Dante’s Divine Comedy is an epic of spirituality, religious faith, and wild imagination.
Now, a bizarre study claims that one of its most famous poems, Inferno, hides some surprising scientific revelations.
According to Dr Timothy Burbery of Marshall University, Dante’s description of hell actually predicts the effects of a devastating asteroid strike.
Dr Burbery argues that this 14th–century poem modelled a planetary impact, 500 years before meteors were first scientifically described.
In Dante’s description of the afterlife, hell is a nine–tiered pit descending into the Earth, with each layer representing a specific sin and punishment.
The poem describes how this cone formed when Satan, the fallen angel, tumbled from heaven to Earth and crashed through the ground.
Dr Burbery says that Dante intuitively saw Satan as a ‘high–velocity impactor’ hitting the Southern Hemisphere and understood what effects that would cause.
He told the Daily Mail: ‘Other sources such as the Bible mention Satan’s fall, but Dante was the first to think through the geological implications of his fall.’
Dante’s Inferno is an epic description of the nine circles of hell, but experts now say that it could also contain scientific insights about a massive asteroid strike. Pictured: An illustration from a 1480s manuscript of The Divine Comedy
The nine circles of hell are remarkably similar to the terraced ridges of large meteor strikes seen on Mars, such as this impact crater on the Arcadia Planitia
The Divine Comedy, written between 1308 and 1321, is widely seen as one of the most important pieces of literature in the Italian language.
Its three parts describe the poet’s journey through the afterlife, guided by the Roman author Virgil, as they travel to Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory.
In the section on hell, known as Inferno, readers are given an enormously detailed description of the physical organisation and layout of the nine layers of hell.
According to Dante, hell was formed by the enormous force of Satan’s fall from heaven into the Earth’s Southern Hemisphere.
This impact drove the devil into the very core of Earth, bore out the cone–shaped crater of hell behind him, and displaced the northern continents upwards with the mountain of Purgatory as a central peak.
While this is usually seen as a fascinating insight into the medieval spiritual worldview, Dr Burbery claims that Dante was also trying to say something about the mundane world.
According to Dr Burbery, we should see Inferno as a sort of ‘thought experiment’ in which Dante considers what would really happen if a heavy mass collided with Earth.
He suggests treating the Prince of Darkness as an ‘oblong, asteroid–sized body’, similar to the 3,000–feet–long (1,000 metres) interstellar object ‘Oumuamua.
Dante Alighieri (artist’s impression) is seen as one of the founding figures of Italian literature, but his vision of hell may also reflect an intuitive scientific knowledge
Although Dante couldn’t have known it at the time, his description of Inferno is remarkably similar to the Chicxulub crater in Mexico, left by the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs
If this were to hit Earth, the resulting collision would be a devastating event similar to the impact which wiped out the terrestrial dinosaurs in the Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction.
Dr Burbery says: ‘Satan’s fall is also akin to the planet Theia, which crashed into the Earth and created our moon.
‘Just as Satan’s body is wedged into the earth’s core, continent–sized chunks of Theia are still near the earth’s core.’
Although there was no way for Dante to have foreseen this in the 14th Century, scientists now know that the impact really would create a crater like Inferno.
The Chicxulub crater off the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, left behind by the dinosaur–killing asteroid, spans 124 miles (200 km) and originally extended more than 18 miles (30 km) beneath the surface.
Even more surprisingly, Dante actually had some extremely accurate insights into what shape this crater would form.
Just like the nine circles of hell, large asteroid impacts really do create craters with a tiered or ‘terraced’ structure.
When an asteroid collides with a layered surface, it can leave behind large, flat terraces stepping down towards a central impact point.
Experts say that Dante’s idea that Satan crashed into Earth and became embedded in the core reflects the theory that a protoplanet named Theia collided with the planet and left traces in the mantle (illustrated)
Astronomers have spotted these structures all throughout the solar system, on the moon, Mars, and even Venus.
Dr Burbery says that Dante ‘intuitively mapped the physics of terminal velocity and crustal breach’ long before anyone even knew about meteors.
In Dante’s period, the idea of an asteroid impact ran counter to the theory that heaven was perfect and well organised.
Shooting stars were regarded as an atmospheric phenomenon like lightning, and there was no concept connecting them to rocks falling from the sky.
Scientists wouldn’t connect shooting stars and meteor impacts until 1833, when astronomers realised that the unusually intense Leonid Meteor Shower was coming from space.
‘To be clear, Dante was not a scientist and did not see Satan as a literal asteroid,’ says Dr Burbery.
‘Dante held to the Aristotelian notion that asteroids and comets are local phenomena, yet he broke with Aristotle when he imagined that something could plummet from the heavens and create real geological effects on Earth.
‘Hence Satan’s fall is striking, and it anticipates the formation of meteoritics, the study of meteors.’
