In 1908, on a sunny, clear, quiet morning in Siberia, witnesses recall seeing a blinding light streak across the sky, and then … the earth shook, a forest was flattened, fish were thrown from streams, and roofs were blown off houses. The “Tunguska event,” as it came to be known, was one of the largest extraterrestrial impact events in Earth’s history. But what kind of impact—what exactly struck the earth in the middle of Siberia—is still up for debate. Producer Annie McEwen dives into one idea that suggests a culprit so mysterious, so powerful, so … tiny, you won’t believe your ears. And stranger still, it may be in you right now. Or, according to Senior Correspondent Molly Webster, it could be you.

EPISODE CREDITS

Reported by - Annie McEwen and Molly Webster
Produced by - Annie McEwen and Becca Bressler
with help from - Matt Kielty
Original music and sound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloom, Annie McEwen, Matt Kielty
Mixing by - Jeremy Bloom
with dialogue mixing by - Arianne Wack
Fact-checking by - Diane Kelly
and edited by  - Alex Neason

GUESTS
Matt O’Dowd (https://www.mattodowd.space/)

Special Thanks: 

Special thanks to, Matthew E. Caplan, Brian Greene, Priyamvada Natarajan, Almog Yalinewich

EPISODE CITATIONS

Videos:

Watch “PBS Space Time,” (https://zpr.io/GNhVAWDday49) the groovy show and side-gig of physicist and episode guest Matt O’Dowd

Articles:

Read more (https://zpr.io/J4cKYG5uTgNf) about the Tunguska impact event!

Check out the paper (https://zpr.io/vZxkKtGQczBL), which considers the shape of the crater a primordial black hole would make, should it hit earth: “Crater Morphology of Primordial Black Hole Impacts”

Curious to learn more about black holes possibly being dark matter? You can in the paper (https://zpr.io/sPpuSwhGFkDJ), “Exploring the high-redshift PBH- ΛCDM Universe: early black hole seeding, the first stars and cosmic radiation backgrounds”

Books: 

Get your glow on – Senior Correspondent Molly Webster has a new kids book, a fictional tale about a lonely Little Black Hole (https://zpr.io/e8EKrM7YF32T)

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Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.