A search for a present-day candidate for the Comet P/Tunguska-1908

Abstract

The reason for the horizontal turn of the Tunguska-1908 bolide trajectory remains difficult to understand. It finds explanation, however, in the New Explosive Cosmogony of minor bodies as having been caused by an explosion of a part (M up to 10^12 g) of the comet nucleus whose ices contained products of its electrolysis, 2H2+O2. In detonation, this part was repelled from the more massive unexploded nucleus remnant, changed the direction of its own motion by ~10^o and imparted its kinetic energy, in expanding and slowing down, to the air in producing an effect of a high-altitude explosion. Because there are no traces of a fall of the more massive remnant, one comes to the conclusion that on passing through the Earth's atmosphere it again entered a heliocentric orbit (the hypothesis of V.Vernadskiy, 1932). A search for this comet, P/Tunguska-1908, among the 6077 known NEAs shows the 2005NB56 object to be the most appropriate candidate for a number of its parameters (a size is ~ 170 m, P = 2.106 y, e = 0.473 and i = 6.8^o). Back integration of its orbit made without allowing for non-gravitational effects suggests that it had passed the Earth on June 27, 1908 at a distance of 0.06945 AU. It is quite possible that a proper inclusion of even fairly weak non-gravitational forces would make its orbit fit in parameters that of the Tunguska bolide.