June 18, 1178: English Monks Observe Lunar Explosion

Saw this in Wired's headlines and found it really interesting. I wonder what could explain this?

1178: Just after sunset, according to the English monk and chronicler Gervase of Canterbury, five monks watch the moon explode into flames.

Gervase said the observers were looking at a new crescent moon when the upper part "suddenly split in two. From the midpoint of this division a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out … fire, hot coals and sparks…. The body of the moon, which was below, writhed … throbbed like a wounded snake."

Source: www.wired.com...

Hard to understand what might be going on, but if it were some sort of massive explosion as they claim, wouldn't a shock wave have struck the Earth and caused massive casulaties and injuries?

The part about it writhing like a snake - hard to say. I know that waves of heat can distort the view of something, much like heat radiating from a highway on a hot day distorts the view of whatever is just above it. I wonder if waves of heat interacting with Earth's atmosphere could have distored their view of the moon.

Originally posted by sos37
Saw this in Wired's headlines and found it really interesting. I wonder what could explain this?

1178: Just after sunset, according to the English monk and chronicler Gervase of Canterbury, five monks watch the moon explode into flames.

Gervase said the observers were looking at a new crescent moon when the upper part "suddenly split in two. From the midpoint of this division a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out … fire, hot coals and sparks…. The body of the moon, which was below, writhed … throbbed like a wounded snake."

Source: www.wired.com...

Very interesting ... two comments:

1) I wonder if it was indeed the moon they were observing

2) Amateur and professional astronomers during the 19th century, based in the UK especially, regularly reported strange things occurring on and around the moon. Many of these were reported in the newspapers of the day. (I'm currently in the process of rounding up examples - which is proving not easy). These strange things included: strange moving lights; clouds; patches of vegetation; moving objects on the moon's surface etc. (I know, you are gonna ask why they are not being seen during the 20th century - and I have no answers)

peace

Duncan

The splitting of the moon (Arabic: شق القمر) is a miracle ascribed to Muhammad in Islamic tradition.[2] The incident is mentioned in many early Muslim traditions as the context of revelation (asbāb an-nuzūl) for the Qur'anic verse 54:1-2 and virtually all Muslim commentators accept the historicity of the miracle.
en.wikipedia.org...

Hmm strange that. I'm not sure when this was supposed to happen in Islamic tradition though...

Here is another source (BBC, 2001) with a short compendium of different theories:

BBC

Very interesting story.

Any new interpretations by ATS members?

The story seems to be perfectly legitimate.

How about the Moon as an artificial structure that has a hinge like aperture taking one inside the sphere, and something malfunctioned causing the opening to explode in fire.

"The moon is a hollow spacecraft, an ark."

Maybe they were seeing an alien spacecraft taking off, or the lights of some battle involving infernal extraterrestrial super-weapons.

Or maybe they'd just drunk a bit too much sacramental wine.

By the way, shock waves don't travel in a vacuum.

Maybe they say a large metero or comet strike the moon. It's possilbe that any debris from the impact hit later, and on another side of the earth. maybe even somewhere remote where it wasn't noted, or somewhere the people didn't keep track of it except orally.