"Space Shuttle Science"

The mysterious 1908 Tunguska explosion that leveled 830 square miles of Siberian forest was almost certainly caused by a comet entering the Earth's atmosphere, says new Cornell University research. The conclusion is supported by an unlikely source: the exhaust plume from the NASA space shuttle launched a century later.


The research, accepted for publication (June 24, 2009) by the journal Geophysical Research Letters, published by the American Geophysical Union, connects the two events by what followed each about a day later: brilliant, night-visible clouds, or noctilucent clouds, that are made up of ice particles and only form at very high altitudes and in extremely cold temperatures.

"It's almost like putting together a 100-year-old murder mystery," said Michael Kelley, the James A. Friend Family Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Cornell who led the research team. "The evidence is pretty strong that the Earth was hit by a comet in 1908." Previous speculation had ranged from comets to meteors.

The researchers contend that the massive amount of water vapor spewed into the atmosphere by the comet's icy nucleus was caught up in swirling eddies with tremendous energy by a process called two-dimensional turbulence, which explains why the noctilucent clouds formed a day later many thousands of miles away.

Noctilucent clouds are the Earth's highest clouds, forming naturally in the mesosphere at about 55 miles over the polar regions during the summer months when the mesosphere is around minus 180 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 117 degrees Celsius).

The space shuttle exhaust plume, the researchers say, resembled the comet's action.

A single space shuttle flight injects 300 metric tons of water vapor into the Earth's thermosphere, and the water particles have been found to travel to the Arctic and Antarctic regions, where they form the clouds after settling into the mesosphere.

Kelley and collaborators saw the noctilucent cloud phenomenon days after the space shuttle Endeavour (STS-118) launched on Aug. 8, 2007. Similar cloud formations had been observed following launches in 1997 and 2003.

Following the 1908 explosion, known as the Tunguska Event, the night skies shone brightly for several days across Europe, particularly Great Britain -- more than 3,000 miles away.

Kelley said he became intrigued by the historical eyewitness accounts of the aftermath, and concluded that the bright skies must have been the result of noctilucent clouds. The comet would have started to break up at about the same altitude as the release of the exhaust plume from the space shuttle following launch. In both cases, water vapor was injected into the atmosphere.

The scientists have attempted to answer how this water vapor traveled so far without scattering and diffusing, as conventional physics would predict.

"There is a mean transport of this material for tens of thousands of kilometers in a very short time, and there is no model that predicts that," Kelley said. "It's totally new and unexpected physics."

This "new" physics, the researchers contend, is tied up in counter-rotating eddies with extreme energy. Once the water vapor got caught up in these eddies, the water traveled very quickly -- close to 300 feet per second.

Scientists have long tried to study the wind structure in these upper regions of the atmosphere, which is difficult to do by such traditional means as sounding rockets, balloon launches and satellites, explained Charlie Seyler, Cornell professor of electrical engineering and paper co-author.

"Our observations show that current understanding of the mesosphere-lower thermosphere region is quite poor," Seyler said. The thermosphere is the layer of the atmosphere above the mesosphere.

The paper is also co-authored by physicist Miguel Larsen, Ph.D. '79, of Clemson University, and former student of Kelley. The work performed at Cornell was funded by the Atmospheric Science Section of the National Science Foundation.

On July 1, Kelley will give a lecture, "Two-dimensional Turbulence, Space Shuttle Plume Transport in the Thermosphere, and a Possible Relation to the Great Siberian Impact Event," at a plenary session of the annual meeting of Coupling, Energetics and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions in Sante Fe, N.M.

oh come on...this is interesting!!!

Agreed, it is very interesting.

However to increase the number of responses, I would suggest:

Claim it was caused by aliens.

Claim that the Earth is flat.

Claim that planets don't exist.

Or make up some other crazy crap.

lol

yeah...i guess the title is pretty boring

Hey tessa :) hugzzzz

:)

c ya in funcamp tessy:)

for thread without alarmist title and intriguing content that is not total GLP BS.

Asset - Tessa backwards.

Just thought I'd share that with ya messy Tess.

Yes, I heard this on NPR a couple of days ago.

Fascinating, really. The clouds evidence shows that the Tunguska event was probably a comet impact.

Just finished reading your post and another on this event. The other one I was reading from the same web site noted that the Tunguska event may have increased global warming , which I don't believe in, but anyway, the article read, that this scientist believed that global warming was caused by the atmosphere being churned up after the Tunguska event and not the industrial revolution which is the "global warming moonies" favorite mantra.

Any way here is a link to the article I was reading.
[link to www.sciencedaily.com]

I was thinking if this is indeed true what a huge paradigm shift, and wouldn't the Tunguska be a fantastic name for one of the new concept SUVs?

Thanks for offering this article I have always found this event and the Krakatoa eruption fascinating?

The article I was reading relating to Tunguska and global warming.

Global-warming May Have Been Jump-started By The Tunguska Meteorite Churning Up Atmosphere

ScienceDaily (Mar. 14, 2006) — A new theory to explain global warming was revealed at a meeting at the University of Leicester. The controversial theory has nothing to do with burning fossil fuels and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. According to Vladimir Shaidurov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the apparent rise in average global temperature recorded by scientists over the last hundred years or so could be due to atmospheric changes that are not connected to human emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of natural gas and oil. Shaidurov explained how changes in the amount of ice crystals at high altitude could damage the layer of thin, high altitude clouds found in the mesosphere that reduce the amount of warming solar radiation reaching the earth's surface.


Shaidurov has used a detailed analysis of the mean temperature change by year for the last 140 years and explains that there was a slight decrease in temperature until the early twentieth century. This flies in the face of current global warming theories that blame a rise in temperature on rising carbon dioxide emissions since the start of the industrial revolution. Shaidurov, however, suggests that the rise, which began between 1906 and 1909, could have had a very different cause, which he believes was the massive Tunguska Event, which rocked a remote part of Siberia, northwest of Lake Baikal on the 30th June 1908.

The Tunguska Event, sometimes known as the Tungus Meteorite is thought to have resulted from an asteroid or comet entering the earth's atmosphere and exploding. The event released as much energy as fifteen one-megaton atomic bombs. As well as blasting an enormous amount of dust into the atmosphere, felling 60 million trees over an area of more than 2000 square kilometres. Shaidurov suggests that this explosion would have caused "considerable stirring of the high layers of atmosphere and change its structure." Such meteoric disruption was the trigger for the subsequent rise in global temperatures.

Global warming is thought to be caused by the "greenhouse effect". Energy from the sun reaches the earth's surface and warms it, without the greenhouse effect most of this energy is then lost as the heat radiates back into space. However, the presence of so-called greenhouse gases at high altitude absorb much of this energy and then radiate a proportion back towards the earth's surface. Causing temperatures to rise.

Many natural gases and some of those released by conventional power stations, vehicle and aircraft exhausts act as greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide, natural gas, or methane, and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are all potent greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide and methane are found naturally in the atmosphere, but it is the gradual rise in levels of these gases since the industrial revolution, and in particular the beginning of the twentieth century, that scientists have blamed for the gradual rise in recorded global temperature. Attempts to reverse global warming, such as the Kyoto Protocol, have centred on controlling and even reducing CO2 emissions.

However, the most potent greenhouse gas is water, explains Shaidurov and it is this compound on which his study focuses. According to Shaidurov, only small changes in the atmospheric levels of water, in the form of vapour and ice crystals can contribute to significant changes to the temperature of the earth's surface, which far outweighs the effects of carbon dioxide and other gases released by human activities. Just a rise of 1% of water vapour could raise the global average temperature of Earth's surface more then 4 degrees Celsius.

The role of water vapour in controlling our planet's temperature was hinted at almost 150 years ago by Irish scientist John Tyndall. Tyndall, who also provided an explanation as to why the sky is blue, explained the problem: "The strongest radiant heat absorber, is the most important gas controlling Earth's temperature. Without water vapour, he wrote, the Earth's surface would be 'held fast in the iron grip of frost'." Thin clouds at high altitude allow sunlight to reach the earth's surface, but reflect back radiated heat, acting as an insulating greenhouse layer.

Water vapour levels are even less within our control than CO2 levels. According to Andrew E. Dessler of the Texas A & M University writing in 'The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change', "Human activities do not control all greenhouse gases, however. The most powerful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapour, he says, "Human activities have little direct control over its atmospheric abundance, which is controlled instead by the worldwide balance between evaporation from the oceans and precipitation."

As such, Shaidurov has concluded that only an enormous natural phenomenon, such as an asteroid or comet impact or airburst, could seriously disturb atmospheric water levels, destroying persistent so-called 'silver', or noctilucent, clouds composed of ice crystals in the high altitude mesosphere (50 to 85km). The Tunguska Event was just such an event, and coincides with the period of time during which global temperatures appear to have been rising the most steadily - the twentieth century. There are many hypothetical mechanisms of how this mesosphere catastrophe might have occurred, and future research is needed to provide a definitive answer.

Shaidurov's paper "Atmospheric hypotheses of Earth's global warming" is under consideration for publication in the journal "Science First Hand," Published by Russian Academy of Sciences (Editor-in-Chief, Acad. Dobretsov, Vice-President Russian Academy of Sciences, President of Siberian Branch RAS).
Adapted from materials provided by University of Leicester.
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University of Leicester (2006, March 14). Global-warming May Have Been Jump-started By

Interesting read.. Good find

Since this is GLP, I think that we should always be open to alternative theories.

The rumor I heard (sorry I can't reveal the source), was that this was the result of an uprising and brutal putdown of protesting teenage Ents that felt disenchanted. So the elder Ents of Tiananmen Forest brutally put them down. And there they lie even until today.

I like what Terrence McKenna thought about the Tunguska event because it explains the presence of the radiation that was found at the site.

The way he explains it, around the time of Christ the Earth had divided itself much like a cell reproduces itself, so you have two Earth's existing interdimensionally. In our dimension, the arrival of Christianity holds us back from making technological and metaphysical advances for about a thousand years. Where in the other dimention, Christianity never occurs. The Greeks are then allowed to continue their science without persecution. Eventually they discover the Mayan civilization and by about 900 A.D. the first calculus is formulated.

So you have this Greco-Mayan civilization that makes huge advances in metaphysical science, without having to be bridled by religion. They become so advanced in their ethics based technology that they find out about us and our struggle, and they conceive the notion of trying to save us.

So in their dimension they decide to experiment with a thermonuclear device in a remote part of the world - Siberia. Because a nuclear explosion generates so much pressure it literally punches a hole through the fabrc of space-time, which for us became the Tunguska Event. They discover that if we were to have an all out nuclear war, it would destroy their Earth paradise too because of this effect.

You have the Roswell incident which occurs in 1947, just after we begin exploding atomic bombs. You have reports from the millitary about objects hovering over nuclear middle silos, disabling the launch controls.

You have the crop circles, which them communicating with us across the dimensions from this other earth civilization telling us that in 2012 the two dimentions will once again merge, ending duality.

That was actually one of Terrence's shamanic experiences.


------

Well, this sounds good...all "scientific" and everything. However it is totally wrong, since the basis for this is the theory that comets are made of ice, like a "dirty snowball" to try and explain the tail that appears as they near the sun. However, this has been proven to be bunk, since last year they actually LANDED a ship on a comet and found NO WATER AT ALL. Since this is the basis of this entire theory outlined above, it throws all of it into the trash. Sorry. Comets are rocks. No water.

Feb 14, 2006
Deep Impact—Where’s the Water?

Early in the morning of July 4, 2005, cosmic fireworks occurred millions of miles from Earth. NASA had planned the event to clear up some longstanding mysteries about comets. But what actually happened defied every expectation of the comet experts.

About 24 hours earlier, the Deep Impact spacecraft had fired an 800-pound copper projectile at the nucleus of Comet Tempel 1. The impact was expected to eject large volumes of subsurface material into space, and we were assured that the material would be dominated by water. The presence of abundant volatiles, preeminently water ice sublimating in the heat of the Sun, is an essential requirement of standard comet theory.

Without cometary ices, it is the “dirty snowball” theory that would evaporate. How could comets produce their often-spectacular tails in the absence of sublimating volatiles?

Cameras on the projectile recorded its approach toward the nucleus, and instruments on the spacecraft observed the event across a broad spectrum. Dozens of telescopes on Earth and in orbit around the Earth were trained on the comet.

According to NASA scientists, the released material would provide a sample of the primordial water, gas, and dust from which the Sun, planets, moons, and other bodies in the solar system formed. Statements advancing this claim were the general rule, as if the modern theory of comets was no longer a theory, but a fact

"It's pretty clear that this event did not produce a gusher," said SWAS principal investigator Gary Melnick of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). "The more optimistic predictions for water output from the impact haven't materialized, at least not yet."

The Deep Impact team had hoped that, by excavating material from the comet's interior, they could find the one thing the standard model required. “SWAS operators were puzzled by the lack of increased water vapor from Tempel 1”. In fact, an observation from the Odin telescope in Sweden found that the relative abundance of water decreased after the impact, due to the injection of quantities of dry dust, not water.


article continues here...

[link to thunderbolts.info]

[link to thunderbolts.info]

[link to thunderbolts.info]

hrm...didn't realize that...

neat!

SOURCE:Flight International
NASA postpones testing of alternate Orion escape system
By Rob Coppinger
NASA has postponed indefinitely the launch of its 20,450kg (45,000lb) 10m (33ft)-tall Max Launch Abort System (MLAS) flight-test vehicle from its Wallops Flight Test Facility in Virginia.
Planned for 25 June, the launch has been delayed at least four times since its original target of September 2008.
The MLAS test vehicle, designed by the NASA Engineering and Safety Center, is bullet shaped, has four solid rocket motors and a full-scale crew module simulator. It is an alternate launch abort system for the Orion crew exploration vehicle, which has a single motor system.

Backwards. Water was observed in cometary spectra; that's why theory said they contain water. Water (certainly OH radicals, et al) has been observed on every comet mission. How much water, and how it is integrated in the comet structure, is still being learned.

But this doesn't stop the Electric Universe people from mis-reading, mis-interpreting, taking out of context, and just plain lying about any mainstream report they think they can twist to support their idea that comets are dry.

I don't actually understand why a dry comet is so essential to the Electric Universe theory. I have no idea why their absurd notions of planetary formation require dry comets (I mean...do they think there are no volatiles on Jupiter? On Saturn?) Perhaps it would help if they could actually come up with a quantified mathematical statement of their ideas that could actually be tested as a theory.

Instead of, you know, standing around saying "Currents this" and "forces that" and "mainstream science doesn't understand plasma physics" (err...Io flux tube, anyone? Solar wind, anyone? I defy anyone to show that mainstream astronomy doesn't see electromagnetism as a significant player in the structure of the observed universe).



One thing is certain about Electric Universe supporters. They may not have a theory they understand (or that they can explain to anyone else) but they are damned sure going to butt in on any discussion they think they can put a foot in. That's why even a whiff of Electric Universe around many science forums will get you ignored quickly. They've seen it too often.