National Geographic are reporting on their front page that Italian scientists may have found the crater made by the cosmic object which caused the Tunguska event in 1908:
On June 30, 1908, a ball of fire exploded about 6 miles (10 kilometers) above the ground in the sparsely populated region, scientists say. The blast released 15 megatons of energy—about a thousand times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima—and flattened 770 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) of forest…
…In their new study, a team of Italian scientists used acoustic imagery to investigate the bottom of Lake Cheko, about five miles (eight kilometers) north of the explosion’s suspected epicenter…”We searched its bottom looking for extraterrestrial particles trapped in the mud. We mapped the basin and took samples. As we examined the data, we couldn’t believe what they were suggesting.
“The funnel-like shape of the basin and samples from its sedimentary deposits suggest that the lake fills an impact crater,” Gasperini said.
It’s worth noting that this is not fresh news though – we covered it back in June at least. I’m not sure why it’s a ‘new’ headline on NG now – but it does offer some comments from the scientists involved which readers might be interested in.
