June 30, 2008: The year is 1908, and it's just after seven in the morning. A man is sitting on the front porch of a trading post at Vanavara in Siberia. Little does he know, in a few moments, he will be hurled from his chair and the heat will be so intense he will feel as though his shirt is on fire.
That's how the Tunguska event felt 40 miles from ground zero.
Today, June 30, 2008, is the 100th anniversary of that ferocious impact near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in remote Siberia--and after 100 years, scientists are still talking about it.1
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Earlier today I was wondering why Russia gets all the good meteor strikes–like this one, which looks like a viral promo for a sci-fi movie, captured from a dashboard-mounted video camera. What I should have been asking – and Wired did – was “why do Russian motorists have video cameras on their dashboards in the first place?”
Apparently, Russia’s combination of geographic immensity and lax law enforcement incentivizes everyone to install these “dash-cams” in their cars. If you get into a he-said/she-said traffic accident in the middle of nowhere, you can use the video footage as proof of what actually happened.
Arthur C. Clarke famously said that advanced technology may be indistinguishable from magic. But more importantly, it folds into local culture – and back again – in totally unpredictable ways. As Frederik Pohl (another sci fi author) remarked, good science fiction predicts the traffic jam, not the automobile. Who would have thought that the perfect system for visually documenting a historic meteor strike would be a nation full of drivers strapping cheap, flash-based webcams to their dashboards as a backstop against rampant legal corruption?2
That's how the Tunguska event felt 40 miles from ground zero.
Today, June 30, 2008, is the 100th anniversary of that ferocious impact near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in remote Siberia--and after 100 years, scientists are still talking about it.1
*****
Earlier today I was wondering why Russia gets all the good meteor strikes–like this one, which looks like a viral promo for a sci-fi movie, captured from a dashboard-mounted video camera. What I should have been asking – and Wired did – was “why do Russian motorists have video cameras on their dashboards in the first place?”
Apparently, Russia’s combination of geographic immensity and lax law enforcement incentivizes everyone to install these “dash-cams” in their cars. If you get into a he-said/she-said traffic accident in the middle of nowhere, you can use the video footage as proof of what actually happened.
Arthur C. Clarke famously said that advanced technology may be indistinguishable from magic. But more importantly, it folds into local culture – and back again – in totally unpredictable ways. As Frederik Pohl (another sci fi author) remarked, good science fiction predicts the traffic jam, not the automobile. Who would have thought that the perfect system for visually documenting a historic meteor strike would be a nation full of drivers strapping cheap, flash-based webcams to their dashboards as a backstop against rampant legal corruption?2
1. NASA: The Tunguska Impact--100 Years Later
2. Technology Review: Unintentional Interfaces: Why Russian Dashcams Saw That Meteor
3. TPM: 9 Spectacular Videos Of The Russian Meteorite Blast
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