About the Sirente lake: the first italian impact crater?
About one year ago, TS announced an important scientific hypothesis: a small circular lake in the Prati del Sirente plain, in the heart of the Abruzzo mountains, was proposed to be the first impact crater ever discovered in Italy. In an interesting article (see TS issue n.18, "The discovery of the Sirente crater field"), Jens Ormö, Angelo Pio Rossi, and Goro Komatsu described the years of research that followed the discovery and the scientific proofs they found. This year, a second article by a different group of researchers appeared on Meteoritics & Planetary Science, announcing that the lake should not be the result of a meteoritic impact. TS asked to the authors of this new research to explain how they came to this new conclusion.
One thing is for sure: we will keep on hearing about the Sirente lake.
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An anthropogenic origin for the Sirente crater
by Fabio Speranza - Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia
In our paper ["An anthropogenic origin of the 'Sirente crater', Abruzzi, Italy", by F. Speranza, L. Sagnotti and P. Rochette] published on Meteoritics & Planetary Science, we report the results and the conclusion of a specific study on the morphological and geological characters of the Sirente plain (...). We conclude that the lake from the Sirente plain is not the result of a meteoritic impact, but rather is the well preserved relict of an efficient hydraulic work created by man, taking advantage of a natural setting favourable to the accumulation and retain of water...read the full article.
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