[meteorite-list] Million's of Dollars of Tunguska Meteorites may be located, just like Chelyabinsk's Meteorites: OUTSIDE of, NOT INSIDE, the Blast Zone.

[Steve Arnold]

Million's of Dollars of Tunguska Meteorites may be located, just 
like Chelyabinsk's Meteorites: OUTSIDE of, NOT INSIDE, the Blast Zone.
 
Help! 
 
OK, I am not a rocket scientist that understands all the physics of 
fireball entry, "blast zones," break ups and distribution of meteorite 
fragments on the ground, however some of you are.  So tell me if I am 
way off the mark here?
 
Robert Beauford and I were talking about Chelyabinsk shortly after the 
fall and he asked how many Chelyabinsk meteorites were being found in 
the city of Chelyabinsk, where all the windows had been blasted out?  I 
told him that, as I understood it, the strewnfield was farther "down 
stream" because inertia carried the rocks further beyond the blast, 
like what almost always happens with fireballs. We later talked about 
how the Tunguska event of June 30, 1908, was bigger than Chelyabinsk it 
seemed, but probably not as big as the 101 crater forming event of 
Sikhote Alin, Russia of Feb. 12, 1947.  Certainly, Tunguska was not as 
big as what caused the near-mile-wide Barringer Crater in Arizona.  All 
of a sudden, it hit Robert..."Maybe there really should be Tunguska 
meteorites, but not where everyone has been looking for the last 105 
years!"
 
It seemed like an extremely obvious conclusion to me!
 
Have we not learned anything from Barringer? There are NOT meteorites 
at the bottom of that "blast zone," right?
 
Have we not learned anything from Chelyabinsk?  There are NOT 
meteorites sitting amongst the broken glass in that "blast zone," right?
 
So why would there be Tunguska meteorites amongst the fallen trees at 
the Tunguska blast zone?
 
It seems too obvious of a question to not to have been asked years ago, 
so I assume someone smarter than us has done so already, and that 
someone has poked all the holes into that theory, and thus they moved 
on to the "Comet made of ice" theory as the best plausible explanation.
 
Unless Tunguska was close to a perpendicular - straight down - impact, 
inertia should carry the Tunguska meteorite specimens farther along if 
any survived, right?  But even with a straight down trajectory, we have 
learned from Doppler data, in more recent falls, that wind can move 
specimens substantial distances during the dark flight portion of their 
fall, so even then, if it was windy that fateful day in 1908, the 
strewnfield still could have been moved after the blast occurred.
 
Tunguska was not a crater forming event, so there should not be a 
"splash zone" such as what Barringer's Crater has with Canyon Diablo 
meteorites.  It should have a many-kilometer-long typical looking 
strewnfield that might start as close as just outside the fallen tree 
blast zone or, depending on angle of entry, it could start and finish 
many dozens of kilometers farther "down stream."
 
Sutter's Mill taught us that a huge mass can ablate away by over 99.9% 
coming in.  And if Tunguska was made of comet ice or made of a loosely 
held together rubble pile of asteroid debris, then sure, it could have 
all vaporized, yet not made a crater or strewnfield...I suppose?  But 
maybe not?  Again, I didn't do all that well in math in school, much 
less understand the physics to know what is big enough or too big to 
produce craters or to totally vaporize the mass. 
 
So, if Robert and I are wrong, I would like to know why. 
 
If we are right, WHERE should someone be looking to actually find the 
potentially millions of dollars of meteorites that have been waiting to 
be found all this time?
 
Maybe Chelyabinsk will be even more important than we 
thought...especially if it helps us answer the biggest mystery in the 
history of fireball events: What caused the Tunguska Event?


Steve Arnold
Host of Science Channel's TV Series Meteorite Men
       www.ScienceChannel.com
Co-Founder of America's Meteorite Store: Meteorites & More, 28 1/2 
Spring St., Eureka Springs, AR 72632
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