Sirente crater

The Sirente crater is a small shallow seasonal lake in Abruzzo, central Italy. The lake is located at the center of the Prati del Sirente, a mountainous highland north of the Sirente massif in the Apennines, 13 kilometres from the small village of Secinaro. In the late 1990s, the peculiar appearance of the ridge drew the attention of geologist Jens Ormö, a Swedish impact crater specialist. Ormö set up a research team (the Sirente Crater Group) together with two colleagues from the International Research School of Planetary Science of Pescara (IRSPS), Angelo Pio Rossi and Goro Komatsu. The lake was suggested to be just part of a larger crater field comprising about 30 individual depressions in the Sirente area. However, the "crater field" has recently been proposed to be the result of human activity.

Formation hypotheses

Many potential origins of the Sirente depressions have been suggested: impact crater, anthropogenic basin and mud volcano.

Meteorite impact

The Sirente Crater Group proposed a meteoric origin for this structure in the late 1990s and they went on updating their result for nearly a decade.

Mud volcano

In 2005, Francesco Stoppa of the Gabriele d'Annunzio University proposed as a responsible agent for the basin a rapid local emission of mud and/or water.

World War II bombing

Metallic fragments in great quantities have been sampled in the Sirente crater area. They proved to be fragments of exploded ordnance, such as bombs and grenades. Consequently WW II bombing was suggested as the craters origin.

Anthropogenic hypothesis

In 2004 a group of geologists led by Fabio Speranza working in the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia hypothesized that the lake basin was excavated by humans in order to collect natural water for livestock. This "shepherdogenic" hypothesis was proposed considering the lack of any evidence for impact shock in the area. The nature of the depressions are now believed by Speranza et ali to be karstic or be the result of human activity combined with the action of natural karstic processes.

Archaeology, Legends & History

Radiocarbon fixed the formation of the main crater within the late 4-th and the early 5-th century AD. At the age in question the Sirente territory was still controlled by the Roman municipium of Superaequum. In the fourth century AD a local Roman village (vicus) belonging to this municipium was suddenly abandoned, probably in consequence of a fire. A local Christian catacomb dating back to the same century reveals many cadavers that were probably piled-up in a hurried manner on occasion of some public calamity.

An impact generating a crater of the Sirente size would have been visible from a great distance as a strip of fire turning into a fireball, culminating in a pyrotechnic show of bolides. A similar eyewitness description is contained in a local Italian story toward the religious conversion from Paganism to Christianity. This oral legend was proposed as a possible historical recording of the impact event..

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.

An interesting proximity in time and space between the Sirente impact and the famous vision of the emperor Constantine I was formerly noted by Jens Ormö, as Constantine camped nearby before the battle of the Milvian Bridge. Though a coincidence between the two events can't be confirmed, media widely speculated the hypothesis the Sirente impact might have been witnessed and mistaken for a divine vision by the emperor.

The conversion of 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

External links

• Crater find backs falling star legend
• Space impact 'saved Christianity'
• It Came from Outer Space?
• The day the sky fell in
• Hyperbole in Reports on NEOs and Impacts - Oct. 2004
• The Sirente craters (Italy): On the possible origin of geomagnetic anomalies (Ormö et al. 2007)
• Crater impostor unmasked as sheep-dip
• Unravelling the Geometry of a Holocene Continental Basin by Geoelectric Profiles and High-Resolution Magnetic Survey: Evidence from the “Sirente Crater Field” (Italy)