Discovery of iridium and other element anomalies near the 1908 Tunguska explosion site

Details Discovery of iridium and other element anomalies near the 1908 Tunguska explosion site Discovery of iridium and other element anomalies near the 1908 Tunguska explosion site

Feb 1998

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1998p%26ss...46..179h&link_type=abstract

Planetary and Space Science, v. 46, p. 179-188.

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Scientific paper

Fifteen peat samples collected from a core including the layer affected by the 1908 Tunguska explosion in Tunguska area of central Siberia, Russia, were analyzed by NAA to determine the contents of Ir, REE, Ni, Co, Fe and Sb. The analytical results indicate that Ir concentration in and under the event layer were 0.54-0.24 ppb, about 10-20 times higher than those reported in the work of Korina et al. (1987) and more than 2 times higher than in layers above, and other elements were enriched by factors of 2 to 5. In addition, the variation of Ni concentration is closely related with Ir in the explosive layer, and the patterns of chondrite-normalized REE are almost flat, which are different from the traps of Siberian plateform. Hence, it can be inferred from the characteristics of elemental geochemistry that the explosion likely was associated with an extraterrestrial object. Because it exploded before reaching the ground, the density of the projectile must have been quite low, and its chemical composition was probably similar to carbonaceous chondrites (C1). According to the Ir flux in the explosion area, it can be estimated that the celestial body weighed more than 3.5 × 104 tons, corresponding to >60 m in diameter, and might have released energy equivalent to more than 106 t of TNT. If the projective was a comet, the total mass was more than 7 × 106 tons, and the diameter of core was more than 160 m.

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