Russian scientists in bid to solve Tunguska Event
By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow
Last Updated: 1:18AM BST 02/07/2008

A century after reindeer herdsmen saw a column of light that shone with the intensity of the Sun moving across the Siberian dawn sky, the Tunguska Event remains one of the modern era`s most abiding scientific riddles.

From the X-Files to Indiana Jones, the makers of films and television programmes have ensured that Tunguska remains a byword for conspiracy in the imagination of science fiction buffs.

But even among serious scientists the cause of the explosion remains an enigma, a fact that has allowed the theories to multiply over the years.

The symposium in Russia has drawn together the proponents of some of the most outlandish, perhaps none more so than Yuri Lavbin.

The head of the Tunguska Space Phenomenon Fund has long blamed extraterrestrials for the explosion and in 2004 claimed to have discovered wreckage from their spacecraft.

What the aliens were up to divides Mr Lavbin`s followers. The more orthodox suggest they were coming to Earth`s rescue by shooting down a meteorite that would have caused far more damage if it had struck the planet.

Others maintain it was a monumental mix-up after aliens on a planet orbiting the star 61-Sygni mistakenly assumed that the 1883 eruption on Krakatoa was an attempt by earthlings to communicate with them.

They responded with a laser probe that destroyed 80 million trees in an 830 square mile radius.

The explosions that accompanied the column of blue light were so ferocious they could be heard more than 600 miles away.

Even more bizarrely, the night sky across Britain was lit up for several days by an exquisite sunset that lasted several hours and was bright enough to allow midnight games of cricket and golf across the country.

In a letter to a newspaper, one reader wrote: `I myself was aroused from sleep at 1.15am, and so strong was the light at this hour, that I could read a book by it in my chamber quite comfortably. At 1.45am the whole sky, N. and N.E., was a delicate salmon pink, and the birds began their matutinal song.`

Most scientists reckon that the Tunguska explosion 1,000 times more powerful than the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima was caused by a meteorite or a comet.

But because evidence of a meteorite crater or space debris has yet to be shown, the conspiracy theories continue to multiply.

Even in the mainstream scientific community different explanations have been offered. One theory aired this week suggested that the sudden expulsion of methane from the ground could have been responsible.

In Moscow, however, even that theory is given short shrift. Some attending the conference blamed Nikola Tesla, the eccentric American scientist who said he had developed a death ray a particle beam weapon capable of moving at the speed of light. They claimed he had been testing it.

Others said that the explosion was the result of interaction between the universe`s Ying and Yang elements or was a curse by the thunder god Ogdy.

`The facts collected over 100 years disprove the hypothesis of a meteorite or comet. The sooner we understand that the better,` said Boris Rodionov, a physicist.