They're now convinced it looked like this....

Posted this on the other bbs.

Mystery space blast 'solved'

By BBC News Online science editor Dr David Whitehouse

...Scientists have always suspected that an incoming comet or asteroid lay behind the event - but no impact crater was ever discovered and no expedition to the area has ever found any large fragments of an extraterrestrial object.

Now, a team of Italian researchers believe they may have the definitive answer. After combining never-before translated eyewitness accounts with seismic data and a new survey of the impact zone, the scientists say the evidence points strongly to the object being a low-density asteroid.

They even think they know from where in the sky the object came....

Of the 886 valid orbits that they calculated, over 80% of them were asteroid orbits with only a minority being orbits that are associated with comets....