3 case files, newest first.
A 20-metre asteroid exploded over the southern Urals, brighter than the Sun. The shock wave blew out windows in six cities and injured about 1,500 people, mostly from flying glass. Dashcams recorded it from every angle.
In 2021 a team argued in Scientific Reports that a cosmic airburst destroyed a Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley, possibly inspiring the story of Sodom. Critics found errors in the data and the airburst physics. The journal retracted the paper in April 2025; some authors disagree.
A cosmic body exploded over the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia and flattened about 2,000 square kilometres of forest. The first scientific expedition arrived nearly 20 years later and found no crater. Today it is accepted as an airburst of a small asteroid or comet.
