Word: tunguska
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Subsequently, two imaginative University of Texas researchers suggested that a tiny black hole had passed through the earth in 1908, causing the mysterious blast that leveled trees for miles around in the Tunguska region of Siberia. But most scientists doubt that explanation. Says Princeton's Ostriker: "A hit by a mini-black hole would have blown up the entire earth...
...collide with the earth. Although the path of Halley's comet precluded collision, the possibility that a comet could strike the earth is not entirely farfetched. The earth bears the scars of at least two impacts that some scientists ascribe to comets: at the site of the Great Tunguska catastrophe, which leveled the Siberian landscape for more than 20 miles around in 1908, and in the geological formation known as the Witwatersrand gold field in South Africa. The possibility of a hit also fascinated Jules Verne. In his 1877 story Hector Servadac, the earth is smashed to bits...
...June 30,1908, a giant fireball exploded in Siberia's remote Tunguska region, leveling trees for more than 20 miles around and causing atmospheric shock waves that were detected round the world. At the time, scientists thought that a giant meteorite had crashed into the earth. Later, when they failed to find a major crater or clearly identifiable meteorite fragments at the site, they began to question their earlier theory...
Jackson and Ryan offer a concrete check for their fantastic suggestion. Witnesses to the Tunguska blast indicated that whatever caused it streaked toward the earth at an angle of 30° from the horizon. If the object was actually a black hole, it would have easily penetrated the earth in an almost straight line and emerged eight minutes later on the other side, about 1,000 miles east of Nova Scotia, triggering underwater and atmospheric shock waves and drawing off a thin, geyser-like column of water as it flew into space. Jackson and Ryan suggest that their theory...