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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 nineties, the peculiar appearance of the ridge drew the attention of the Swedish geologist Jens Ormö: an impact crater specialist with a PhD from the 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 (IRSPS): Angelo Pio Rossi and Goro Komatsu.

Meteorite impact
These researchers had previously found seventeen smaller craters around the lake, distributed over an area of about one square kilometer. The Sirente Crater Group proposed a meteoric origin for this structure and radiocarbon analysis set the age of the main crater to the 4th or 5th Century CE. At that time the Sirente area was inhabited by a little-known Roman tribe named Superaequum. Using this date, Dr. Roberto Santilli started an independent survey on the possible historical and archaeological evidence for a meteorite impact. In 2001 Dr. Ormö invited Dr. Santilli to collaborate in a manuscript analysing and reviewing a local legend possibly related to the impact.

Further archaeological indications for a possible meteorite impact in this highly civilized area during the 4th and 5th Centuries have been presented in 2006.

In 2006 the Sirente Crater Group discovered eleven new craters. In the meantime, some geologists had started hypothesizing different causes in order to explain the nature of the Sirente structure.

The following geological theories that have been officially proposed so far.

Anthropogenic hypothesis
An anthropogenic hypothesis was presented in 2004 by a group of geologists lead by the Italian Fabrizio Speranza working in the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia. The authors criticize the conclusions of the Sirente Crater Group and suggest that the crater was excavated by man in order to collect natural water for the livestock. According to them, the effort of the excavation is historically linked to the custom of the 'Transumanza': the seasonal migration of hundreds of sheep from the south of Italy to the fresh pastures of the Apennines. It has been pointed out that this conclusion contrasts with any official historical data about the locations of Transumanza routes and pastures.

Mud volcano
A recent hypothesis toward the Sirente crater was proposed in 2005 by Prof. F. Stoppa from the 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.

Forthcomings
More recently, an international committee of scientists spontaneously set up in order to provide an independent evaluation on the nature of the Sirente crater. This news is given by 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."

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

Santa Maria della Consolazione
''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.'' The last scene is dipicted in a fresco from XIV century standing on the central arch of the Church! (source: Santilli et. ali, cit).

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''. (source: Eusebius, Life of the Emperor Constantine).

An impact of the Sirente size can be seen at big distance as a strip of fire turning into a fireball and then generating a pyrotechnic show. There may be a proximity in space and time between the proposed Sirente impact and the vision that the emperor Constantine had before the famous Battle of Milvian Bridge. A possibile coincidence between these two events has been widely discussed in the popular press.

News

 * 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

Official Sites

 * Earth Impact Database

Category:craters