Who blew up the Moon?
And one such story took place on June 18, 1178. A group of monks from Canterbury, Southeast England, watched as the moon "suddenly exploded" and turned into "sparks," taking on a "blackish appearance. You have to agree, it sounds bizarre and weird.
The description of this event goes like this:
"...On the Sunday before the feast of St. John the Baptist, after sunset, when we first saw her light after the new moon, five or more men, sitting face to face, observed a wonderful sign. Now there was a clear new moon. And, as usually happens in this phase, her horns were stretching toward the east. And friend, suddenly, the upper horn split in two. A burning torch erupted from its middle, throwing flames and embers and sparks far away. Luna's body, which was lower, curved. And, according to those who said they saw it with their own eyes, the moon trembled like a Serpent that had been struck. After that, everything returned to its original state...".
So what did the monks observe in 1178? Did the moon really explode?
According to some modern scholars, people did not actually witness the Moon explode. They simply observed the powerful impact of some large body that crashed into the surface of our only satellite. This impact created the crater that we know today as Giordano Bruno's crater.
In the right place at the right time
However, there are people who disagree with this hypothesis. They believe that an impact of such force would have sent a lot of debris toward Earth. Which would lead to many more witnesses to this strange phenomenon.
Indeed, studies have shown that within a week of such an impact, at least 10 million tons of ejected lunar rock must have entered the Earth's atmosphere.
According to a report released by NASA on the matter, such an impact would cause a week-long meteor storm on Earth. Yet there is no mention of such a storm in any known historical sources. Including European, Chinese, Arabic, Japanese and Korean astronomical archives.
So what was it then? A collective hallucination? Or a deliberate fake? One is left to speculate. But, according to many researchers, in principle the phenomenon can be quite explained. Most likely the monks saw an explosion in the atmosphere of a powerful meteor. From where the monks were (and only from there) the event looked as if someone had blown up the moon. While people elsewhere observed such a phenomenon as a bright shooting star.
The Canterbury monks were probably just in the right place at the right time. And they saw a meteor explode right in front of the moon. This explains why only five people saw the phenomenon.
Or maybe it was, in fact, an alien fusion reactor that exploded.
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