At 7.17am on June 30, 1908, an explosion like a detonating hydrogen bomb erupted in the forests of Siberia - and until now, scientists have offered no conclusive explanation for the event.

Now Italian scientists claim to have found chunks of a meteorite which might have caused the blast - from seismic and magnetic scans of nearby Lake Cheko.

Lake Cheko, they claim is an impact crater for the blast - which devastated nearly 1,000 square miles of forest and was detected hundreds of miles away.
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The Tunguska event, or explosion, was an enormously powerful explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia - and was seen as far away as Britain

'This "Tunguska Event" is probably related to the impact with the Earth of a cosmic body that exploded about three to six miles above ground, releasing in the atmosphere 10-15 megatons of energy,' say the researchers.

Fragments of the impacting body have never been found, and its nature (comet or asteroid) is still a matter of debate.

'We report here results from a magnetic and seismic reflection study of a small lake, Lake Cheko, located about 8 km NW of the inferred explosion epicenter, that was proposed to be an impact crater left by a fragment of the Tunguska Cosmic Body,' say the researchers, from the University of Bologna in a paper published in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.
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© UnknownSiberian Evenk people today: 'The sky split in two and fire appeared high and wide over the forest,' a member of the local Evenki tribe remembered at the time
They claim to have detected a stony fragment in the lake that could be a remnant of the meteorite that caused the explosion.

Seismic reflection and magnetic data revealed an anomaly close to the lake center, about 30ft below the lake floor; this anomaly is compatible with the presence of a buried stony object and supports the impact crater origin for Lake Cheko.'

The explosion was so huge it was visible in Britain - and conspiracy theorists have claimed for decades it might have been caused by UFOs or other supernatural forces.

'The sky split in two and fire appeared high and wide over the forest,' a member of the local Evenki tribe remembered.

'The split in the sky grew larger, and the entire northern side was covered with fire.