did a solar flare cause tunguska?

battery

Did a solar flare cause tunguska and devestate a huge area of forest in Russia?

g33kski11z

No. Most believe it was an meteoroid that blew up before it landed.
Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

matthyaouw

Why do you think a solar flare could be responsible? How could one bring about what happened?

jim mcnamara

Watching quasi-scientific "documentaries" on cable-TV causes solar flares to impact the earth. With devasting explosive power.

Seriously, Matt - where do you think most of these non-standard ideas come from? It is not from reading Scientific American. It is from people who want to know about things, but do not know where to look, so they turn to tabloid TV. Or whatever is the local equivalent. And they are not science trained at all so they cannot tell hokum from real science.

battery

I asked because if gas is ejected from the sun I thought it might cool on its way to earth
(and be held together as a ball by electric charges in the form of ions) and then heat up similar to a meteor as it fell through the earth's atmosphere.

g33kski11z

Um.. No. I don't think that would be possible.

battery

Some people say they have seen ball lightning on the Earth which is not supposed to be possible.I think the question is: is it possible to heat a ball of gas with a weak gravitational filed - a small mass -to a very high temperature and for that ball to be stable over a long period of time.The answer could be yes if either:

(a) the ball is essentially electromagnetic in nature and made of regions of high negative charge density separated and insulated ( insulated so charges don't come together quickly and form neutral atoms or molecules )from regions of high positive charge density.

(b) the ball is made of quarks held together by the strong force

Option (a) is most likely because it would require less energy input and there is some anecdotal evidence from witnesses around the world for ball lightning and also there is the phenomenon ( on a small scale of about 10^-6 metres ) of sonoluminescence in which the concentration of sound energy can cause a very high temperature bubble to form -
perhaps thunder causes ball lightning to form similarly on a larger scale.

battery

[QUOTE=battery;1764615]Some people say they have seen ball lightning on the Earth which is not supposed to be possible.I think the question is: is it possible to heat a ball of gas with a weak gravitational filed - a small mass -to a very high temperature and for that ball to be stable over a long period of time.The answer could be yes if either:

(a) the ball is essentially electromagnetic in nature and made of regions of high negative charge density separated and insulated ( insulated so charges don't come together quickly and form neutral atoms or molecules )from regions of high positive charge density.

(b) the ball is made of quarks held together by the strong force

QUOTE]

A ball of quarks would be potentially very energetic and explosive if the quarks became pions on hitting the Earth's atmosphere, and the pions then decayed into photons ( a well established decay mode for pions).

DrClapeyron

First, how would this solar falre after cooling down contract into a ball? Second, how large and dense would a giant ball of charged particles have to be to create the frictional energy to cause the destruction of Tunguska?

I'd say that a contracting solar flare is likely to not happen and if it could the giant ball would need to have roughly the same mass and density of a meteor to cause the destruction.

Evo

Sorry, battery, this violates the guidelines on overly speculative posts.

Please read our Guidelines for posting here. http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=5374

Closed.