The Tunguska Fireball

Appropriately for the July 4th holiday, this last week marked the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska Event--the mysterious explosion over Siberia that (by some estimates) packed the explosive force of hundreds of Hiroshima-sized atom bombs. At the time, in 1908, investigators weren't able to rush to the scene, thanks to the combination of Siberia's remoteness and the paranoia of the beleaguered Russian government (which was less than a decade away from full-scale revolution).

What, exactly, happened in Tunguska? To date, scientists haven't been able to locate a crater, or any other informative residue, so the prime theory points to the detonation of a comet high up in the atmosphere. And why do I bring this up on a dinosaur blog? Well, except for its size, the astronomical body that leveled Tunguska was probably not all that different from the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Something to think about before you light that next firecracker!