The Tunguska Event: An Enduring Mystery

The Tunguska Event refers to the so- far unexplained explosion that occurred on Jun 30 1908 in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. Because of its remote locale there were few casualties but its area of devastation extended for miles and its aftermath can be seen today. One of its most peculiar aspects, and one which has given rise to a host of speculative theories, is its lack of an identifiable impact crater. Scientists disagree on how powerful the blast was, but even conservatively, it would have been tremendous. One scholarly article posits that, “The Tunguska Event has been variously estimated as liberating between 4 X 10 ²³ (ref 14) to 4 X 10 ²⁵ erg. (ref. 12) or 10 X 10 ³ megatons.” (Chyba, Thomas, etc.)   So how big is that? About 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II. (Wikipedia). The Tunguska Event was more than capable of wiping out a major metropolitan area.

Possible Explanations for the Tunguska Event are:

Celestial Body explosion: Either a meteoroid, comet or asteroid that exploded in Earth’s low atmosphere that produced devastating effects for miles around without leaving a visible (or so far undiscovered) impact crater. This is the generally agreed upon scientific theory, with a meteoroid being the most likely candidate as to what exploded.

Spontaneous Nuclear explosion: Some scientists theorize that a comet containing deuterium underwent a nuclear reaction as it burned up in the Earth's atmosphere. While this conceivably explains the blast radius, the lack of radioactive isotopes found at the site limits this theory's general acceptance. 

Other Explanations: Black Holes, Antimatter, Mirror Worlds, and UFO's. Obviously, the absence of hard scientific data limits these theories to the fringes of scientific debate concerning the Tunguska Event. Essentially, none of the above theories can be ruled out, which undoubtedly is one of the reasons for the lasting curiosity regarding this mysterious occurrence.  

What it means to the novel:

It is not surprising that Pynchon uses the Tunguska Event in his fiction. It has the Pynchon hallmarks of being mysterious in origin, little known historically, and open to endless interpretation. Pynchon’s descriptions from his novel touch on these themes, as when he writes, “…, the error of the seismographs recordings more than embraced the “instant” in which a hitherto unimagined quantum of energy had entered the equations of history.” (AGAINST THE DAY 797). What this means is that here is something new, in a novel that is all about viewing the traditional in nontraditional ways, and is bound to have greater significance as the story continues.

            A Pynchon novel, however, is more than a collection of scientific observations, and so to Pynchon the Event may have human origins, as hard as that is to comprehend. Pynchon writes, “Was it, to be blunt, the general war which Europe this summer and autumn would stand at the threshold of, collapsed into a single event?” (AGAINST THE DAY 797). This interpretation is especially interesting, because it is very close to the so called Mirror World theory, which theorizes that an immense explosion in a parallel, yet close dimension was the cause of the Tunguska Event. 

         The human element can also be seen in Hunter Penhallow's following observation“…, as if to make sure it had not moved or disappeared, this gift from far away, perhaps another Krakatoa, no one knew, perhaps the deep announcement in the Creation, with nothing now ever to be the same,…” (AGAINST THE DAY 798). Here we see Pynchon’s enduring theme of hope for redemption, in which the characters daily wage a battle between wanting a better future with the intrusion of the past into their present lives.  

Sources

wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

http://www.igpp.ucla.edu/public/mkivelso/refs/PUBLICATIONS/Chyba%20Tunguska.pdf

 AGAINST THE DAY Thomas Pynchon