Book contents
- Tunguska
- Studies in Environment and History
- Tunguska
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Maps
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Sources, Abbreviations, Terminology, and Transliteration
- 1 Landscape of Mystery
- 2 Destruction from the Sky
- 3 Reaching the Inaccessible Terrain
- 4 Poking and Prodding for Answers
- 5 Cosmic Fantasies
- 6 Volunteers Take Charge
- 7 Life in Tunguska
- 8 Protecting the Taiga
- 9 Views from Afar
- 10 Siberian and Planetary Futures
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Studies in Environment and History
4 - Poking and Prodding for Answers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 June 2022
- Tunguska
- Studies in Environment and History
- Tunguska
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Maps
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Sources, Abbreviations, Terminology, and Transliteration
- 1 Landscape of Mystery
- 2 Destruction from the Sky
- 3 Reaching the Inaccessible Terrain
- 4 Poking and Prodding for Answers
- 5 Cosmic Fantasies
- 6 Volunteers Take Charge
- 7 Life in Tunguska
- 8 Protecting the Taiga
- 9 Views from Afar
- 10 Siberian and Planetary Futures
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Studies in Environment and History
Summary
Continuing chronologically, this chapter picks up the story of the expeditions of Leonid Kulik in 1929 and follows Tunguska research through World War II. A desire to figure out the source of the destroyed forest fostered a set of distinct ecological interactions at the blast site. Workers and scientists began draining waterlogged holes in the ground in search of meteorite fragments, collecting rock samples, and planning an aerial survey of the location. At this stage scouring and manipulating the environment to find a space rock took precedence. Thwarted by political intrigues, environmental obstacles, and the lack of large remains, the mission to find a meteorite proved unsuccessful. While a pattern had now been established in terms of how to engage materially with the Tunguska site, the mystery of what had happened there only deepened.
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- TunguskaA Siberian Mystery and Its Environmental Legacy, pp. 60 - 83Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022