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Richard Cochrane is trained in chemistry and metallurgy but is far more interested and practiced as a political and fund raising consultant, writer and amateur historian. He grew up in a Navy family and with his two younger brothers carried on its 500+ year tradition of naval service to Great Britain and the USA then enjoyed a career with one of the largest advertising and public relations agencies working with numerous Fortune 500 companies and many of America's premier educational institutions. He maintains friendships and acquaintanceships around the world. He lives in Santa Barbara, California.

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Tunguska Blast Caused By Exploding Comet

April 5th, 2009 • Richard Cochrane
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tsar-bombMoscow, Russia (RIA Novosti) Apr 03, 2009 The mysterious Tunguska, Siberia blast in 1908 that flattened millions of trees in Siberia was due to the explosion of a hydrogen-saturated part of a comet in Earth’s atmosphere, a Russian scientist said Monday.

Eduard Drobyshevsky, a doctor of physical and mathematical science and chief researcher at the Ioffe physics and technology institute of the Russian Academy of Science, said his new theory of a comet exploding after grazing Earth’s atmosphere explained the Tunguska blast.

On June 30, 1908, an explosion equivalent to between 5 and 30 megatons of TNT occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in a remote region of Siberia. Five megatons is equivalent to ten times the amount of all the explosives used in World War II combined, including the Little Boy and Fat Man, the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The blast, the cause of which has not been determined, flattened 80 million trees, destroying an area of around 2,150 sq km (830 sq miles).

tsar-bomb-2The largest nuclear bomb ever detonated was the 50 megaton hydrogen bomb called the Tsar Bomb. It was designed to generate 100 megatons but was scaled back to reduce nuclear fallout. It was detonated by the former Soviet Union in 1961 but it was so expensive to build in addition to having no practical military use. The Tsar Bomb generated only a little more than 1.4% of the Sun’s equivalent output in the instant is detonated.

It is thought that a huge meteorite hit the area, although scientific expeditions have failed to find an obvious crater

 If the presumed Tunguska impact had occurred some 4 hours and 47 minutes later, the Earth’s rotation means it would have completely destroyed the then Russian imperial capital of St. Petersburg.

Drobyshevsky said that in 1908 an icy comet nucleus saturated with dissolved hydrogen and oxygen entered the Earth atmosphere tangentially. The body had a speed of about 20 km per second, its size was 200×500 meters, and it weighed 5-50 million tons.

Part of the nucleus, weighing about 1 million tons, detonated at a great altitude, and the explosion caused the fallen trees and other phenomena associated with the incident. The main part of the nucleus went through the Earth atmosphere and out into space again.

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