Britannica Sources used in this answer

Why did the Tunguska event not leave a crater in Siberia?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

The Chicxulub asteroid — Earth impact hazard An artist's rendering of the impact of a near-Earth object 66 million years ago in what is today the Caribbean region. Many scientists think that the collision of a large asteroid or comet nucleus with Earth triggered the mass extinction of dinosaurs and many other species near the end of the Cretaceous Period.

The Tunguska event did not leave an impact crater because the object—likely an asteroid or comet—exploded high in the atmosphere, approximately 5 to 10 km above Earth's surface.1

Because the object vaporized during this high-altitude explosion, it created a massive fireball and a powerful blast wave that flattened and charred a vast area of forest, but it did not strike the ground with the physical mass required to excavate a crater. While the blast was powerful enough to be recorded by seismographs in Europe and caused significant environmental effects, the only remnants of the object found have been microscopic fragments. This differs from events involving larger, more solid objects that reach the surface at high velocities, which possess the kinetic energy necessary to produce a traditional hypervelocity impact crater.123