I have the cover story on BBC Sky at Night’s June issue:

“They say that lightning never strikes twice.  Most people think the same about asteroid impacts but some researchers aren’t so sure.  Take the devastating 30 June 1908 impact over Tunguska in Siberia.

It was about 7:15am when, out of the brilliant summer sky flashed a meteorite, a really big one.  As it ploughed onwards, it left a pillar of smoke hanging across the sky marking its passage.

It never reached the ground.  Instead, at an altitude of 16 kilometres it detonated with energy estimated to be around a thousand times greater than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The resulting blast wave swept across an area of 2150 square kilometres.  Had there been a city underneath, it would have been devastated, with hundreds of thousands of casualties. …”

You can read the full story in the June issue of BBC Sky At Night magazine.  You can also listen to an interview with me about Tunguska by the magazine’s editor Graham Southorn.  It is available on the magazine’s second podcast episode, available here.