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At 7.16 am on 30th June 1908 a gigantic fireball exploded in the skies above Siberia. Some 2,000 sq kms of forest burst into flames as the blast, several times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, obscured the sun and sent pressure-waves around the world. Remarkably, an eye-witness still survives. “Everything shook,” says 96-year-old Grigory Verkhoturov. “There was a flash, a roar. The sun went in. We ran to a neighbour’s house. People came round to ask what had happened. No one knew.” Nearly a century later scientists are still not really sure what happened. The race is on to find the answer so we know what to do should it happen again.

At 7.16 am on 30th June 1908 a gigantic fireball exploded in the skies above Siberia. Some 2,000 sq kms of forest burst into flames as the blast, several times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, obscured the sun and sent pressure-waves around the world. Remarkably, an eye-witness still survives. “Everything shook,” says 96-year-old Grigory Verkhoturov. “There was a flash, a roar. The sun went in. We ran to a neighbour’s house. People came round to ask what had happened. No one knew.” Nearly a century later scientists are still not really sure what happened. The race is on to find the answer so we know what to do should it happen again.

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