[I spotted a headline on The Drudge Report about a supposed UFO that crashed in Russia – but the link from The Drudge Report did not work. I did a quick search and found some stories going back a few months. One story is the claim it happened. The other is from TIME magazine debunking it. When I was a teenager, the 1908 explosion in Tunguska fascinated me – it still does. In fact, it was in a Reader’s Digest book that I read the concept of a possible spaceship being the cause of the mysterious explosion. I remember the claim that the object did not travel in a straight line but that it made turns before it crashed. How true that is I do not know.

But somehow… the Russians are suddenly claiming… after finding a “metallic block” … 98 years later… that they have evidence of a spaceship? The Russians are practised liars and hoaxers, and their scientists will lie on cue when told to do so.

So my question is this: If they’re lying… then WHY NOW? What’s the purpose? What are the Russians really up to? Even lies… told boldly in public HAVE A PURPOSE! Jan]

Here is the claim:-

Researcher Discloses UFO Crash in Siberia:
According to the June 1st international edition of the Bolivian newspaper “El Diario” citing an ANSA press release, a Russian scientist has revealed a UFO crash in Siberia:

Moscow, May 31 (ANSA).- A mysterious spherical object and built with technology that does not exist on our planet was discovered some time ago in the vicinity of Dalnegorsk in Siberia’s Primorye Region, according to Lyudmila Tselina, a researcher with the Russian space center.

Tselina, who has been studying the UFO phenomenon for quite some time and has been engaged in collecting documents and material, told the Russian newspaper Trud that the object “fell at a velocity of 15 meters per second over Mount Isumrudnaia,” proving that it was not a meteorite

A red sphere was recovered and scutinized by the best experts of various institutes of the Russian Science Academy, which agreed in its nonterrestrial origin.

(Se trataba de “una esfera rojiza” que “fue examinada escrupulosamente por los mejores expertos de varios institutos de la academia rusa de las ciencias, los cuales coincidieron en su origen no terrestre”.)

The object, whose function is unknown and whose diameter and present whereabouts are unknown, was made of materials unknown on Earth and which resisted the action of all known chemicals.

Tselina confirmed other sightings and UFO discoveries, among them the landing of a 3 meters diameter object between Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Translation (C) 2001. S. Corrales, Institute of Hispanic Ufology.

Many thanks to Gloria Coluchi.

URL: http://www.ufologie.net/htm/tselina.htmbr>
Here is Time Magazine’s rebuttal:-

Strange Doings on Tunguska (skeptical)

TIME Magazine, Leon Jaroff, “The Skeptical Eye” column – 8/26/2004 – 8/26/2004

go to original article (124)| fair use notice

Amazingly, some people still believe the devastating Siberian event was caused by space aliens.
——
Thursday, Aug. 26, 2004

If any people are more gullible about Unidentified Flying Objects than Americans, it™s the Russians. And if any group of professionals is more gullible than Russians about UFOs, it™s the journalists. This truism was confirmed again this month when, around the world, wire services and other press outlets straight-facedly reported a new claim that a UFO had been involved in the great Tunguska catastrophe.

Tunguska? That™s the then-uninhabited region in Siberia where in 1908 a mammoth explosion leveled and charred trees and killed wildlife over an area of 800 square miles. That night in northern Europe and western Russia, the skies glowed with an eerie light and in London, for example, it was light enough outside to read a newspaper. The lone human being in the area, a trapper living near the periphery of the blast, was blown off the porch of his shack, but survived. Had the explosion occurred over London, say, or New York, the casualties would have been counted in the hundreds of thousands.

Most scientists today believe that the Tunguska event was caused by an asteroid or a comet that heated so rapidly upon plunging into the atmosphere that it blew up some five miles above the surface with an explosive force of 10 to 15 megatons. But that conclusion is far too rational for Russians like scientist Yuri Lavbin, who heads the Tunguska Space Phenomenon public state fund. It was Lavbin who in July announced that he would lead an expedition to Siberia and stated, œWe intend to find proof that not a meteorite but an extraterrestrial spaceship crashed with the Earth.

Some might suggest that Lavbin was predisposed to making a remarkable discovery. And that is precisely what happened. A Russian scientific team headed by Lavbin scoured the Tunguska site early in August and breathlessly announced that it had found the remnants of an extraterrestrial spacecraft, in the form of a large metallic block. After sending a 50 kilogram chunk of the block to a laboratory for testing, Lavbin chose not to await the results. œI can make an official announcement that we were saved by some forces of a superior civilization, he proclaimed. œThey exploded this enormous meteorite headed toward us with tremendous speed. Now this great object that caused the meteorite to explode is found at last.

His announcement was greeted by loud raspberries from reputable scientists. Interviewed by Space.com, British researcher Benny Peiser, who runs the CCNet website, a scholarly forum devoted largely to asteroid impacts and other potential natural threats, called the Russian report œa rather stupid hoax. He was equally critical of the press: œIt™s a rather sad comment on the current state of anything-goes attitudes among some science correspondents that such blatant rubbish is being reported.”

All this came as no surprise to science writer James Oberg. In his 1982 book, œUFOs and Outer Space Mysteries, he had traced the origins of the Russian Tunguska UFO obsession to a science fiction writer named Kazantsev, who wrote a story attributing the mighty blast to an exploding nuclear power plant of a spaceship from Mars. Other Russians took the bait. Astronomy lecturer Feliks Zigel, who was also a flying saucer enthusiast, became a spokesman for the œspaceship theory of Tunguska, and a scientist named Aleksey Zolotov, began claiming, almost annually but without proof, that he had found radioactivity at the blast site.

Oberg predicted that the Tunguska spacecraft story, in various forms, would endure and that gullible members of the press would continue to be hoodwinked by Russian UFOlogists. More than two decades later, his prediction stands unchallenged.

URL: http://www.ufoevidence.org/news/article138.ht…/p>