Scientists discover Tunguska crater

On June 30, 1908, a ball of fire exploded about 6 miles (10 kilometers) above the ground in the sparsely populated region, scientists say. The blast released 15 megatons of energy—about a thousand times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima—and flattened 770 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) of forest.

Since then many teams of scientists have combed the site, but none was able to find any fragments of an object, like a rocky asteroid or a comet, that might have caused the event.

In their new study, a team of Italian scientists used acoustic imagery to investigate the bottom of Lake Cheko, about five miles (eight kilometers) north of the explosion's suspected epicenter.

"When our expedition [was at] Tunguska, we didn't have a clue that Lake Cheko might fill a crater," said Luca Gasperini, a geologist with the Marine Science Institute in Bologna who led the study.

"We searched its bottom looking for extraterrestrial particles trapped in the mud. We mapped the basin and took samples. As we examined the data, we couldn't believe what they were suggesting.

"The funnel-like shape of the basin and samples from its sedimentary deposits suggest that the lake fills an impact crater," Gasperini said.