January 19, 2025 • 32 mins
Could the Electric Universe Theory be the key to unlocking the cause of the Tunguska Event of 1908? The strange Tunguska explosion flattened 80 million trees in Siberia. Was it a meteor? Nikola Tesla Death Ray? UFO? This bold new theory may hold the answer! The Tunguska event has puzzled scientists for over a century. Learn how the controversial Electric Universe theory finally solves this cosmic mystery in this mini-documentary. ...Or does it? You decide.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:16):
Strange mysteries, unexplained phenomena.
And the shadows in between.
This is The InBetween Official Podcastwith your host,
Carol Ann!
115 years ago, deep in the wildernessof Russian Siberia,
(00:37):
an incredible event rocked the world.
You have been a participant in the biggest
interdimensional cross ripsince the Tunguska Blast of 1909.
As Dr.
Ray Stantz says,although he's off by a year,
something wildly unexplainable went downin the Siberian wilderness back in 1908.
Out of nowhere,a huge, earthshaking explosion
(01:01):
sending shockwaves - not once,but twice - around the entire
globe, levelinghundreds of square miles of trees.
But why is this such a mystery?
have been a meteorite, right?
But no impact crater.
Over a century later,the cause of this tree
flattening blast remains a total mystery.
(01:22):
But one theory does seem to explainall of this.
Could it be true?Welcome to The InBetween.
I'm Carol Ann.
And today we explore the mysteries ofthe Tunguska Event of 1908.
a little after 7 a.m., June 30th, 1908,
(01:45):
the heavens split openas a ball of fire races across the sky,
exploding with the force of a 10to 15 megaton hydrogen bomb,
which is about a thousand timesthe impact of the bomb
dropped on Hiroshima in a sparselyinhabited region of Siberia, in Russia,
(02:05):
near the PodkamennayaTunguska River Basin.
Seismic stations across Europe and Asiafeel the explosion and the shockwave,
which was so strongthat it actually felt like a magnitude
5.0 earthquake,not only knocks people off their feet,
but overturns boats in the river, sendsfish flying out of the water,
(02:27):
breaks windows up to 100 miles away
and circles the earth twice.
Astronomers observe a glowing hazein the upper atmosphere
for several nights so bright that people
were taking pictures at midnightwithout a flash in Sweden and Scotland.
The area of the blast is so remote
(02:48):
it takes another 13 yearsbefore anyone from Moscow or St.
Petersburg can even get out thereto look at it.
Now, in all fairness, people in the citieskind of had their hands a little full
with the multiple revolutionsand civil war going on.
But that doesn't stopRussian mineralogist Leonid Kulik.
(03:10):
He tries for years to convince the powers
that be to let him gocheck it out, with no luck.
Until he finally speaks the magic word...
...Iron!
See, in his estimation,this had to have been a meteor,
which means tons of meteoric iron,a commodity in very short supply
(03:31):
at the time and desperately neededfor the Civil War effort.
So with the carrot successfully dangledthat this could be an iron salvage
mission, in 1921,he attempts to embark on an expedition
to the area in the name of the SovietAcademy of Sciences.
However, the locals, the Evenki tribe,which is an indigenous tribe
(03:55):
that lives in northern Siberia,warned him to turn back.
but winter is coming.
Winter is comingand you don't want to go there.
So Kulick and his group, frustratedturn around and go home.
But Kulick isn't one to give up.
And while it takes him another seven yearsto gather the resources
(04:16):
and permissions again, in 1928,he and his group head out a second time.
This time they actually make it amazingly,
even 19 years after the thunderous event,
it's still a breathtaking sight to see.
Kulick discoversa blast zone of roughly 830
(04:38):
square miles, about 34 miles by 43 miles.
That's about 80 million charred
trees completely leveled.
But even more interestingis what he doesn't see, an impact crater.
What there is, is a five mile wide areain the center of the blast pattern
(04:59):
where there are birch trees still standingand a few unburned ones mixed in.
So how is that possibleto make several trips back to the region
over the next several yearsand never finds his meteoric iron?
so no meteor, no meteor impact.
That's when scientistskick it into high gear
(05:20):
to find a theorythat fits the evidence left behind.
Now, one of the two biggest theoriesthat surfaces immediately is that
it was a meteor, but that it blew upbefore it could actually hit the ground.
So no impact crater.
Keep in mindthat we are talking about a theorized hunk
of rock, about 200 feet in diameter.
(05:43):
And if that's the case,
you would think that there would bechunks of it everywhere.
Right.
But none are ever found in 1930.
British meteorologistand mathematician J.W.
Whipple suggestjust the second of the two main theories,
and that is that the Tunguska bodywas actually a small comet.
a comet according to mainstream astronomyis different from a meteor in that it's
(06:07):
composed of dust, ice and frozen gases
which would have been completely vaporized
once it entered the Earth's atmosphere,leaving no trace.
But something made primarily of waterand gases would most likely burn up
long before it even gets closeenough to earth to cause any damage.
(06:27):
Believe it or not, these two camps
have been battling it out since the 1930s.
And in the words of German astrophysicistWolfgang Kunde, If a group of experts
cannot agree for almost 100 years, it'sprobably a third option.
And there are lots of third options.
(06:48):
None of them being able to explainall of the evidence that is
either there or not there,except for maybe one.
So let's start with Wolfgang Kuhn's option
Kimberlite explosion.
Wolfgang took a deep diveinto the Tunguska case file
in the late 1990s and decidedthe event was probably not celestial
(07:11):
but a more earthbound volcanic solution.
He suggested a kimberlite ejection
in kimberlite pipes,which are a type of volcanic eruption.
The eruptions eject a column of overlyingmaterial directly over the Magma column
so they don't form that large above ground
cone, as typical volcanoes do.
(07:34):
Instead, a low ring formed around a bull
shaped depressionover the underground column of magma.
According to his theory,ten megatons of methane
were explosively ejected,
whose icy remnants in the upper atmosphere
caused three bright nightsto follow in Europe.
(07:55):
And there are many records of thereindeed being several nights
following the event that were so bright,it was almost like daylight.
However, the methane explosion theorydoesn't quite fit.
First off,not only is there no evidence of the low
ring and bull shaped depression
that walking in southsays should be there, but it also does
(08:18):
not fit the eyewitness accounts of peoplewho are close to the epicenter.
One account comes from the newspaperXabier,
who quoted a resident of Kaliningrad about
225 miles southeast of the blast.
The peasants saw to the north west,
rather high above the horizon,some strangely bright,
(08:39):
bluish white heavenly body,which for 10 minutes moved downwards.
The body appeared as a pipe, i.e.
a cylinder. The sky was cloudless.
Only a small dark cloud was observed inthe general direction of the bright body.
It was hot and dry.
As the body neared the ground.
(09:00):
The body seemed to smudgeand then turned into a giant.
Below a black smoke and a loudknocking was heard
as if large stones were fallingor artillery was fired.
All buildings shook.
At the same time, the cloud beganemitting flames of uncertain shapes.
(09:22):
All villagers were stricken with panicand took to the streets.
Women cried, thinkingit was the end of the world.
Simone Semenov was about 40 milessouth of the explosion.
According to him, At breakfast time,
I was sitting by the houseat one of our trading post facing north.
(09:42):
I suddenly saw that directly to the northover on Cool's Tunguska Road.
The sky split in two and five year
appeared high and wide over the forest.
The split in the skygrew larger and the entire
northern side was covered with fire.
At that moment, I became so hot that
(10:04):
I couldn't bear itas if my shirt were on fire.
From the northern side,where the fire was came strong heat.
I wanted to tear my shirtand throw it down, but then the sky shot
closed and a strong thump soundedand I was thrown a few meters.
I lost my senses for a moment, but thenmy wife ran out and led me to the house.
(10:29):
After that, such noise came
as if rocks were fallingor cannons were firing.
The earth shook,and when I was on the ground,
I pressed my headdown, fearing rocks would smash it.
When the sky opened up, hot winds
raced between the houses,lakes and cannons,
which left traces on the groundlike pathways in a damaged some crops.
(10:54):
Later,we saw that many windows were shattered
and in the barn,a part of the iron block snapped.
So according to these eyewitnesses,the event seemed to indeed
come from the sky.
So probably not a methane explosion,
a glancing blow.
(11:15):
Another theoryis that the meteor came roaring in,
but bounced off back into space.
Really?
I mean, I guess they ran the numbersand have a scenario
of an iron asteroid around600 feet in diameter,
traveling at seven milesper second or 25,000 miles per hour,
(11:36):
which glances off the Earth's atmosphereand returns into solar orbit,
I guess but there's no evidencefor that one either.
And you would think that if it got lowenough to flatten 80 million trees,
it would have probably shed a few rocksalong the way.
I can't imagine that onegetting away clean.
(11:56):
So now that all of the logicalexplanations have been tried
and found wanting, we start getting intothe more fantastical ones.
First,let's give a nod to the local event.
People
Agca Aquilina,
an event you woman who is roughly20 miles from the epicenter
at the time of the explosion,tells scientists
(12:19):
a brilliant outburst of light blinded us.
The wind was breaking treeslike they were sticks
as a rising whirlwind lifted us offthe ground.
I lost consciousness.
After she wakes up, she remembersseeing her husband, Ivan, being lifted up
by a wind blast and slammedinto one of the remaining upright trees
(12:42):
130 feet from the remnants of the campthat they had been sleeping in.
Ivan dies a few hours laterfrom fractures, shock and blood loss.
Aquilina also reports our reindeers
also vanishedand we haven't found them since.
The shamans of the event Tribe,who have lived in the area
(13:02):
for thousands of years, claimthe Tunguska event was caused by Ogden.
The God of Thunder himself,
Not that God of thunder.
who is upset by their tribal disputesthey say are descent demons
with shining eyes and fiery tailsto punish the disobedient event men.
(13:25):
I know this one is really hard to believe,
but it is notable for the factthat immediately after the event,
the area was declared sacredand a forbidden zone by event.
Tribesmen who then reportedly either
chased out or killeddozens of Soviet scientific expeditions
that ventured into the area for decadesafter
(13:49):
Black hole.
Most people are familiarwith the idea of a black hole,
a gigantic area of spacewhere the gravitational pull is so strong
that nothing, not even lightcan escape these matter devouring
machine beans are thought to be createdby the explosion of a star.
(14:10):
But not all of them are of the monstervariety.
Some have theorizedthat at the time of the Big Bang,
small black holes were also producedcalled primordial black holes.
And I mean smalllike the size of a hydrogen atom.
Small.
And that these little mattereating monsters,
(14:31):
unlike their big brothers,are not gravitationally tied to anything.
So spend their daysfree falling through the universe.
And how does this relate to Tunguska?
Well, in 1973, two scientists
Albert A Jackson and MichaelP, Ryan Sloat.
The theory that one dayone of these primordial black holes
(14:53):
just happens to come free falling our way
on a direct collision course with Earth.
That were the case.
As it startsplowing through our atmosphere,
it would be gobbling up any moleculesof anything it encounters along the way.
Oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide.
This gobbling process createslots of heat and energy,
(15:16):
so it would look like a bright, glowingmass as it moves through the sky.
And once it hits the Earth's surface,it wouldn't stop like an impact.
It would keep moving throughlike a hot knife, through butter.
But the energy it would produce alongthe way would be great enough
to create that shockwaveAnd the seismic rumble.
(15:37):
Pretty neat theory.
The only problem is that the black holewould also exit the earth
preciselywhere would depend on the angle of entry.
But based on the shape of the blastpattern in the trees, it's theorized
that it would have come out somewherein the North Atlantic Ocean.
But no reports of anythingamiss were ever reported.
(15:58):
And unless researchersuncover a pillar of glass
burrowing into the groundin the Tunguska region,
where the energy of the black holewould have melted the soil.
I think we have to callthis one purely hypothetical
anti-matter and a UFO explosion.
These two theories are quite differentfrom each other.
(16:22):
But hang with meand you'll see why I put them together.
first the exploding UFO theory.
In 1945,a science fiction writer named Alexander.
Because ATF visits the ruins of Hiroshima,which we know was devastated
by a nuclear explosionnear the explosions epicenter.
He noticed still standingtree trunks with their leaves
(16:45):
and branches ripped off by the sheerforce of the shockwave.
Six years later,Alexander visits Tunguska,
where he notices similar patternsno crater
standing trees without any branchesor leaves in the trees
still standing more charring on the sideclosest to the impact.
(17:05):
So he quickly comes to a conclusionThe Tunguska event
had to be caused by a massive explosion,
probably of nuclear origin.
A bit of a leap. But. Okay.
But what would cause that?
Nuclear weapons are a long way off.
So being the sci fi writer that he is,Kazan says, develops his theory
(17:27):
that the blast was caused by a UFOwhose nuclear powered
propulsion system must have malfunctionedand exploded.
and in 1956, he wrote his famous shortnovel titled The Explosion, where he lays
out his own explanation about the truecause of the tank explosion.
now I would think that if this were indeed
(17:49):
the case, that there would be evidenceleft behind.
The chances of the explosion completelyvaporizing everything are pretty slim.
There should still be some tracesof some foreign metal
left on the ground, which there isn't.
But amazingly enough,that's not what brings this theory down.
Which brings us to the other ideathat of an anti-matter explosion in 1941.
(18:15):
An American astronomerfrom the University of New Mexico
who might be known tosome as one of the military investigators
of the Roswell, New MexicoUFO crash in 1947.
Lincoln La Paz.
Total side note Lincolnthen had a UFO sighting of his own
with his familyjust two days after the crash at Roswell.
(18:39):
Anyway, Lincoln tosses out an ideathat perhaps the explosion
was the result of a glob of anti-matterhitting the earth.
Anti-matteris like the mere opposite of matter.
So when the two meet,the effectively cancel each other out
releasing hugeamounts of energy in various forms.
(18:59):
So the idea is thatthis big blob of anti-matter comes
barreling into the earth atmosphere,being canceled out by matter as it drops,
creating the fireballuntil it finally hits the matter
on the ground and releasesthe rest of its energy.
Now, forget for a moment that it seemslike such a release of energy
(19:22):
would cause an impact crater of some sort.
The real downfall of thistheory is neutrinos.
Neutrinos are one of the many thingsgenerated
by the cancellation of matter,by anti-matter.
And where else are neutrinos created?
Nuclear explosions.
Which brings us to this guy, Dr.
(19:44):
Willard Libby, a Nobel Prizewinning scientist who specialty is
anything atomic, including the fallout
and especially carbon dating
that is measuringthe amount of carbon 14 in an object.
Carbon 14 is a radioactive isotopewith a predictable decay rate.
(20:05):
So the less carbon 14something has, the older it is.
But I digress.
when a hailstorm of neutrinos hitsthe air like in a nuclear explosion
or when matter and anti-mattercancel each other out,
the result is the creationof a ton of extra carbon.
14 in the air.
(20:26):
because you see the trees
record the composition of the atmospherebecause they grow from the atmosphere.
We can establish
if there was ever a rise in the relativeatmospheric levels of carbon.
Dr. Willard and his team had already runthe same kind of carbon
14 test on trees from the blast areasof other nuclear test sites.
(20:48):
So they already knew thatthe rise in carbon 14
in the tree rings did indeed happen.
So they did the same carbontesting on the Tunguska trees.
Result that there was don'thave that matter involved at all,
nor was there any hydrogen bomb,nor was ten atomic bomb.
There was anything elseatomic good nuclear
(21:12):
So with one simple testwe are able to knock out
both the explodingUFO and anti-matter theories.
The death rate.
This theory is a little less well known,
but I think it's my favoriteonly because I love Nikola Tesla.
(21:34):
Starting as far back as the 1890s, Teslahad theorized and experimented
on the possibilityof wireless power transmission.
He wanted to wirelessly powerthe world for free.
How can you not love the guy?
In 1901, he finally obtains the financingand the property
(21:55):
to build his 187 foottall wireless transmission
tower on Long Island,which would become known as Warden Cliff.
Long story.
By 1908, financing has dried upand predators are calling.
And Nikola is getting desperate.
He needs a miracle or a spectacle?
(22:20):
And it just so happensthat he is friends with one Robert Peary.
The first person to reach the North Pole.
Peary didn'tachieve that honor until April of 1909.
But in June of 1908, as he's
about to depart from New Yorkon his way to the Arctic Circle,
Tassler tells him to keep his eye openwhen he gets there.
(22:40):
For a little demonstration. Presumably.
The idea is that Tesla will aimthe wireless power transmitter
at the North Poleso that when Peary and his team get there,
they will see the aftermathof a great explosion in Up there.
What else would it be from?
But Tesla's power beam?
Peary reportedlynever saw any signs of destruction.
(23:04):
But maybe that'sbecause they weren't there.
If you draw a straight linefrom Long Island
through the North Pole and keep going,what do you hit?
Tunguska?
Is it possiblethat his test was partially a success?
That the death Ray, as it's called,did deliver the immense
(23:25):
amount of energy requiredto cause a 15 megaton explosion
in another part of the world,but that he just overshot his target.
Knowing the genius that that guy was.
I certainly wouldn't put it past him.
By now,
you're probably shaking your head thinkingthis is just a pointless exercise
(23:45):
because everything we've talked aboutso far is either too
far out there to be real or doesn't fitthe evidence.
We've delve deep into theoriesthat range from a rogue asteroid
making an unexpected house call to earthto even extraterrestrial
interventions, eachfascinating in its own right,
but still leaving gapsthat science struggles to fill.
(24:08):
But what if there is an anglewe've overlooked an angle
that doesn't just add yetanother layer to the Tunguska event,
but challenges our fundamentalunderstanding of the cosmos
Electric Universe.
Imagine for a moment a universe unlikethe one you were taught about in school.
(24:30):
Go beyond Einstein and Newton pastthe rigid equations and models
you've been taughtabout how celestial bodies should behave.
Picture a universethat is not just a passive stage
for matter to float around in,but a dynamic,
interconnectednetwork of electromagnetic currents
(24:52):
pulsing and weaving their influence
across the vast expanses of space.
This, my friends, isthe Electric Universe theory.
It suggests that our universe isn'tjust bound by weak gravitational forces,
but also by complexand powerful electrical interactions
(25:14):
that govern everything from planetary
orbits to galactic formation.
It's a paradigm shift, daring
to propose that maybe, just
maybe electrical and magnetic forcesplay a far
more significant role in our universethan we ever imagined.
(25:35):
So why am I telling you this as outlandishas it might sound.
The Electric Universe modelcould offer a radically different lens
through which to view the Tunguska event.
In a world that's electrically connected.
What happened in that remoteSiberian forest
may not be as inexplicable as we thought.
(25:57):
So what if the power behindthis cataclysmic event
wasn't just some random rockflying through space,
but was actually an electrical interaction
between the earthand an electrically charged comet?
You see, in the Electric Universe model,
comets and planetsaren't just balls of rock and gas.
(26:19):
They're electromagnetically charged bodies
like huge positiveand negative charged masses in space.
When these charged batteriesget close enough to one another,
they see each otherelectrically for the first time and bam,
you get a super charged cosmic fireworks
(26:40):
show pictureputting your hands on a plasma sphere
and watching the plasma arcsburst out to meet your hands.
Or when you put jumper cableson your car battery
and see the spark jumpfrom the battery to the cables.
Those are both very simplistic versions
of this electrical exchange,but the same idea.
(27:02):
you might wonder,why didn't we see it coming?
Well, according to the Electric Universe,we kind of did.
Remember those reports of unusuallybright nights after the big event?
Well, there are also reports of strange,
bright nights even before the explosion.
This glow could have been the earthand the comet
(27:25):
starting to see each other electrically.
This encounter electrical interplay,could also explain the bizarre weather
and seismic activityalso reported days before the explosion.
Another thing reported by peoplethat you don't hear very often
when reading mainstream sourcesfor this story
(27:45):
is that people actually heard weirdsounds before the blast.
well as a comet fragmentspeeds through the atmosphere,
it can ionize the air around it,creating a trail of charged particles.
These charged particles can generate
low frequency electromagnetic waves.
(28:06):
Now, the interesting part isthat these waves can interact with
conductive objects on the ground, likemetal fences, antennas, or even your hair.
when this happens.
These objects essentially convertthe electromagnetic
waves back into sound wavesthat you can hear.
Imagine the atmospherefunctioning like a giant speaker.
(28:28):
It's not emitting soundin the traditional way through vibrations,
but it's producing electromagnetic wavesthat get transformed into sound.
Once they interactwith certain materials on Earth,
this is certainly notyour everyday occurrence,
but it's a phenomenathat's been witnessed and recorded before.
(28:48):
An eerie low frequency rumble or hum
that some people describeas the soundtrack of impending doom.
now under the explosion itself.
The celestial culpritwas probably a fragment of comet NK,
which is the comet now recognizedas the originator of the Taurid
asteroid belt that Earth passesthrough twice each year.
(29:12):
Once in October and once around June.
The June pass, the Beta Tau and Pass
is known to peak around June 28th to 29th.
So the Earth is flying through thisasteroid belt in one of those floating
chunks of comet passes a little too closeand gets sucked our atmosphere.
(29:33):
But this fragment doesn't just explodebecause it crashes into the earth.
It violently explodesbecause of the colossal
electrical differentialbetween the earth and itself.
So why no crater?
Well, in this electrical model,the explosion is more like a supercharged
arc of electricity so hot and powerful
(29:55):
that it vaporizes the comet fragmentbefore it can even touch the ground.
It's like the universe's own versionof a plasma cutter slicing
through a celestial body, but not leavinga scratch on the Earth's surface.
And although not much evidence of anythinghas been found in the impact area,
one thing that an expedition in the 1960s
(30:17):
did find is a bunch of small, shiny,
metallic and silica spheres,which known to be produced in high heat,
high energy situationslike a nuclear blast.
But they are also known to be remnantsof high energy electric discharges.
The Electric Universe theorydoesn't need to invoke exotic explanations
(30:42):
like black holes or, anti-matteror UFOs to explain the Tunguska mystery.
The electrical force,this powerful, universal force
that we're still trying to fullyunderstand does the job just fine.
It wraps up all these strange observationsinto one coherent story
without ignoring any of the mindboggling details left over by the rest.
(31:07):
Unfortunately, given the elapsed timeas well as our lack of discernable clues.
Will most likely never knowexactly what happened
in the remote Russianwilderness of Siberia that June morning.
But whatever the cause, it certainlychanged the way we think of our safety.
Atop this lonelyfloating rock or battery forever.
(31:35):
The Electric Universe
is a pretty trippy theory to explore,but it explains
so many things that you didn't even knowneeded explaining.
And if the hair on the back of your neckis standing up and curiosity,
we have a video coming out on thisvery soon.
So if you are interestedand you want to see it,
(31:56):
make sure that you subscribe
in turn on notificationsso you don't accidentally miss it.
Until then, be careful out there andI'll see you here again on The InBetween.
Thanks for tuning into The InBetween Podcast.
Enjoy the full visual experiencewith me over on YouTube.
Just search for @TheInBetweentales.
(32:20):
I'm Carol Ann,and until next time, be careful
out there.
Strange mysteries, unexplained phenomena.
And the shadows in between.
This is The InBetween Official Podcastwith your host,
Carol Ann!
115 years ago, deep in the wildernessof Russian Siberia,
(00:37):
an incredible event rocked the world.
You have been a participant in the biggest
interdimensional cross ripsince the Tunguska Blast of 1909.
As Dr.
Ray Stantz says,although he's off by a year,
something wildly unexplainable went downin the Siberian wilderness back in 1908.
Out of nowhere,a huge, earthshaking explosion
(01:01):
sending shockwaves - not once,but twice - around the entire
globe, levelinghundreds of square miles of trees.
But why is this such a mystery?
have been a meteorite, right?
But no impact crater.
Over a century later,the cause of this tree
flattening blast remains a total mystery.
(01:22):
But one theory does seem to explainall of this.
Could it be true?Welcome to The InBetween.
I'm Carol Ann.
And today we explore the mysteries ofthe Tunguska Event of 1908.
a little after 7 a.m., June 30th, 1908,
(01:45):
the heavens split openas a ball of fire races across the sky,
exploding with the force of a 10to 15 megaton hydrogen bomb,
which is about a thousand timesthe impact of the bomb
dropped on Hiroshima in a sparselyinhabited region of Siberia, in Russia,
(02:05):
near the PodkamennayaTunguska River Basin.
Seismic stations across Europe and Asiafeel the explosion and the shockwave,
which was so strongthat it actually felt like a magnitude
5.0 earthquake,not only knocks people off their feet,
but overturns boats in the river, sendsfish flying out of the water,
(02:27):
breaks windows up to 100 miles away
and circles the earth twice.
Astronomers observe a glowing hazein the upper atmosphere
for several nights so bright that people
were taking pictures at midnightwithout a flash in Sweden and Scotland.
The area of the blast is so remote
(02:48):
it takes another 13 yearsbefore anyone from Moscow or St.
Petersburg can even get out thereto look at it.
Now, in all fairness, people in the citieskind of had their hands a little full
with the multiple revolutionsand civil war going on.
But that doesn't stopRussian mineralogist Leonid Kulik.
(03:10):
He tries for years to convince the powers
that be to let him gocheck it out, with no luck.
Until he finally speaks the magic word...
...Iron!
See, in his estimation,this had to have been a meteor,
which means tons of meteoric iron,a commodity in very short supply
(03:31):
at the time and desperately neededfor the Civil War effort.
So with the carrot successfully dangledthat this could be an iron salvage
mission, in 1921,he attempts to embark on an expedition
to the area in the name of the SovietAcademy of Sciences.
However, the locals, the Evenki tribe,which is an indigenous tribe
(03:55):
that lives in northern Siberia,warned him to turn back.
but winter is coming.
Winter is comingand you don't want to go there.
So Kulick and his group, frustratedturn around and go home.
But Kulick isn't one to give up.
And while it takes him another seven yearsto gather the resources
(04:16):
and permissions again, in 1928,he and his group head out a second time.
This time they actually make it amazingly,
even 19 years after the thunderous event,
it's still a breathtaking sight to see.
Kulick discoversa blast zone of roughly 830
(04:38):
square miles, about 34 miles by 43 miles.
That's about 80 million charred
trees completely leveled.
But even more interestingis what he doesn't see, an impact crater.
What there is, is a five mile wide areain the center of the blast pattern
(04:59):
where there are birch trees still standingand a few unburned ones mixed in.
So how is that possibleto make several trips back to the region
over the next several yearsand never finds his meteoric iron?
so no meteor, no meteor impact.
That's when scientistskick it into high gear
(05:20):
to find a theorythat fits the evidence left behind.
Now, one of the two biggest theoriesthat surfaces immediately is that
it was a meteor, but that it blew upbefore it could actually hit the ground.
So no impact crater.
Keep in mindthat we are talking about a theorized hunk
of rock, about 200 feet in diameter.
(05:43):
And if that's the case,
you would think that there would bechunks of it everywhere.
Right.
But none are ever found in 1930.
British meteorologistand mathematician J.W.
Whipple suggestjust the second of the two main theories,
and that is that the Tunguska bodywas actually a small comet.
a comet according to mainstream astronomyis different from a meteor in that it's
(06:07):
composed of dust, ice and frozen gases
which would have been completely vaporized
once it entered the Earth's atmosphere,leaving no trace.
But something made primarily of waterand gases would most likely burn up
long before it even gets closeenough to earth to cause any damage.
(06:27):
Believe it or not, these two camps
have been battling it out since the 1930s.
And in the words of German astrophysicistWolfgang Kunde, If a group of experts
cannot agree for almost 100 years, it'sprobably a third option.
And there are lots of third options.
(06:48):
None of them being able to explainall of the evidence that is
either there or not there,except for maybe one.
So let's start with Wolfgang Kuhn's option
Kimberlite explosion.
Wolfgang took a deep diveinto the Tunguska case file
in the late 1990s and decidedthe event was probably not celestial
(07:11):
but a more earthbound volcanic solution.
He suggested a kimberlite ejection
in kimberlite pipes,which are a type of volcanic eruption.
The eruptions eject a column of overlyingmaterial directly over the Magma column
so they don't form that large above ground
cone, as typical volcanoes do.
(07:34):
Instead, a low ring formed around a bull
shaped depressionover the underground column of magma.
According to his theory,ten megatons of methane
were explosively ejected,
whose icy remnants in the upper atmosphere
caused three bright nightsto follow in Europe.
(07:55):
And there are many records of thereindeed being several nights
following the event that were so bright,it was almost like daylight.
However, the methane explosion theorydoesn't quite fit.
First off,not only is there no evidence of the low
ring and bull shaped depression
that walking in southsays should be there, but it also does
(08:18):
not fit the eyewitness accounts of peoplewho are close to the epicenter.
One account comes from the newspaperXabier,
who quoted a resident of Kaliningrad about
225 miles southeast of the blast.
The peasants saw to the north west,
rather high above the horizon,some strangely bright,
(08:39):
bluish white heavenly body,which for 10 minutes moved downwards.
The body appeared as a pipe, i.e.
a cylinder. The sky was cloudless.
Only a small dark cloud was observed inthe general direction of the bright body.
It was hot and dry.
As the body neared the ground.
(09:00):
The body seemed to smudgeand then turned into a giant.
Below a black smoke and a loudknocking was heard
as if large stones were fallingor artillery was fired.
All buildings shook.
At the same time, the cloud beganemitting flames of uncertain shapes.
(09:22):
All villagers were stricken with panicand took to the streets.
Women cried, thinkingit was the end of the world.
Simone Semenov was about 40 milessouth of the explosion.
According to him, At breakfast time,
I was sitting by the houseat one of our trading post facing north.
(09:42):
I suddenly saw that directly to the northover on Cool's Tunguska Road.
The sky split in two and five year
appeared high and wide over the forest.
The split in the skygrew larger and the entire
northern side was covered with fire.
At that moment, I became so hot that
(10:04):
I couldn't bear itas if my shirt were on fire.
From the northern side,where the fire was came strong heat.
I wanted to tear my shirtand throw it down, but then the sky shot
closed and a strong thump soundedand I was thrown a few meters.
I lost my senses for a moment, but thenmy wife ran out and led me to the house.
(10:29):
After that, such noise came
as if rocks were fallingor cannons were firing.
The earth shook,and when I was on the ground,
I pressed my headdown, fearing rocks would smash it.
When the sky opened up, hot winds
raced between the houses,lakes and cannons,
which left traces on the groundlike pathways in a damaged some crops.
(10:54):
Later,we saw that many windows were shattered
and in the barn,a part of the iron block snapped.
So according to these eyewitnesses,the event seemed to indeed
come from the sky.
So probably not a methane explosion,
a glancing blow.
(11:15):
Another theoryis that the meteor came roaring in,
but bounced off back into space.
Really?
I mean, I guess they ran the numbersand have a scenario
of an iron asteroid around600 feet in diameter,
traveling at seven milesper second or 25,000 miles per hour,
(11:36):
which glances off the Earth's atmosphereand returns into solar orbit,
I guess but there's no evidencefor that one either.
And you would think that if it got lowenough to flatten 80 million trees,
it would have probably shed a few rocksalong the way.
I can't imagine that onegetting away clean.
(11:56):
So now that all of the logicalexplanations have been tried
and found wanting, we start getting intothe more fantastical ones.
First,let's give a nod to the local event.
People
Agca Aquilina,
an event you woman who is roughly20 miles from the epicenter
at the time of the explosion,tells scientists
(12:19):
a brilliant outburst of light blinded us.
The wind was breaking treeslike they were sticks
as a rising whirlwind lifted us offthe ground.
I lost consciousness.
After she wakes up, she remembersseeing her husband, Ivan, being lifted up
by a wind blast and slammedinto one of the remaining upright trees
(12:42):
130 feet from the remnants of the campthat they had been sleeping in.
Ivan dies a few hours laterfrom fractures, shock and blood loss.
Aquilina also reports our reindeers
also vanishedand we haven't found them since.
The shamans of the event Tribe,who have lived in the area
(13:02):
for thousands of years, claimthe Tunguska event was caused by Ogden.
The God of Thunder himself,
Not that God of thunder.
who is upset by their tribal disputesthey say are descent demons
with shining eyes and fiery tailsto punish the disobedient event men.
(13:25):
I know this one is really hard to believe,
but it is notable for the factthat immediately after the event,
the area was declared sacredand a forbidden zone by event.
Tribesmen who then reportedly either
chased out or killeddozens of Soviet scientific expeditions
that ventured into the area for decadesafter
(13:49):
Black hole.
Most people are familiarwith the idea of a black hole,
a gigantic area of spacewhere the gravitational pull is so strong
that nothing, not even lightcan escape these matter devouring
machine beans are thought to be createdby the explosion of a star.
(14:10):
But not all of them are of the monstervariety.
Some have theorizedthat at the time of the Big Bang,
small black holes were also producedcalled primordial black holes.
And I mean smalllike the size of a hydrogen atom.
Small.
And that these little mattereating monsters,
(14:31):
unlike their big brothers,are not gravitationally tied to anything.
So spend their daysfree falling through the universe.
And how does this relate to Tunguska?
Well, in 1973, two scientists
Albert A Jackson and MichaelP, Ryan Sloat.
The theory that one dayone of these primordial black holes
(14:53):
just happens to come free falling our way
on a direct collision course with Earth.
That were the case.
As it startsplowing through our atmosphere,
it would be gobbling up any moleculesof anything it encounters along the way.
Oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide.
This gobbling process createslots of heat and energy,
(15:16):
so it would look like a bright, glowingmass as it moves through the sky.
And once it hits the Earth's surface,it wouldn't stop like an impact.
It would keep moving throughlike a hot knife, through butter.
But the energy it would produce alongthe way would be great enough
to create that shockwaveAnd the seismic rumble.
(15:37):
Pretty neat theory.
The only problem is that the black holewould also exit the earth
preciselywhere would depend on the angle of entry.
But based on the shape of the blastpattern in the trees, it's theorized
that it would have come out somewherein the North Atlantic Ocean.
But no reports of anythingamiss were ever reported.
(15:58):
And unless researchersuncover a pillar of glass
burrowing into the groundin the Tunguska region,
where the energy of the black holewould have melted the soil.
I think we have to callthis one purely hypothetical
anti-matter and a UFO explosion.
These two theories are quite differentfrom each other.
(16:22):
But hang with meand you'll see why I put them together.
first the exploding UFO theory.
In 1945,a science fiction writer named Alexander.
Because ATF visits the ruins of Hiroshima,which we know was devastated
by a nuclear explosionnear the explosions epicenter.
He noticed still standingtree trunks with their leaves
(16:45):
and branches ripped off by the sheerforce of the shockwave.
Six years later,Alexander visits Tunguska,
where he notices similar patternsno crater
standing trees without any branchesor leaves in the trees
still standing more charring on the sideclosest to the impact.
(17:05):
So he quickly comes to a conclusionThe Tunguska event
had to be caused by a massive explosion,
probably of nuclear origin.
A bit of a leap. But. Okay.
But what would cause that?
Nuclear weapons are a long way off.
So being the sci fi writer that he is,Kazan says, develops his theory
(17:27):
that the blast was caused by a UFOwhose nuclear powered
propulsion system must have malfunctionedand exploded.
and in 1956, he wrote his famous shortnovel titled The Explosion, where he lays
out his own explanation about the truecause of the tank explosion.
now I would think that if this were indeed
(17:49):
the case, that there would be evidenceleft behind.
The chances of the explosion completelyvaporizing everything are pretty slim.
There should still be some tracesof some foreign metal
left on the ground, which there isn't.
But amazingly enough,that's not what brings this theory down.
Which brings us to the other ideathat of an anti-matter explosion in 1941.
(18:15):
An American astronomerfrom the University of New Mexico
who might be known tosome as one of the military investigators
of the Roswell, New MexicoUFO crash in 1947.
Lincoln La Paz.
Total side note Lincolnthen had a UFO sighting of his own
with his familyjust two days after the crash at Roswell.
(18:39):
Anyway, Lincoln tosses out an ideathat perhaps the explosion
was the result of a glob of anti-matterhitting the earth.
Anti-matteris like the mere opposite of matter.
So when the two meet,the effectively cancel each other out
releasing hugeamounts of energy in various forms.
(18:59):
So the idea is thatthis big blob of anti-matter comes
barreling into the earth atmosphere,being canceled out by matter as it drops,
creating the fireballuntil it finally hits the matter
on the ground and releasesthe rest of its energy.
Now, forget for a moment that it seemslike such a release of energy
(19:22):
would cause an impact crater of some sort.
The real downfall of thistheory is neutrinos.
Neutrinos are one of the many thingsgenerated
by the cancellation of matter,by anti-matter.
And where else are neutrinos created?
Nuclear explosions.
Which brings us to this guy, Dr.
(19:44):
Willard Libby, a Nobel Prizewinning scientist who specialty is
anything atomic, including the fallout
and especially carbon dating
that is measuringthe amount of carbon 14 in an object.
Carbon 14 is a radioactive isotopewith a predictable decay rate.
(20:05):
So the less carbon 14something has, the older it is.
But I digress.
when a hailstorm of neutrinos hitsthe air like in a nuclear explosion
or when matter and anti-mattercancel each other out,
the result is the creationof a ton of extra carbon.
14 in the air.
(20:26):
because you see the trees
record the composition of the atmospherebecause they grow from the atmosphere.
We can establish
if there was ever a rise in the relativeatmospheric levels of carbon.
Dr. Willard and his team had already runthe same kind of carbon
14 test on trees from the blast areasof other nuclear test sites.
(20:48):
So they already knew thatthe rise in carbon 14
in the tree rings did indeed happen.
So they did the same carbontesting on the Tunguska trees.
Result that there was don'thave that matter involved at all,
nor was there any hydrogen bomb,nor was ten atomic bomb.
There was anything elseatomic good nuclear
(21:12):
So with one simple testwe are able to knock out
both the explodingUFO and anti-matter theories.
The death rate.
This theory is a little less well known,
but I think it's my favoriteonly because I love Nikola Tesla.
(21:34):
Starting as far back as the 1890s, Teslahad theorized and experimented
on the possibilityof wireless power transmission.
He wanted to wirelessly powerthe world for free.
How can you not love the guy?
In 1901, he finally obtains the financingand the property
(21:55):
to build his 187 foottall wireless transmission
tower on Long Island,which would become known as Warden Cliff.
Long story.
By 1908, financing has dried upand predators are calling.
And Nikola is getting desperate.
He needs a miracle or a spectacle?
(22:20):
And it just so happensthat he is friends with one Robert Peary.
The first person to reach the North Pole.
Peary didn'tachieve that honor until April of 1909.
But in June of 1908, as he's
about to depart from New Yorkon his way to the Arctic Circle,
Tassler tells him to keep his eye openwhen he gets there.
(22:40):
For a little demonstration. Presumably.
The idea is that Tesla will aimthe wireless power transmitter
at the North Poleso that when Peary and his team get there,
they will see the aftermathof a great explosion in Up there.
What else would it be from?
But Tesla's power beam?
Peary reportedlynever saw any signs of destruction.
(23:04):
But maybe that'sbecause they weren't there.
If you draw a straight linefrom Long Island
through the North Pole and keep going,what do you hit?
Tunguska?
Is it possiblethat his test was partially a success?
That the death Ray, as it's called,did deliver the immense
(23:25):
amount of energy requiredto cause a 15 megaton explosion
in another part of the world,but that he just overshot his target.
Knowing the genius that that guy was.
I certainly wouldn't put it past him.
By now,
you're probably shaking your head thinkingthis is just a pointless exercise
(23:45):
because everything we've talked aboutso far is either too
far out there to be real or doesn't fitthe evidence.
We've delve deep into theoriesthat range from a rogue asteroid
making an unexpected house call to earthto even extraterrestrial
interventions, eachfascinating in its own right,
but still leaving gapsthat science struggles to fill.
(24:08):
But what if there is an anglewe've overlooked an angle
that doesn't just add yetanother layer to the Tunguska event,
but challenges our fundamentalunderstanding of the cosmos
Electric Universe.
Imagine for a moment a universe unlikethe one you were taught about in school.
(24:30):
Go beyond Einstein and Newton pastthe rigid equations and models
you've been taughtabout how celestial bodies should behave.
Picture a universethat is not just a passive stage
for matter to float around in,but a dynamic,
interconnectednetwork of electromagnetic currents
(24:52):
pulsing and weaving their influence
across the vast expanses of space.
This, my friends, isthe Electric Universe theory.
It suggests that our universe isn'tjust bound by weak gravitational forces,
but also by complexand powerful electrical interactions
(25:14):
that govern everything from planetary
orbits to galactic formation.
It's a paradigm shift, daring
to propose that maybe, just
maybe electrical and magnetic forcesplay a far
more significant role in our universethan we ever imagined.
(25:35):
So why am I telling you this as outlandishas it might sound.
The Electric Universe modelcould offer a radically different lens
through which to view the Tunguska event.
In a world that's electrically connected.
What happened in that remoteSiberian forest
may not be as inexplicable as we thought.
(25:57):
So what if the power behindthis cataclysmic event
wasn't just some random rockflying through space,
but was actually an electrical interaction
between the earthand an electrically charged comet?
You see, in the Electric Universe model,
comets and planetsaren't just balls of rock and gas.
(26:19):
They're electromagnetically charged bodies
like huge positiveand negative charged masses in space.
When these charged batteriesget close enough to one another,
they see each otherelectrically for the first time and bam,
you get a super charged cosmic fireworks
(26:40):
show pictureputting your hands on a plasma sphere
and watching the plasma arcsburst out to meet your hands.
Or when you put jumper cableson your car battery
and see the spark jumpfrom the battery to the cables.
Those are both very simplistic versions
of this electrical exchange,but the same idea.
(27:02):
you might wonder,why didn't we see it coming?
Well, according to the Electric Universe,we kind of did.
Remember those reports of unusuallybright nights after the big event?
Well, there are also reports of strange,
bright nights even before the explosion.
This glow could have been the earthand the comet
(27:25):
starting to see each other electrically.
This encounter electrical interplay,could also explain the bizarre weather
and seismic activityalso reported days before the explosion.
Another thing reported by peoplethat you don't hear very often
when reading mainstream sourcesfor this story
(27:45):
is that people actually heard weirdsounds before the blast.
well as a comet fragmentspeeds through the atmosphere,
it can ionize the air around it,creating a trail of charged particles.
These charged particles can generate
low frequency electromagnetic waves.
(28:06):
Now, the interesting part isthat these waves can interact with
conductive objects on the ground, likemetal fences, antennas, or even your hair.
when this happens.
These objects essentially convertthe electromagnetic
waves back into sound wavesthat you can hear.
Imagine the atmospherefunctioning like a giant speaker.
(28:28):
It's not emitting soundin the traditional way through vibrations,
but it's producing electromagnetic wavesthat get transformed into sound.
Once they interactwith certain materials on Earth,
this is certainly notyour everyday occurrence,
but it's a phenomenathat's been witnessed and recorded before.
(28:48):
An eerie low frequency rumble or hum
that some people describeas the soundtrack of impending doom.
now under the explosion itself.
The celestial culpritwas probably a fragment of comet NK,
which is the comet now recognizedas the originator of the Taurid
asteroid belt that Earth passesthrough twice each year.
(29:12):
Once in October and once around June.
The June pass, the Beta Tau and Pass
is known to peak around June 28th to 29th.
So the Earth is flying through thisasteroid belt in one of those floating
chunks of comet passes a little too closeand gets sucked our atmosphere.
(29:33):
But this fragment doesn't just explodebecause it crashes into the earth.
It violently explodesbecause of the colossal
electrical differentialbetween the earth and itself.
So why no crater?
Well, in this electrical model,the explosion is more like a supercharged
arc of electricity so hot and powerful
(29:55):
that it vaporizes the comet fragmentbefore it can even touch the ground.
It's like the universe's own versionof a plasma cutter slicing
through a celestial body, but not leavinga scratch on the Earth's surface.
And although not much evidence of anythinghas been found in the impact area,
one thing that an expedition in the 1960s
(30:17):
did find is a bunch of small, shiny,
metallic and silica spheres,which known to be produced in high heat,
high energy situationslike a nuclear blast.
But they are also known to be remnantsof high energy electric discharges.
The Electric Universe theorydoesn't need to invoke exotic explanations
(30:42):
like black holes or, anti-matteror UFOs to explain the Tunguska mystery.
The electrical force,this powerful, universal force
that we're still trying to fullyunderstand does the job just fine.
It wraps up all these strange observationsinto one coherent story
without ignoring any of the mindboggling details left over by the rest.
(31:07):
Unfortunately, given the elapsed timeas well as our lack of discernable clues.
Will most likely never knowexactly what happened
in the remote Russianwilderness of Siberia that June morning.
But whatever the cause, it certainlychanged the way we think of our safety.
Atop this lonelyfloating rock or battery forever.
(31:35):
The Electric Universe
is a pretty trippy theory to explore,but it explains
so many things that you didn't even knowneeded explaining.
And if the hair on the back of your neckis standing up and curiosity,
we have a video coming out on thisvery soon.
So if you are interestedand you want to see it,
(31:56):
make sure that you subscribe
in turn on notificationsso you don't accidentally miss it.
Until then, be careful out there andI'll see you here again on The InBetween.
Thanks for tuning into The InBetween Podcast.
Enjoy the full visual experiencewith me over on YouTube.
Just search for @TheInBetweentales.
(32:20):
I'm Carol Ann,and until next time, be careful
out there.
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