1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:16,290 This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture. 2 00:00:16,290 --> 00:00:20,811 The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations but not necessarily 3 00:00:20,811 --> 00:00:30,311 the only ones to the mysteries we will examine. 4 00:00:30,311 --> 00:00:37,592 Since the first man-made nuclear blast in July 1945, scientists have chronicled the devastating 5 00:00:37,592 --> 00:00:46,993 effects of an atomic explosion. 6 00:00:46,993 --> 00:00:52,553 The evidence now indicates that a nuclear explosion may have occurred on Earth as early 7 00:00:52,553 --> 00:01:05,314 as 1908. 8 00:01:05,314 --> 00:01:10,255 In an age when satellites have become commonplace in the heavens above Earth, it is possible 9 00:01:10,255 --> 00:01:20,216 to conceive of another civilization sending a distant probe to our planet. 10 00:01:20,216 --> 00:01:24,876 There is a startling theory that such a probe may have arrived on Earth just after the turn 11 00:01:24,876 --> 00:01:33,337 of the century and that it was programmed to land in the vast open spaces of Siberia. 12 00:01:33,337 --> 00:01:38,497 In the four million square miles of Siberian tundra, there are only a handful of population 13 00:01:38,497 --> 00:01:39,497 centers. 14 00:01:39,497 --> 00:01:44,498 For the most part, it is a land that nature has forsaken. 15 00:01:44,498 --> 00:01:51,298 A layer of permafrost descending 1,000 feet below the surface makes farming virtually 16 00:01:51,298 --> 00:01:54,458 impossible. 17 00:01:54,458 --> 00:02:05,059 The barren land supports very little animal life and only a small, hearty population. 18 00:02:05,059 --> 00:02:09,140 The lives of the people have changed little over the hundreds of years. 19 00:02:09,140 --> 00:02:18,020 The stories they tell of their past are simple tales whose origins can easily be traced. 20 00:02:18,020 --> 00:02:25,501 The traders in Vanavara, a tiny hamlet 3,000 miles east of Moscow, maintain a legend, however, 21 00:02:25,501 --> 00:02:31,621 that has puzzled scientists for 80 years. 22 00:02:31,621 --> 00:02:42,702 They say that a bluish, cylindrically shaped object came hurtling in from outer space. 23 00:02:42,702 --> 00:02:46,703 It was the morning of June 30, 1908. 24 00:02:46,703 --> 00:02:56,223 At precisely 717, the object exploded. 25 00:02:56,223 --> 00:03:01,144 The story of that explosion has been passed down through a generation to people who remember 26 00:03:01,184 --> 00:03:02,864 it today. 27 00:03:02,864 --> 00:03:06,184 Dorothy Raisinan's parents witnessed the explosion. 28 00:03:06,184 --> 00:03:09,784 It was this big boom. 29 00:03:09,784 --> 00:03:15,905 They couldn't see and the earth shook under them and of course they all fell down and 30 00:03:15,905 --> 00:03:16,905 prayed and cried. 31 00:03:16,905 --> 00:03:20,265 You know, my children got hysterical. 32 00:03:20,265 --> 00:03:27,586 The sky turned kind of a dirty orange, a haze, got in there. 33 00:03:27,626 --> 00:03:32,626 Old journals and daily newspapers as far away as California reported that dirty haze seemed 34 00:03:32,626 --> 00:03:41,707 to settle on the horizon following the explosion. 35 00:03:41,707 --> 00:03:46,067 The blast that occurred in Tunguska was so intense that it knocked people off their feet 36 00:03:46,067 --> 00:03:48,388 200 miles from the blast site. 37 00:03:48,388 --> 00:03:51,948 Amazingly, however, there was not one human fatality. 38 00:03:51,948 --> 00:03:56,348 Whatever the object was, it struck in Tunguska in the middle of a swamp. 39 00:03:56,348 --> 00:04:06,109 But it was, or how it could have caused such massive destruction, remained a mystery. 40 00:04:06,109 --> 00:04:11,590 Barographs, a primitive form of seismic recorder, mechanically measured the magnitude of the 41 00:04:11,590 --> 00:04:16,030 explosion as far away as London and Washington, D.C. 42 00:04:16,030 --> 00:04:23,190 But they in no way adequately communicated the intensity of the event. 43 00:04:23,190 --> 00:04:31,711 What did the brilliant sunsets, which painted the skies for several days after the explosion? 44 00:04:31,711 --> 00:04:37,152 The first successful scientific expedition into Tunguska was not launched until 19 years 45 00:04:37,152 --> 00:04:42,112 after the explosion. 46 00:04:42,112 --> 00:04:54,713 In 1927, a young Russian meteorologist, Leonid Kulik, set out to prove that the massive destruction 47 00:04:54,713 --> 00:04:58,913 was caused by a meteor colliding with the Earth. 48 00:04:58,913 --> 00:05:08,354 Kulik's theory was fully accepted at the time as being perfectly logical. 49 00:05:08,354 --> 00:05:12,795 After carefully studying the work done by Kulik and other Soviet scientists, a book 50 00:05:12,795 --> 00:05:15,715 was authored on the subject by Thomas Atkins. 51 00:05:15,715 --> 00:05:23,835 And also by using some information that he had acquired from a seismic station, an earthquake 52 00:05:23,835 --> 00:05:32,556 station in Irkutsk in southern Siberia, he manages to locate, after a rather long and 53 00:05:32,556 --> 00:05:38,317 arduous expedition, the fall point or epicenter of the explosion. 54 00:05:38,317 --> 00:05:42,957 What he finds is a shattered forest. 55 00:05:42,957 --> 00:05:48,717 The extent of the destruction that lay before him was mind-boggling. 56 00:05:48,717 --> 00:05:53,198 He got up on a high ridge and looked out for 10 or 12 miles. 57 00:05:53,198 --> 00:05:58,878 And as far as he could see toward the north, every single visible tree had been knocked 58 00:05:58,878 --> 00:06:00,358 down. 59 00:06:00,358 --> 00:06:08,199 He gets to the center of this destroyed forest and he finds not a crater, but something that 60 00:06:08,199 --> 00:06:11,799 was far stranger and something for which he had no explanation. 61 00:06:11,799 --> 00:06:19,760 He found a forest that was still upright, a dead forest. 62 00:06:19,760 --> 00:06:25,000 It was here in the very epicenter of the blast that Kulik expected to find the same sort 63 00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:34,761 of crater that was gouged into the Arizona landscape 50,000 years ago by a giant meteor. 64 00:06:35,761 --> 00:06:43,082 4,000 feet in diameter and 600 feet deep, the Arizona crater has resisted forces of 65 00:06:43,082 --> 00:06:49,762 rain and wind to remain virtually unchanged. 66 00:06:49,762 --> 00:06:54,723 If a similar type of meteor had crashed in Siberia, then logically it should have left 67 00:06:54,723 --> 00:06:57,443 just such a crater. 68 00:06:57,443 --> 00:07:01,803 But it did not. 69 00:07:01,803 --> 00:07:06,684 That fact has sparked the controversy over the origins of the Tunguska explosion which 70 00:07:06,684 --> 00:07:16,605 continues today. 71 00:07:16,605 --> 00:07:25,885 The information on Tunguska is still being catalogued and analyzed. 72 00:07:25,885 --> 00:07:30,966 Some modern day astronomers believe, however, that Kulik was on the right track. 73 00:07:30,966 --> 00:07:36,486 They maintain that a crumbly sort of meteorite, a carbonaceous chondurite, was responsible 74 00:07:36,486 --> 00:07:43,767 for the explosion. 75 00:07:43,767 --> 00:07:53,048 If we have a carbonaceous chondrite that is 40 or 50 feet in diameter, that's a huge object. 76 00:07:53,048 --> 00:07:58,248 Ronald Oriti, who supports the meteor theory, is an associate lecturer at Griffith Park 77 00:07:58,248 --> 00:07:59,248 Observatory. 78 00:07:59,248 --> 00:08:04,769 It would probably totally disrupt in the atmosphere at an altitude of anywhere from 5 to 10 or 79 00:08:04,769 --> 00:08:06,809 15 miles above the Earth. 80 00:08:06,809 --> 00:08:11,049 The energy that it releases at that time is the same energy that would be released by 81 00:08:11,049 --> 00:08:18,490 a much stronger object, an iron object, of the same mass upon striking the Earth. 82 00:08:18,490 --> 00:08:23,810 So what we find with Tunguska is that we can entirely account for what took place if we 83 00:08:23,810 --> 00:08:33,971 have a very soft and crumbly meteorite that explodes in the atmosphere. 84 00:08:33,971 --> 00:08:36,851 Most meteors burn up before they can explode. 85 00:08:36,851 --> 00:08:41,412 That fact has not escaped the notice of an equally qualified scientist, Charles Cole, 86 00:08:41,412 --> 00:08:45,292 of Caltech, who supports the comet theory. 87 00:08:45,292 --> 00:08:48,252 Comets are basically dirty snowballs. 88 00:08:48,252 --> 00:08:53,132 They're composed mostly of water ice with some dust mixed in. 89 00:08:53,132 --> 00:08:54,453 They're very fragile things. 90 00:08:54,453 --> 00:08:56,013 They're not solid rocks. 91 00:08:56,013 --> 00:09:00,733 This helps explain why the Tunguska event did not leave a large crater on the ground, 92 00:09:00,733 --> 00:09:03,133 even though it was a very massive, violent event. 93 00:09:03,133 --> 00:09:06,374 There were no large craters found. 94 00:09:06,374 --> 00:09:09,374 This is because the comet exploded before it hit the ground. 95 00:09:09,374 --> 00:09:14,654 The blast effect knocked down trees and people many miles from the center of the explosion. 96 00:09:14,654 --> 00:09:16,374 But it did not leave much evidence on the ground. 97 00:09:16,374 --> 00:09:21,055 There were no large chunks of meteorites left. 98 00:09:21,055 --> 00:09:25,375 This can only be explained by the fact that the comet disappeared before it hit the ground 99 00:09:25,375 --> 00:09:27,175 or as a meteorite with what's a large crater. 100 00:09:27,175 --> 00:09:30,776 The fragments scattered all over the place. 101 00:09:30,776 --> 00:09:36,896 I think the comet theory is the best one simply because it explains all the facts with a minimum 102 00:09:36,896 --> 00:09:42,937 number of assumptions. 103 00:09:42,937 --> 00:09:47,977 Some scientists are even willing to reach further for possible explanations. 104 00:09:48,097 --> 00:09:52,857 Dr. Isaac Azimov is a physicist, mathematician, and author. 105 00:09:52,857 --> 00:10:05,018 Until, say, 20 years ago, the universe we knew was very staid and stable and nothing particularly 106 00:10:05,018 --> 00:10:06,658 exciting happened. 107 00:10:06,658 --> 00:10:13,619 But since then, since then with the discovery of quasars in 1963, we have come to believe 108 00:10:13,619 --> 00:10:20,220 and to have evidence for the fact that this is a violent universe we live in and that 109 00:10:20,220 --> 00:10:24,380 there are all kinds of strange objects we didn't dream of before. 110 00:10:24,380 --> 00:10:31,380 For instance, there are black holes. 111 00:10:31,380 --> 00:10:37,341 The ordinary black hole was a monstrous thing with a mass equal anywhere from three times 112 00:10:37,341 --> 00:10:43,581 that of the sun to billions of times the mass of the sun. 113 00:10:43,581 --> 00:10:47,982 There are at least theories that there are such things as mini black holes formed at 114 00:10:47,982 --> 00:10:56,823 the very moment of creation in the Big Bang 15 billion years ago. 115 00:10:56,823 --> 00:11:02,863 The ravening gases that emerged from the original Big Bang may have created sufficient compressions 116 00:11:02,863 --> 00:11:08,584 here and there to squeeze small bits of matter into black holes. 117 00:11:08,584 --> 00:11:14,264 Supposing one of these mini black holes that perhaps didn't have any more mass than an 118 00:11:14,264 --> 00:11:24,425 asteroid came down and struck the earth, it would absorb atmospheric molecules as it dashed 119 00:11:24,425 --> 00:11:33,186 through the air, heating it up and creating a terrific explosion. 120 00:11:33,186 --> 00:11:36,266 Now there is no evidence that this is what happened. 121 00:11:36,626 --> 00:11:41,186 In fact, to tell you the truth, there is no hard and fast evidence that many black holes 122 00:11:41,186 --> 00:11:45,867 exist at all. 123 00:11:45,867 --> 00:11:51,427 The explanation, however, with which Dr. Asimov feels most comfortable is the comet theory 124 00:11:51,427 --> 00:11:55,307 proposed by Charles Cole. 125 00:11:55,307 --> 00:12:00,468 Other explanations have been offered, particularly by Soviet scientists who have had more opportunity 126 00:12:00,468 --> 00:12:05,268 to study the physical evidence. 127 00:12:05,268 --> 00:12:11,349 Soviet science writer Alexander Kassansev proposed in the early 1950s that the Tunguska 128 00:12:11,349 --> 00:12:16,229 blast was nuclear in origin. 129 00:12:16,229 --> 00:12:28,350 But who or what could have triggered such a blast remained a mystery. 130 00:12:28,350 --> 00:12:35,031 Despite the diverging opinions, scientists have one area of agreement that on June 30th, 131 00:12:35,031 --> 00:12:39,471 1908, some outer space object collided with the earth. 132 00:12:39,471 --> 00:12:45,191 But in order to seek a logical explanation of what happened in the Tunguska, we must 133 00:12:45,191 --> 00:12:49,112 go back and analyze the blast itself. 134 00:12:49,112 --> 00:12:56,672 There was a gigantic fireball, a huge pillar of fire that blossomed up into the air for 135 00:12:56,672 --> 00:13:01,033 some 20 miles and was visible for several hundred miles away. 136 00:13:01,033 --> 00:13:09,233 It was an instantaneous thermal flash as a result of this fireball that scorched the 137 00:13:09,233 --> 00:13:13,714 forest for, again, for hundreds of miles. 138 00:13:13,714 --> 00:13:19,794 There were shock waves that rushed through the forest, knocking trees down. 139 00:13:26,675 --> 00:13:39,716 Russian writer Kassansev, Atkins and others have theorized that such a blast was triggered 140 00:13:39,716 --> 00:13:45,316 by a nuclear device almost 40 years before the first man-made explosion. 141 00:13:45,316 --> 00:13:50,397 Nowhere in Earth's history is there evidence of a spontaneous atomic blast. 142 00:13:50,397 --> 00:13:58,517 The heavens, however, hold a partial answer. 143 00:13:58,517 --> 00:14:03,318 Using the sun as a model, we know that all stars have for billions of years created power 144 00:14:03,318 --> 00:14:05,398 through nuclear fusion. 145 00:14:05,398 --> 00:14:10,198 Surrounding these stars exist planetary systems much like our own, and it is quite likely 146 00:14:10,198 --> 00:14:18,119 also that if there is other intelligent life in the galaxy, they have harnessed such a power. 147 00:14:18,119 --> 00:14:24,159 The experiment that took place at Alamogordo, New Mexico in the summer of 1945 proved that 148 00:14:24,159 --> 00:14:40,281 Earth scientists had found a way to trigger a nuclear explosion. 149 00:14:40,281 --> 00:14:45,401 From that momentous day until the present, the atomic tests have continued, and the results 150 00:14:45,401 --> 00:15:13,363 have been carefully monitored. 151 00:15:13,363 --> 00:15:27,565 The link parallels can be found between man-made blasts and the event at Tunguska. 152 00:15:27,565 --> 00:15:32,565 The devastation at Hiroshima provides a glimpse of what occurs at both the center and fringes 153 00:15:32,565 --> 00:15:35,085 of a massive explosion. 154 00:15:35,085 --> 00:15:50,647 The Hiroshima Castle was the exact detonation point. 155 00:15:50,647 --> 00:15:57,727 The Soviets carefully compared the after effects both at Hiroshima and Tunguska. 156 00:15:57,727 --> 00:16:01,567 At ground zero of the first blast was the Hiroshima Castle. 157 00:16:01,567 --> 00:16:06,688 At charred, it remained upright even though buildings far sturdier, only a few hundred 158 00:16:06,688 --> 00:16:13,368 feet away were flattened and completely destroyed. 159 00:16:13,368 --> 00:16:22,529 This fact coincided perfectly with a telegraph forest effect that had so puzzled Kulik. 160 00:16:22,529 --> 00:16:28,170 Evidences of accelerated plant growth in both Japan and Tunguska were observed, as were 161 00:16:28,170 --> 00:16:42,491 traces of radioactive material in tree rings. 162 00:16:42,491 --> 00:16:47,571 The people of Hiroshima have known almost from the very first day the deadly effects 163 00:16:47,571 --> 00:16:52,172 of a nuclear explosion. 164 00:16:52,172 --> 00:17:01,452 Coincidentally, the people of Tunguska have suffered similar after effects. 165 00:17:01,452 --> 00:17:15,053 Ill health has plagued the entire family of Dorothy Raisinen. 166 00:17:15,053 --> 00:17:20,934 In an effort to confirm or deny their suspicions regarding Tunguska, Soviet scientists conducted 167 00:17:20,934 --> 00:17:23,374 one final experiment. 168 00:17:23,374 --> 00:17:26,614 They constructed a matchstick forest. 169 00:17:26,614 --> 00:17:33,615 It was the exact scale model of the Tunguska blast site, each tiny matchstick representing 170 00:17:33,615 --> 00:17:44,776 a particular stand of trees. 171 00:17:44,776 --> 00:17:54,417 They detonated an explosion at the relative altitude of the 1908 blast. 172 00:17:54,417 --> 00:18:00,057 Even to their surprise, the pattern of uprooted model trees was identical to the original 173 00:18:00,057 --> 00:18:17,939 Tunguska explosion. 174 00:18:17,939 --> 00:18:22,899 The evidence supported the Soviet contention that Tunguska was the result of a nuclear 175 00:18:22,899 --> 00:18:24,899 holocaust. 176 00:18:24,899 --> 00:18:27,299 One nagging question remained. 177 00:18:27,299 --> 00:18:31,580 How could a nuclear bomb have been exploded in 1908? 178 00:18:31,580 --> 00:18:36,380 Who or what would have had such a capability? 179 00:18:36,380 --> 00:18:42,861 Henry Gree is an acclaimed journalist and author of the book, New Soviet Psychic Discoveries. 180 00:18:42,861 --> 00:18:48,541 He is the only American who has interviewed the man who took up the quest in 1956 to solve 181 00:18:48,541 --> 00:18:50,461 the Tunguska mystery. 182 00:18:50,461 --> 00:18:53,861 The Russian physicist Alexei Zolotov. 183 00:18:53,861 --> 00:19:02,942 He is a very long black beard, bold, burning black eyes, fanatical in his dedication to 184 00:19:02,942 --> 00:19:03,942 his subject. 185 00:19:03,942 --> 00:19:10,983 He has eliminated ten very interesting theories about the possibility of what had happened 186 00:19:10,983 --> 00:19:14,263 on that day in 1908. 187 00:19:14,263 --> 00:19:19,144 And he has eliminated each and all of them for various very important scientific reasons 188 00:19:19,144 --> 00:19:25,984 to arrive at the conclusion that his one theory is the most valid, namely that an extraterrestrial 189 00:19:25,984 --> 00:19:36,425 civilization had sent a message to Earth for us to know that there is life in outer space, 190 00:19:36,425 --> 00:19:41,185 that there is civilization in outer space which is ahead of us and which is watching 191 00:19:41,185 --> 00:19:49,906 us very benevolently. 192 00:19:49,906 --> 00:19:59,707 This is why Zolotov said this particular explosion took place at Tunguska. 193 00:19:59,707 --> 00:20:04,867 Thomas Atkins explains why he believes that the Tunguska explosion resulted from an alien 194 00:20:04,867 --> 00:20:06,507 spacecraft. 195 00:20:06,507 --> 00:20:11,788 Eyewitness accounts provided him with the object's course. 196 00:20:11,788 --> 00:20:18,628 Several miles above the Earth, over Siberia, it seemed to have executed an eastward turn 197 00:20:18,628 --> 00:20:21,469 and then a very sharp westward turn. 198 00:20:21,469 --> 00:20:27,429 That westward turn, in fact, that took this object over the more desolate part of Siberia 199 00:20:27,429 --> 00:20:30,829 where it would do no human damage. 200 00:20:30,829 --> 00:20:35,070 They didn't know what happened. 201 00:20:35,070 --> 00:20:44,230 They thought it was the end of the Earth. 202 00:20:44,230 --> 00:20:48,111 The universe is full of strange things. 203 00:20:48,111 --> 00:20:49,111 We know that. 204 00:20:49,111 --> 00:20:52,391 We've discovered some of them in the last 20 years. 205 00:20:52,391 --> 00:20:58,112 The only way we're ever going to understand the universe is to try to keep an open mind 206 00:20:58,112 --> 00:21:00,712 and try to be ready for strange things. 207 00:21:00,712 --> 00:21:07,472 J.B.S. Haldane once said, the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger 208 00:21:07,472 --> 00:21:17,113 than we can imagine. 209 00:21:17,113 --> 00:21:22,354 Coming up next on FBI, The Untold Stories, an agent is trapped into a dangerous meeting 210 00:21:22,354 --> 00:21:23,514 with drug traffickers. 211 00:21:23,514 --> 00:21:28,994 Then, on history's crimes and trials, one of the most elaborate hoaxes of modern times, 212 00:21:29,114 --> 00:21:34,035 Clifford Irving's claim that Howard Hughes had chosen him as a biographer. 213 00:21:34,035 --> 00:21:37,675 And later tonight, Hitler and Stalin clash in Kiev. 214 00:21:37,675 --> 00:21:42,235 Now history's mysteries reveals the secrets they thought they'd buried in the rubble. 215 00:21:42,235 --> 00:21:45,595 At 8, here on the History Channel, where the past comes alive.