The 1930 Curuçá River event refers to the possible fall of objects on 13 August 1930 over the area of Curuçá River in

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. It is based on the account of a single investigator who interviewed witnesses to the purported event and then wrote a letter to the Vatican Observatory.

Overview

The event received little attention until 1995, when British astronomer Mark E. Bailey found in the

Vatican Library The Vatican Apostolic Library ( la, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, it, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana), more commonly known as the Vatican Library or informally as the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City. Formally es ...

archives a 1931 issue of ''

L'Osservatore Romano ''L'Osservatore Romano'' (, 'The Roman Observer') is the daily newspaper of Vatican City State which reports on the activities of the Holy See and events taking place in the Catholic Church and the world. It is owned by the Holy See but is not ...

'', which contained a dispatch from the

Franciscan friar , image = FrancescoCoA PioM.svg , image_size = 200px , caption = A cross, Christ's arm and Saint Francis's arm, a universal symbol of the Franciscans , abbreviation = OFM , predecessor = , ...

Fedele d'Alviano. D'Alviano had visited the region five days after the event and interviewed people from the region; they told him they were frightened by what had happened. According to Bailey, the Curuçá event was one of the most important impact events of the 20th century. Inspired by Bailey's article and based on images from

Landsat The Landsat program is the longest-running enterprise for acquisition of satellite imagery of Earth. It is a joint NASA / USGS program. On 23 July 1972, the Earth Resources Technology Satellite was launched. This was eventually renamed to La ...

satellites, the Brazilian astrophysicist Ramiro de la Reza attempted to find an

astrobleme An impact structure is a generally circular or craterlike geologic structure of deformed bedrock or sediment produced by impact on a planetary surface, whatever the stage of erosion of the structure. In contrast, an impact crater is the sur ...

—the remains of a meteorite impact crater. He explored a circular feature measuring 1 km in diameter, to the southeast of the village of Argemiro, but found no evidence for impact. In the first week of June 1997, de la Reza led an expedition organized by

Rede Globo TV Globo (, "Globe TV", or simply Globo), formerly known as Rede Globo, is a Brazilian free-to-air television network, launched by media proprietor Roberto Marinho on 26 April 1965. It is owned by media conglomerate Grupo Globo. The TV stati ...

and co-financed by ABC Television of Australia, to the region where the event is said to have occurred. Subsequent researchers have concluded that the circular feature is unrelated to the reported event, and is not an impact crater. Assuming that the reported event was an air burst, various researchers have estimated the initial mass of the

meteor A meteoroid () is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space. Meteoroids are defined as objects significantly smaller than asteroids, ranging in size from grains to objects up to a meter wide. Objects smaller than this are classified as mi ...

at between 1,000 and 25,000 tons. Estimates for the energy released have varied from 9

kiloton TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. The is a unit of energy defined by that convention to be , which is the approximate energy released in the detonation of a ...

s, 100 kilotons, and 5 megatons, though most estimates place the energy at below 1 megaton, comparable to the Chelyabinsk meteor.

References

*http://alias.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,estrondo--na-selva,1760865 * Bailey, Mark E. et al. 1995. The Observatory Vol. 115 (1128), pp. 250–253 * Daily Herald. Menace of meteors like huge bombs from space. 6 Mar 1931, p. 9. * De la Reza, J. R.; Rumble in the Jungle, Quantum programme of the ABC-TV, Australia, directed by Richard Smith, ABC-TV Science Unit, 1998. * Gehrels, T.,;Collisions with Comets and Asteroids. Scientific American, Vol. 274, No. 3., March, 1996, pp. 54–59. * Gorelli, R.; The Rio Curuçá Event. Meteorite!, August 1995, p. 26. * Huyghe, P.; Incident at Curuça. The Sciences, March/April, 1996, pp. 14–17. * Informazioni Fides, L'Osservatore Romano. The Fall of Three Bolides on the Amazonas. Strange and Frightening Phenomena. 1 March, p. 5, 1931. (English translation in Bailey et al. 1995.) * Kulik, L. A.; The Brazilian twin of the Tunguska meteorite. Priroda i Ljudi, 13–14, p. 6, 1931. * Vasilyev, N.; and Andreev, G.; The Brazilian Twin of the Tunguska Meteorite: Myth or Reality? WGN, The Journal of the International Meteor Organization, 17, No.6, pp. 247–248, 1989. * Vega, A. J.; Possible Evidencia Sismica del Evento "Tunguska" del 13 de Agosto de 1930, Ocurrido en Brasil. Revista Geofisica Instituto Panamericano de Geografia e Historia 44, Enero-Junio, pp. 201–211, 1996. {{DEFAULTSORT:Curuca River event, 1930

1930 Events January * January 15 – The Moon moves into its nearest point to Earth, called perigee, at the same time as its fullest phase of the Lunar Cycle. This is the closest moon distance at in recent history, and the next one will b ...

1930 in Brazil Explosions in 1930 Meteoroids 1930 natural disasters Natural disasters in Brazil Explosions in Brazil Pará August 1930 events 1930 disasters in Brazil

Overview

See also

References

Further reading