Vitim's Bolide

The Vitim event or Bodaybo event was a half kiloton explosion on 24–25 September 2002 in the taiga near the Vitim River, near the city of Bodaibo, in the Mamsko-Chuiski district of Irkutsk Oblast, Central Siberian Plateau in Russia.

It is believed to have been caused by the nucleus of a comet between 50 and 100 meters in diameter, made up of heavy metals that fissioned as they entered the Earth's atmosphere.^{[citation needed]} Some attempts were made to measure the magnitude of the explosion.^{[which one?]} US military analysts. they estimated it to be between 0.2 and 0.5 kilotons, while the Russian physicist Andrei Olkhovatov calculated that it would have reached 4 or 5 kilotons.^{[citation needed]}

Information about the event took a week to appear in the scientific and social media. Initially, no one understood the magnitude of the explosion. As is often the case in these cases, alternative hypotheses have been postulated.