Sirente crater

The Sirente crater is a small shallow seasonal lake in Abruzzo. The lake is located at the center of a mountainous highland north of the Sirente massif in the Apennines and is 13 kilometres from the small village of Secinaro. In the late 1990s, the peculiar appearance of the ridge drew the attention of the Swedish geologist Jens Ormö: an impact crater specialist with a PhD from the [http://www.geo.su.se University of Stockholm.] He decided to start a field investigation in order to verify his intuition on the geological nature of the lake structure. Dr. Ormö set up a research team (the Sirente Crater Group) together with two colleagues from the International Research School of Planetary Science of Pescara [http://irsps.sci.unich.it/research/projects/earth/sirente (IRSPS):] Angelo Pio Rossi and Goro Komatsu. The crater is suggested to be part of a whole crater field comprising about 30 individual depressions in the Sirente area.

Formation hypotheses

Meteorite impact

The Sirente Crater Group proposed a meteoric origin for this structure and the attendant smaller craters and published first result of radiocarbon tests (4th to 5th Century AD) in 2002. [ Ormö, Jens; Pio Rossi, Angelo; Komatsu, Goro; [http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?2002M%26PS...37.1507O&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf The Sirente crater field, Italy.] Meteoritics & Planetary Science, vol. 37, no. 11, pp. 1507-1521, 2002] [ Jens ORMÖ, David GOMEZ-ORTIZ, Patrick C. MCGUIRE, Herbert HENKEL,Goro KOMATSU, and Angelo Pio ROSSI, Magnetometer survey of the proposed Sirente meteorite crater field, central Italy: Evidence for uplifted crater rims and buried meteorites, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 42, Nr 2, 211–222, 2007] [Ormö, J, Koerbel, C, Rossi, A. P. and Komatsu G; Geological and geochemical data from the proposed Sirente crater field: New age dating and evidence for heating the target, Meteoritics & Planetary Science, Vol. 41, 1331-1435, 2006]

During the Roman Empire Prati del Sirente was controlled by the Roman municipium of Superaequum and historical/archaeological evidence for a meteorite impact have been considered as well. [Santilli, R.; Ormo, J.; Rossi, A. P.; Komatsu, G.; [http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/077/Ant0770313.htm A catastrophe remembered: a meteorite impact of the fifth century AD in the Abruzzo, central Italy.] Antiquity, 2003, VOL 77; PART 296, pages 313-320 (Link to abstract) ] [Santilli, R, Investigating a meteorite impact in Prati del Sirente: First indications from a small Christian Catacomb, Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, Special Issue, Vol. 6, No 3, pp. 145-147, 2006]

Anthropogenic hypothesis

In 2004 a group of geologists lead by the Italian Fabio Speranza working in the [http://www.ingv.it/~roma/profilo/fondazione/sezioni/romadue/speranza/home.html Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia] hypothesized that the lake basin was excavated by humans in order to collect natural water for the livestock. [ Speranza, Fabio; Sagnotti, Leonardo; Rochette, Pierre; [http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=2004M%26PS...39..635S&db_key=AST An anthropogenic origin of the "Sirente crater," Abruzzi, Italy.] Meteoritics & Planetary Science, Vol. 39, No. 4, p.635-649, 2004 (Link to abstract) ]

Mud volcano

A recent hypothesis toward the Sirente crater was proposed in 2005 by Prof. F. Stoppa from the [http://www.unich.it University 'G. D'annunzio' of Pescara.] Prof. Stoppa argues that the Sirente crater neither formed by an impact expolosion or by the excavation of man and that the most realistic agent that explains the observed effects is a rapid local emission of mud and/or water. [Stoppa, Francesco; [http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=2006M%26PS...41..467S&db_key=AST The Sirente crater, Italy: Impact versus mud volcano origins.] Meteoritics and Planetary Science, vol. 41, Issue 3, p.467-477, 2006 (Link to abstract)]

World War II bombing

A further anthropogenic hypothesis has recently been proposed for at least part of the Sirente craters.

On comparing the proposed [http://www.chiemgau-impact.com Chiemgau meteorite impact strewnfield] with the Sirente crater field, Werner Mayer from the German [http://chiemgau-impact.com/team.html CIRT] research team sampled metallic fragments in great quantities in the Sirente crater area that proved to be fragments of exploded ordnance like bombs and grenades. Accordingly, an [http://www.impact-structures.com origin from World War II bombing] for at least the smaller craters is to be taken into consideration.

Forthcomings

An international committee of independent scientists is currently evaluating the literature on the Sirente crater. According to the Earth and Environmental Sciences (EES) Division of the Los Alamos National Laboratories: "if the impact origin of this structure would be confirmed, it would constitute an exceptionally interesting example (the only one in the world) of a crater formed in historic time and in a highly civilized region." [ Earth and Environmental Sciences (EES) Division of the Los Alamos National Laboratories: [http://www.ees.lanl.gov/news/archive_apr_june_2006.shtml news archive April/June 2006] ]

Legends

The Sirente crater is an example of a well preserved Holocene crater and has a legend attached to it as well, as other Holocene craters. A local story about the religious conversion from Paganism to Christianity has been handed on orally for over 1600 years:

"It was in the afternoon...an uproar hit the mountain and quartered the giant oaks announcing the violent arrival of the Goddess. A sudden and intense heat overwhelmed the people and a shout echoed all around, splitting the air with its trail of violence..."

"All of a sudden, over there, in the distance, in the sky, a new star, never seen before, bigger than the other ones, came nearer and nearer, appeared and disappeared behind the top of the eastern mountains. Peoples’ eyes looked at the strange light growing bigger and bigger. Soon the star shone as large as a new sun. An irresistible, dazzling light pervaded the sky. The oak leaves shuddered, discoloured, and curled up. The forest lost its sap. The Sirente was shaking. In a tremendous rumble the statue sank into a sudden chasm. The satyrs and the Bacchantes fell down senseless. A huge silence fell. It seemed as if time had stopped in the ancient wood near the temple at the foot of the Sirente, and it looked like the mountain had never existed. The entire valley became dumb. Not a breath of wind could be heard, nor a sheep bleating from the numerous herds, nor a rustle from the strong trees, nor a human sound.” “After an endless period of time, when stars shone in the sky without the moon, a new breeze came to stir the leaves; sheep were heard again and the Mountain was dressed in the light of a new dawn. Faint stars disappeared, blue sky slowly came back and the Sirente became a golden mountain in the first rays of the new sun. It looked like the Valley was full of roses. Newly awake, men listened closely to the death rattle of the Goddess at the foot of the wood; and then they saw the statue of the Madonna with the Holy Child in her arms who was sitting on a throne of light and was surrounded by light."

(source: Antiquity).

Emperor Constantine

"He said that about noon, when the day was already beginning to decline, he saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the inscription, Conquer by this. At this sight he himself was struck with amazement, and his whole army also, which followed him on this expedition, and witnessed the miracle".

"Eusebius, Life of the Emperor Constantine"

An impact the size of the putative Sirente meteoroid would have been visible from a great distance as a strip of fire turning into a fireball, culminating a pyrotechnic show of bolides. The proposed Sirente impact may have occurred at the same time, and near the same place the emperor Constantine I was camped before the famous battle of the Milvian Bridge, and may have been the event recorded as his "vision". A possible coincidence between these two events has been widely discussed in the popular press. [Whitehouse, David, BBC News Online; [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3013146.stm Space impact 'saved Christianity'] Monday, 23 June, 2003]

References

External links

News

* [http://www.sfu.ca/geog312/readings/Sirente.pdf Crater find backs falling star legend]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3013146.stm Space impact 'saved Christianity']
* [http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/37224 It Came from Outer Space?]
* [http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/science/story/0,12450,889308,00.html The day the sky fell in]
* [http://nai.arc.nasa.gov/impact/news_detail.cfm?ID=152 Hyperbole in Reports on NEOs and Impacts - Oct. 2004]
* [http://www.impact-structures.com The Sirente craters (Italy): On the possible origin of geomagnetic anomalies (Ormö et al. 2007)]

Official Sites

* [http://www.unb.ca/passc/ImpactDatabase/index.html Earth Impact Database]