Was there a Tunguska-type impact over the Pacific basin around the year 1178 AD?
Prof. Emilio Spedicato
Italy
Summary: As related by astronomers Clube and Napier in their monograph "The Cosmic Winter" in the year 1178 AD four wise men of Cantabury were sitting outside on a clear and calm June 18th night,, a half Moon standing placidly in the starry skay. Suddenly they noticed a flame jutting out of a horn of the Moon. Then they saw the Moon tremble and its colour change slowly from light brilliant to a darker reddish tone. Such a colour remained for all the time the Moon was visible during that phase. This story is found in a manuscript version of Cantaburry annals, attributed to the cleric Gervase, that was shown to Clube by a medieval English history specialist.
When the hidden face of the Moon was first photographed by a lunar mission, a large and apparently very recently produced crater was visible near the lunar north polar region. It was named the 'Giordano Bruno' crater. Its recent origin is shown by the absence of secondary superimposed craters. The crater is considered to have been produced by a cometary or meteoritic impact with a body of 2-3 kilometers size, implying an energy in the range of hundred of million of megatons. The year of the impact might well be 1178 AD, thereby explaining the observations recorded in the Canterbury annals, as first proposed to our knowledge by Hartung.
The following question naturally arises: was planet Earth, whose cross section is much larger than the Moon's (by a factor about 15), also subject to impacts around the year 1178? Preliminary to this question: was the earth crossing a stream around 1178? Then, if the earth was hit, where was the event or the events and which were the consequences?