Planetary and Space Science 59 (2011) 1016

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Planetary and Space Science

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Curuc- a 1930: A probable mini-Tunguska?

Guadalupe Cordero a,n, Arcadio Poveda b,1
a
b

n, 04510 Me
noma de Mexico, Ciudad Universitaria, Delegacio
n Coyoaca
xico, D.F., Mexico
Depto. Ciencias Espaciales, Instituto de Geofsica, Universidad Nacional Auto
n, 04510 Mexico, D.F., Mexico
noma de Mexico, Ciudad Universitaria, Delegacio
n Coyoaca
Instituto de Astronoma, Universidad Nacional Auto

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 5 April 2010
Received in revised form
21 October 2010
Accepted 22 October 2010
Available online 28 October 2010

Eyewitness accounts of reballs and explosions in the Curuc-a area, Brazil, in August 1930, led to the
suggestion that a large meteorite had fallen. It was later discovered that a seismic event had occurred on
the same day and approximately the same hour as the Curuc- a event and in the same area. There is also a
published description of a circular feature of about 1.2 km diameter in Landsat images of the River Curuc-a
basin; it has been suggested that this feature could be the trace of an impact crater produced by the Curuca event.
In the present work, it was calculated that the creation of a 1.2 km impact crater would require
energies able to generate an earthquake of a magnitude between 5.7 and 6, which is greater than the
magnitude of the quake reported by Vega (1996). This, together with the fact that the seismic record
shows clear evidence that it was a local seism, indicates that the circular feature is not an impact crater
related to the Curuc- a event. A consideration of alternative possibilities suggests that the object involved in
the Curuc-a event could have had a diameter less than 9 m and could have exploded with an energy o 9 kt
without producing destruction in the forest or on the land.
& 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Meteoroids
Cratering
Tunguska
Curuc- a

1. Introduction
In August 1930 Father dAlviano went to the Curuc- a River, near
the BrazilianPeruvian border, to carry out his annual apostolic
mission. There, he discovered that the local people were terried by
reballs and explosions that had occurred a few days before his
arrival and that had let them believe that the world was at an end.
Hundreds of eyewitnesses reported to the catholic missionary that
at around 0800 hours on August 13, 1930, a ne red dust began to
fall onto the forest and into the river; then people heard several earpiercing whistles that became increasingly loud. Fishermen on the
river could see the fall of large reballs. There were three distinct
explosions, each causing earth tremors. The ash continued to fall
until midday (Huyghe, 1996). Father dAlviano concluded that a
meteoroid had exploded in the Earth atmosphere, and a note to this
effect appeared on March 31, 1931, in the Vatican Newspaper,
LOsservatore Romano.
Reza et al. (2004) investigated the event in the Curuc- a River area
by perusal of Landsat images, analysis of seismic records, and eld
work to look for a possible impact crater.
Serra (Huyghe, 1996) examined Landsat images and found three
quasi-circular features in the rain forest (two of them barely
visible), aligned in a north-south direction. The most dened
n

Corresponding author. Tel.: + 52 55 56 22 41 13x20; fax: + 52 55 55 50 24 86.

E-mail addresses: gcordero@geosica.unam.mx (G. Cordero),
poveda@servidor.unam.mx (A. Poveda).
1
Tel./fax: + 52 55 56 22 39 05.
0032-0633/$ - see front matter & 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.pss.2010.10.012

structure has a diameter of  1 km and it is slightly elliptical.

Reza et al. (2004) suggested that these circular features correspond
to three impacts produced by three objects that are being related to
the explosions that were heard.
It has been suggested that the objects that produced the Curuc- a
event could have been part of the comet Swift-Tuttle, because the
meteor shower associated with itthe Perseidspeaks on August
12, and the shooting stars follow a north-south direction (Bailey
et al., 1995; Vega, 1996; Huyghe, 1996). Some comments on this
possibility will be stated in Section 2.5.
In 1997, on a eld trip to the region where the Landsat images
indicated a 1.2 km circular feature (51 110 S, 711 380 W), Reza et al.
(2004) found no evidence about the event having affected the
vegetation, or the nearby rocks. However they did nd a raised
circular structure.
Vega (1996) found a seismic event recorded on the morning of
August 13, 1930. From this, he calculated the surface-wave
magnitude (Ms) of the event to have been 4.7 on the assumption
that the earthquake was produced by the impact of one of the
fragments of the bolide at the site of the putative impact feature.
Beside the works cited in the previous paragraphs, few papers have
been published about this topic. Some authors suggested that the
Curuc- a phenomenon could have been similar to Tunguskas (Kulik,
1931; Bailey et al., 1995); others make some comments on this event
and conclude that more information is necessary to study it (Vasilyev
and Andreev, 1989; Steel, 1995). The possibility that this event is
associated to a large re instead of an encounter with a cosmic body
has been cast too (Svetsov and Shuvalov, 2008); however, we note

G. Cordero, A. Poveda / Planetary and Space Science 59 (2011) 1016

that this last hypothesis does not explain the reballs seen by the
eyewitnesses. A preliminary evaluation of this phenomenon (Gorelli,
1995) suggests that the energy and the height of the explosion were
about 100 kt and between 5 and 10 km, respectively.
In the present study, we show by means of a seismic analysis that if
the circular feature is an impact crater it is not related to the Curuc- a
event; moreover, we calculate some possible physical parameters of
the body that produced the Curuc- a event. Another objective of this
paper is to make clear some aspects of the event that have been
misunderstood, such as the site where the event occurred.

2. Analysis, results, and discussion

2.1. Seismic analysis
In his studies of seismic records at San Calixto Observatory, La
Paz, Bolivia, Vega (1996) mentions that the quake registered in
1930 was reported as a local event 210 km distant from the
observatory by the then director of the observatory.
The San Calixto Observatory supplied us with information about
the arrival times of the P wave (11 h 04 m 27 s) and the S wave (11 h
04 m 51 s), and the calculated distance to the epicenter (210 km).
Part of the original seismogram shows that the seism is supposedly
related to the Curuc- a event (Fig. 1). The shape of the seismogram
and the data in the corresponding register lead to the conclusion
that the epicenter of the seism was not in the Brazilian Amazon. The
difference in the arrival times of the P and S waves indicates that the
epicenter was about 210 km from La Paz, as it had been deduced in
1930 by Father Decotes (see Vega, 1996).
Vega mentioned that at 11 h 05 m 13.2 s GMT, the seismogram
registered a seismic wave of large amplitude and period, whose
spectrum of amplitudes indicated that it was related to a distant
event, thus neglecting the information contained in the P and S
waves that related this seismogram to a local earthquake. Vega
considers that the surface waves in the seismogram were produced
by the impact of a cosmic object that created Serras structure. Vega
assumed a distance from the event equal to 1307 km, i.e., the
distance between La Paz and the circular feature found by Serra. On
the basis of the values of the amplitude and period of the surface
waves, and considering a distance of 1307 km, Vega determined
that the surface-wave magnitude of the event was Ms 4.7.
Assuming that the circular structure of 1.2 km diameter is
indeed an impact crater, we proceeded to calculate the necessary
energy to create it. To do so, we used two methods: data derived
from explosion and impact cratering experiments.
2.1.1. Data from nuclear weapons
The creation of a crater from an impact is not exactly the same
process as its creation from an explosion yield; in fact, impacts
deposit more momentum in the target than explosions (Melosh,
1989). The depth of burst (DOB) is the depth at which an explosive

11

yield is liberated. Nuclear weapon experiments have shown that for

a given explosive yield, the apparent radius of the crater (radius of
the crater measured at the level of the pre-explosion surface)
increases with increase in DOB until a critical depth, after which the
apparent radius decreases with increase in DOB (Glasstone and
Dolan, 1977, p. 255). Thus, to compare impact cratering with
explosion cratering, it is important to nd the DOB at which an
explosive yield must be buried to create a similar crater made by
the impact with an object with an equivalent kinetic energy.
Experiments of impacts with aluminum projectiles (2800 kg m  3)
on dry dense Ottawa sand targets (1800 kg m  3) at a pressure of
1 atm and 1 g show that for energies between 0.1 kt and 100 Mt,
and velocities between 10 and 40 km s  1 the ratio DOB/projectile
radius is between 0.76 and  1.1 (Figure 4 from Holsapple, 1980).
For an iron projectile this ratio is  1.5. We considered stone type
objects whose density value (3000 kg m  3; Hills and Goda, 1993) is
similar to the aluminum projectile density used in the experiment;
for these objects we used the DOB/projectile radius values for
aluminum.
The diameter (rim to rim) of the putative crater at Curuc- a is
1.2 km; therefore, the apparent crater radius is 0.48 km (Glasstone
and Dolan, 1977, p. 253). Figure 6.72a from Glasstone and Dolan
(1977) permits calculation of the apparent crater radius made by a
yield buried at a depth between 0 and almost 61 m (200 feet). From
this gure, we took 3 points (corresponding to 40, 100, and 200
feet) on the curve labeled wet soil or wet soft rock, which is the
kind of expected target at Curuc- a area, and we calculated the
energy to make a crater with an apparent radius of 0.48 km. To
calculate the energy, we considered the scale relationship of
Glasstone and Dolan (1977, p. 254); the results are in the third
column of Table 1. We took DOB 40, 100 and 200 feet arbitrarily to
have an idea of the values of the energy that would be necessary to
create an impact crater of 1.2 km of diameter rim to rim. Taking into
account two values for DOB/apparent radius (0.76 and 1.1), the
radii of projectiles with a kinetic energy equivalent to the explosion
energy were calculated (column 2, Table 1). Considering these radii
and the energies in the third column, we obtained the velocity of
the projectile (fourth column in Table 1).
From nuclear experiments, it is known that one underground
nuclear explosion of yield Y in kilotons produces an earthquake of
Richter magnitude M according to the following relationship
(Barosh, 1969):
M 3:9 0:7 log Y

The last column of Table 1 shows the Richter magnitude

calculated from the values of the third column and Eq. (1). The
value of the rst row was omitted because it does not show a
realistic case (the velocity is not credible).
2.1.2. Scaling relationships
Rigorously, in the last section, scaling laws were used for
explosion cratering experiments. In this section, we analyze the

Fig. 1. Fragment of seismogram from the San Calixto Observatory, La Paz, Bolivia. The beginning of the record (11 h 04 m 27 s), presumed to have been associated with Curucas event, is marked by the left arrow in the original document. Time scale at the top was added for the present study.

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G. Cordero, A. Poveda / Planetary and Space Science 59 (2011) 1016

Table 1
Energy to make a crater of apparent radius of 0.48 km when the explosion yield is buried at a depth given by the values of the rst column. The second column is the projectile
radius. These data are used to calculate the two values per row in the fourth column. The projectile velocity is calculated from the kinetic energy yield of explosion, and
considering that the density of the projectiles is 3000 kg m  3. The fth column shows the Richter magnitude of the explosion according to Eq. (1).
DOB (m)

Projectile radius (m)

DOB/0.76

12
31
61

16
40
80

Energy (kt)
DOB/1.1
3

11
28
55

2.4  10
9.4  102
1.1  103

problem of impact cratering from the point of view of the classical

scaling laws. Substantial work has been done about scaling of
impact processes (e.g., Holsapple, 1993; Holsapple and Schmidt,
1982). For the present analysis, we took the scaling law used by
Schmidt (1980) to study Meteor crater whose rim crest diameter
(Roddy, 1978) is very similar to Serras feature.
According to Schmidt (1980), an estimate of the energy of
formation for an impact crater like Meteor crater can be calculated
by
0:20 0:60

E 1:35r 3:60 r1:20 d

U 0:80

where E is the total kinetic energy of the projectile in joules, r the

apparent crater radius in meters, r the target density in kg m  3,
d the projectile density in kg m  3, g the gravitational acceleration
(9.81 m s  2), and U the projectile velocity in m s  1. Considering
r 480 m, r 2100 kg m  3, and d 3000 kg m  3, for the Curuc- a
event Eq. (2) becomes
E 4:67  1013 U 0:80

3
1

Taking three values for U 11.2, 15, and 20 km s , the energy in

each case is 8.1  101, 1.0  1017, and 1.3  1017 J, respectively. We
chose these values for the velocity because the rst one is the
minimum entry velocity that a cosmic projectile can have, and the
other two are typical encounter velocities with the Earth. From
studies of seismic effects of impact craters on the Moon, it is possible
to estimate the seismic energy to be Esis 10  4E (Schultz and Gault,
1975). Then, the corresponding seismic energies (for the above cases)
are 8.1  1012, 1.0  1013, and 1.3  1013 J, respectively.
The energy is related to the magnitude of a seism by means of
the following equation:
log10 Esis 4:4 1:5Ms

where Esis is the seismic energy in joules and Ms the magnitude of

the surface waves (Lowrie, 1997). Replacing the previous seismic
energies into Eq. (4), we obtained the values of Ms of 5.7, 5.7,
and 5.8.
According to maps from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and
Statistics, the Amazon river basin is formed by Tertiary sediments
or younger whose thickness ranges between some dozen meters
and 12 km (Milliman, 1979; Latrubesse et al., 1997) that lie on older
magmatic (hard) rocks. If a shockwave would excavate a crater in
this area, it will nd hard rock beneath the sediments; in this case
more energy will be required to produce an impact crater of a given
radius, and a more intense earthquake will be generated. Thus the
results derived from explosion cratering experiments would give a
lower limit for the energy and the Ms.
Whatever the method used to estimate the energy necessary to
create an impact crater of 1.2 km diameter, the corresponding seismic
magnitude ( 5.7) is greater than Vegas (4.7). Note that an earthquake of magnitude 45.7 could have been recorded by distant
seismic stations. A search in the International Seismological Summary
for 1930 (Hughes and Bellamy, 1935) found no earthquake around

Projectile velocity (km s  1)

DOB/0.76

DOB/1.1

79
20
11

115
28
16

Richter magnitude

6
6

11 h GMT in South America on August 13, 1930 (besides that

registered at La Paz). In particular, we did not nd a seismic event
on that date in the August records of the Seismological Observatory of
Tacubaya in Mexico City. This is further evidence that if the 1.2 km
circular feature is an impact crater it was not made by an impact
related to the Curuc- a event. In addition, morphological and spectral
analysis of Landsat images and the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission
(SRTM) DEM have shown that the quasi-circular feature found by
Serra is not an impact crater, but an erosional cirque near a drainage
divide (L. Manzo, J. Lopez and G. Cordero, unpublished). In further
sections, we will analyze the hypothesis that the event at Curuc- a was
an aerial explosion similar to the Tunguska event.

2.2. Height of explosion

The Tunguska event occurred around 0 h 14 m UT on June 30,
1908, in the basin of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River with an
epicenter on 601 530 0900 N, 1011 530 4000 E (Farinella et al., 2001).
This phenomenon has been associated with the fall of a cosmic
body 50100 m size that exploded at 510 km height, releasing an
energy equivalent to 1050 Mt TNT (Svetsov and Shuvalov, 2008).
The huge air explosion attened millions of trees over
2150750 km2 of Siberian Taiga (Farinella et al., 2001). Unlike
Tunguska, in the Curuc- a area there are neither fallen trees nor
seismic records that permit an estimation of the height of the
bolides explosion. However, the note in LOsservatore Romano can
help to set limits to the height of explosion: At Remate de Males
and Esperanc- a the phenomena were not seen, but the explosions
were clearly heard and the people thought that they were testing
new cannons and bombs at the fort at Tabatinga (Bailey et al.,
1995). Even though Bailey et al. (1995) say that evidently the
object fell near 51 S, 71.51 W, in the note at LOsservatore Romano
there is nothing to indicate where the event happened. The only
directional information are eyewitness reports from people living
and working along the river; even so, the Curuc- a River is hundreds
of kilometers long, so it is difcult to know where they were
precise, where the explosions occurred, or where the bolides were
seen no more.
In order to set limits to the height of the explosion, several
points over the Curuc- a River and their distances to Remate de
Males were considered (see Fig. 2). We calculated the height of the
explosion considering that the event must have happened below
the line of sight of the inhabitants of Remate de Males. This town is
at 41190 5600 S, 701120 3100 W. Four points were chosen along the river
at different distances from this town (Fig. 2): (1) the conuence of
the Curuc- a with the Yavari river (  134 km), (2) the point where
the Pardo River joins the Curuc- a River ( 244 km), (3) the point
where the Arroja River joins the Curuc- a River (  273 km), and
(4) the point where another smaller river joins the Curuc- a River
(  326 km). The Curuc- a does not start at that place, it rises from a
more southerly point.

G. Cordero, A. Poveda / Planetary and Space Science 59 (2011) 1016

13

Fig. 2. Image from Google Earth where the Curuc- a River area is observed. Remate de Males and several points are marked. See the text for details. Marubo is the place where
the ethnic group of this name lives according to Fagundes et al. (2002).

Table 2
Posible scenarios for the explosion of a meteoroid above the Curuc-a River area. Three
entry velocities, and a density 3000 kg m  3 are considered. No value in the third
column means that the meteoroid does not fragment.
Case number

Fig. 3. Elements used to calculate the height of the explosion: a is the distance
between two points on the Earth surface in km, a the angular distance between the
same two points, and RE is the mean Earth radius (6371 km); H is the maximum
height, above a point in the River Curuc- a basin, at which the explosion could have
occurred without being seen at Remate de Males.

Considering that the mean radius of the Earth is 6371 km, by

elemental geometry (Fig. 3), we can calculate the height of an
explosion if it had happened above one of those four points. To do
this, we calculated the height over each one of the four points to the
intersection with the tangent plane to Remate de Males. We
obtained the heights between 1.5 and 8.4 km. This calculation
did not take into account the atmospheric refraction; when we took
an angle of refraction of 350 2100 at the horizon (Roy and Clarke,
2003), the new heights ranged between 0.03 and 5.0 km. The lower
value is not possible because no object of few meters size bursts at
such low altitude (Figure 4 of Hills and Goda, 1993).

2.3. Energy of the explosion

Although the eyewitnesses reported three seisms, the note in
the LOsservatore Romano makes no mention of the collapse of any
buildings or the dislodging of objects (LOsservatore Romano, 1931;
Alviano, 1931; Perugia, 1931). A seism of magnitude 2 is barely felt,
whereas a seism of magnitude 4 is able to move furniture (Lomnitz,
2005). Hence, the earthquakes felt at the Curuc- a presumably had a
magnitude between 2 and 4.
From the nuclear weapon experiments, it is found that the
proportion of the energy of an aerial explosion, Eexp, that is

11.2 km s  1
1
2
3
15 km s  1
4
5
6
20 km s  1
7
8
9

Diameter (m)

Height of
explosion (km)

3
9
3  101

6
5

2
8
2  101

11.5
10

2
6
2  101

16.5
14.5

transferred into the ground as seismic energy, Esis, is around

2  10  5 (Martin, 1966; Griggs and Press, 1961)
Esis =Eexp 2  105

From Eq. (4), we calculated the expected seismic energy

associated with each seismic magnitude, then we obtained the
explosion energy from Eq. (5). Hence, with a seism of magnitude 2,
Eexp is 3  10  1 kt; with magnitude 3, Eexp is 9 kt; and with
magnitude 4, Eexp is 3  102 kt. These results agree with theoretical
seismograms calculated considering yields between 1 kt and 10 Mt
and heights of explosion between 0 and 80 km (Figure 12 from
Harkrider et al., 1974). We take the initial energy of the body as it
enters the Earths atmosphere to be twice Eexp (Hills and Goda,
1993). We calculated the diameter of the meteoroid from the
assumed kinetic energy and for three entry velocities, 11.2, 15, and
20 km s  1, and a meteoroid density of 3000 kg m  3 (Table 2).
Cases 1, 4, and 7 were calculated with an entry energy of 6  10  1
kt. Cases 2, 5, and 8 were calculated with an entry energy of 18 kt.
Cases 3, 6, and 9 were calculated with an entry energy of 6  102 kt.
The height of the explosion (Table 2) was derived from the plot for
hard stone in Figure 4 of Hills and Goda (1993).

14

G. Cordero, A. Poveda / Planetary and Space Science 59 (2011) 1016

For each one of the previous explosion energies, the critical

height, hc, was estimated by means of
1=3
hc 0:642Eexp

case of large explosions, it can be better estimated by

DP
6

hc is the height in km above which no ground damage occurred (less

than 10% of trees fell) and Eexp is in kton of TNT (Hills and Goda,
1993). This equation gave a height of 0.4 km for an energy of
3  10  1 kt, 1.3 km for 9 kt, and 4.3 km for 3  102 kt. According to
this and the heights of explosion in Table 2, none of these
explosions are able to produce a damage on the trees similar to
the damage caused by the Tunguska explosion.

2.4. Sound
At Curuc- a River, the sounds resembled loud artillery re, while
people at Remate de Males attributed the sounds to the testing of
cannons and bombs at Tabatinga, some 95 km away (Bailey et al.,
1995). This fact suggests that the level of sound at Curuc- a could
have been r130 dB (63.25 Pa; the threshold of pain). It is not
known how loud the sound level was at Remate de Males, but
according to the Father DAlvianos report, the explosions were
clearly heard there; thus, sound level pressures between 60
(subdue conversation) and 80 dB (city trafc) are a reasonable
supposition; therefore, we adopted a value of 70 dB (0.06 Pa)7 10
dB (Raichel, 2000).
It is desirable to know how the pressure decays with the
distance to assess the explosion energies calculated in the previous
section. From nuclear explosion experiments, it is possible to know
the overpressure, DP, at a distance, D, from ground zero produced
by an air blast of 1 kt (Table 4 from Collins et al., 2005), 20 kt and
1 Mt (Glasstone, 1957, pp. 194195; see Fig. 4) and from these data
to estimate overpressures for other energies by means of scaling
relationships (Glasstone and Dolan, 1977). The lowest overpressure
reported by Collins et al. (2005) and Glasstone (1957) is 1 psi
( 6895 Pa), which is rather large compared with overpressures of
interest in this study. In fact, at smaller pressures, i.e., larger
distances, the air shockwaves reach the ground surface at the
acoustic regime. For spherical sound waves DPpD  1, but in the

P1
p

log10 D=D1

where D1 and P1 are constants that can be calculated knowing the

value of DP at two distances (Hunt et al., 1960). To calculate D1 and P1
we took 3.3 psi at 0.549 km and 1 psi at 1.16 km for 1 kt, and 2 psi at
2.90 km and 1.1 psi at 4.18 km for 20 kt. The resulting curves (dashed
lines) are shown attached to the empirical points in Fig. 4. Note that
the units of pressure in the plot are Pascals (we converted the units of
pressure considering 1 psi6895 Pa). We scaled these last curves to
plot curves for 0.3, 9, and 300 kt. The two horizontal lines in Fig. 4
show sound level pressures of 63 and 0.06 Pa. Because the witness at
Curuc- a heard the explosion at  63 Pa, while people at Remate de
Males heard it at 0.06 Pa, the curve that ts these observations must
cross both lines. In addition, the locations in Fig. 2 are less than 400 km
apart, then the pressure must decrease from 63 to 0.06 Pa in a
distance o400 km. As can clearly be seen, neither of the curves fullls
this condition, indicating that the explosion energy must have been
lower than 0.3 kt.
On the other hand, empirical points at 20 kt and 1 Mt show two
regimes for each energy: for 20 kt, DPpD  0.8 if 0.3 kmrD r1.3
km and DPpD  1.6 if 1.3 kmrD r4.2 km; for 1 Mt, DPpD  0.9 if
1.6 kmrD r4.8 km and DPpD  1.7 if 4.8 kmrD r16.1 km. This
means that at greater distances from ground zero the pressure can
decrease faster.
A gas dynamic numerical model applied to the explosions of the
Popocatepetl volcano shows that nearby the point of the explosion,
the compression wave propagates as a supersonic shock, but at
larger distances it becomes a sonic compression wave (Raga et al.,
2002). This model, validated with the empirical data taken at a
distance of 11 km from the volcano, shows that DPpD  2. The
second column of Table 2 of Raga et al. (2002) shows the observed
DP/Pa and the calculated energies given by their model for each
explosion (note the denition of DP given by Raga et al. (2002), for
us DP Pmax  Pa). Making a t of these data, we obtained

DP 2:29Eexp

where DP, the peak overpressure at 11 km from ground zero, is in

Pa and Eexp, the energy of the explosion in kt, is valid in the range

Fig. 4. Horizontal solid lines show sound pressure levels of 63 (higher line) and 0.06 Pa (lower line), two horizontal dotted lines correspond to 0.02 and 0.2 Pa, the error around
0.06 Pa (707 10 dB). Solid lines show the energies calculated in Section 2.3. Triangles are data for an energy of 1 kt taken from Collins et al. (2005), diamonds and rectangles are
data taken from Glasstone (1957, pp. 194195) for 20 kt and 1 Mt, respectively. The dashed lines are ts to data for 1 and 20 kt using Eq. (7).

G. Cordero, A. Poveda / Planetary and Space Science 59 (2011) 1016

15

Fig. 5. Horizontal lines mean the same as in Fig. 4. Three points are peak overpressure at 11 km from ground zero due to explosions of 0.3, 9 and 300 kt according to Eq. (8).
Diagonal lines describe the behavior of the peak overpressure considering that DPpD  2.

35 ktoEexp o264 kt. Assuming Eq. (8) to be valid for the explosion
energies found in Section 2.3, we obtained the corresponding
values of P (see the three points in Fig. 5). The lines that cross these
points, for energies 0.3, 9, and 300 kt, show the relation DPpD  2.
Lines for 0.3 and 9 kt t to the acoustic observation of the witnesses
at Curuc- a and Remate de Males, fullling the condition of yielding
approximately 63 Pa at Curuc- a and 0.06 Pa at Remate de Males.
Based on these calculations, the explosion energy must have
been of the order of a few kilotons, which is compatible with the
energy of explosion of bolides of about 10 m diameter (  5 kt;
Brown et al., 2002). This constrains the cases in Table 2, in
particular, cases 3, 6, and 9 are ruled out because of their large
energies. Similarly, we discarded cases 1, 4, and 7 because the
objects do not fragment in the atmosphere (see Figure 4, Hills and
Goda, 1993). According to the results in Section 2.2, the height of
the explosion is less than 5 km. Cases 5 and 8 are ruled out too
because their heights of explosion are larger than 5 km, so the only
case that ts better with all the observations is case 2. The true case
could be different to case 2 but our results indicate that the object
exploded with an energy r9 kt, and it had an entry velocity by
11.2 km s  1 and a diameter r9 m.
2.5. Perseids
The date of the Curuc- a event coincided with the peak of the
Perseid meteor shower. This timing has suggested to some authors
(Bailey et al., 1995; Vega, 1996; Reza et al., 2004) that one fragment
of this comet could have been involved in the Curuc- a event. The
Perseid meteor shower is produced annually because of the
encounter between the Earth and fragments of the comet 109P/
Swift-Tuttle that, before 1930, was last seen in 1862. The Perseids
radiant is at R.A.481, Decl. + 581 (Jenniskens, 2006) and for an
observer at 51 S, the radiant has an altitude of 271, i.e., near the
horizon, which makes observers in the south see considerably
fewer meteors than observers in the north. This fact reduces the
probability that a huge fragment of the Perseids could have fallen in
South America. The largest particle that can leave the nucleus of
comet Swift-Tuttle, because the drag force due to gas outow, is
6 cm (Yanagisawa et al., 2006). Small objects like this entering the
Earths atmosphere at the relative velocity of  59 km s  1
(Yanagisawa et al., 2006; Hapgood and Rothwell, 1981) are totally

ablated. On the other hand, comets can undergo outburst or

fragmentation; during these events, fragments as large as 50 m
can be detached (Beech et al., 2004). Comet objects of 50 m radius
or less explode in the atmosphere at heights greater than 30 km
(Hills and Goda, 1993). These bolides are very bright, so if they had
come from the north, as expected from a Perseid member, they
would have been seen not only at Remate de Males but in other
towns of the zone, Tabatinga, for example, which was not the case.

3. Conclusions
1. The Curuc- a event was not related to the earthquake registered
on August 13 in the seismological station at San Calixto, La Paz;
this earthquake was just a local event.
2. The 1.2 km diameter feature found by Serra is not an impact
crater associated with the Curuc- a event because the energy
required would have generated an earthquake more intense
than the earthquake studied by Vega. This is consistent with
Rezas failure to nd evidence of an impact on the ground
in 1997.
3. The object that produced the Curuc- a event was estimated to
have been of about 9 m in diameter, to have exploded at a height
of 6 km, and to have entered the Earths atmosphere at
11.2 km s  1.
4. Tunguska and Curuc- a events are similar because both of them
are atmospheric explosions and have similar heights of burst
even though the involved energies have a difference of 3 orders
of magnitude.
The present speculations about diameter, velocity, and energy
of the meteoroid are only estimated values based on several
suppositions. For example, the heights of the explosion were
obtained by assuming an entry angle of 901 (Hills and Goda,
1993); to explore this further, it would be necessary to consider
different entry angles, densities, etc. In addition, eld work and
image analysis will be necessary in the search for answers to the
enigma of the Curuc- a event, in order to look for possible impact
craters different to Serras feature in the River Curuc- a basin having
diameters smaller than 1.2 km or any sign of fallen or damaged
trees. The present work is seen as one of the rst contributions to

16

G. Cordero, A. Poveda / Planetary and Space Science 59 (2011) 1016

what may prove to be a long discussion, just as the Tunguska event

has been the subject of debate for more than eight decades.

Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Ramiro de la Reza and Roberto Gorelli for the
valuable information provided, and to Cinna Lomnitz, Carolyn
Ernst, Boris Ivanov, and Donald Yeomans for their useful comments
and suggestions. G. Cordero thanks Caridad Cardenas for assistance
in technical aspects of seismogram interpretation, Luzmila Parraga
for help in obtaining the original seismogram, and DGAPA for
support through Project PI100206.
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