If a Black Hole Falls in the Forest…

At 7:17 a.m. on June 30, 1908, an explosion equivalent in destructive power to a twelve-megaton nuclear warhead ripped through a remote section of eastern Siberia. Okay, all of eastern Siberia is pretty far from anything, but this explosion was centered near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, one of the most lonesome regions on earth. The blast instantly devastated roughly eight hundred square miles of forest and flattened eighty million trees.

Thanks to the location, either nobody or at most one person was killed, depending on the source. But that also meant few people to witness the carnage. Farmers in neighboring areas later claimed to see a blueish streak race through the sky just before the explosion. Witnesses at Lake Baikal five hundred miles to the south reported being surprised by a blue disk as bright as the sun and a burst of intense light coming from the direction of the blast. People as far away as London, where it was still dark, saw a glow from the