At all times, people believed that the Earth has a satellite - the Moon. And only recently has there been evidence that the Moon is not the only natural satellite on our planet. In the myths of antiquity, it was possible to find information about a certain cosmic body falling to the Earth. Some researchers see in this event the solution to the mystery of the legendary Atlantis.
In the north of Argentina is the area of Campo del Cielo - "Heavenly Field". This name reminds of an ancient Indian legend, which tells how a mysterious fireball fell from the sky at this very place. Old chronicles claim that the Spanish conquistadors found a huge piece of iron on Campo del Cielo, which they used to make swords and spears.
In 1576, the Spaniard Erman Mexico de Miraval, among the marshy lowlands of Gran Chaco, five hundred miles north of Santa Fe, came across a large block of iron. After that, the enterprising Spaniard made four more visits to the block for iron and beat off small fragments from it for various needs. The fifth and last expedition to the iron boulder was organized by Don Rubin de Celis in 1783. He estimated the object's mass at approximately fifteen tons. A detailed description of this strange block has not survived, and no one else saw it, although attempts to find it were made several times, and until now the dream of finding a mysterious object excites the imagination of adventurers.
In 1803, a meteorite weighing about a ton was accidentally discovered in the vicinity of Campo del Cielo. Its largest fragment, weighing about 635 kilograms, was brought to Buenos Aires in 1813, and later it was acquired by the Englishman Sir Woodbine Darish and donated to the British Museum. This lump of cosmic iron still rests on a pedestal in front of the museum. Part of its surface has been specially polished so that you can see the structure of the metal with the so-called "Widmanstetten figures", indicating the extraterrestrial origin of the object. The rest of the meteorite fragments are lost.
Promotional video:
Meanwhile, in the vicinity of Campo del Cielo, meteorites and strange iron fragments weighing from several kilograms to many tons are still being found. The largest one weighed 33.4 tons. It was found in 1980 near the town of Gancedo. American meteorite researcher Robert Hug wanted to acquire this fragment in order to take it to the United States, but the Argentine authorities opposed this. Today this meteorite is considered the second largest among all meteorites found on Earth - after the so-called "Hoba meteorite", weighing about 60 tons.
The unusually large number of meteorites found in a relatively small area testifies to the fact that several thousand years ago a whole "meteor shower" fell over the Earth. Evidence of this, in addition to the finds of the iron bodies themselves, is the large number of craters in the Campo del Cielo area. "Meteorite field" has the shape of an ellipse, elongated 17 kilometers along and 6 kilometers across. The largest crater is Laguna Negra: it has a diameter of 115 meters and a depth of more than two meters.
In 1961, the American scientist from Columbia University W. Cassidy became interested in the legends and finds of Campo del Cielo. As a result of his research, a large number of small metallic meteorites, the so-called hexaderites, consisting of almost chemically pure iron, were discovered. At the same time, the scientist drew attention to a strange fact: usually when a large meteorite explodes in the atmosphere, its debris falls to the Earth, scattering into an ellipse with a maximum diameter of about 1600 meters. And on Campodel Cielo the length of the diameter is 17 kilometers!
The published preliminary findings of Cassidy's research caused a stir. Hundreds of volunteers immediately came to him. As a result of their searches, new fragments of meteorite iron were found even at a distance of 75 kilometers from the "Heavenly Field"!
The final conclusion reached by the Cassidy expedition was as follows: a huge meteorite fell to Earth not from circumsolar orbit. Before the fall, this celestial body revolved in an elliptical near-earth orbit, gradually approaching the Earth. That is, for a long time this body was the second natural satellite of the Earth!
According to this hypothesis, "Luna-2" gradually approached the Earth under the influence of gravity until it crossed the so-called "Roche border" and fell apart. These fragments spent some time orbiting in near-earth orbit, and then entered the atmosphere and in turn began to fall to the surface of the Earth. Through the efforts of Cassidy, the hexaderites were found even at a distance of about a thousand kilometers west of Campo del Cielo, in Chile.
When did this cosmic catastrophe occur? A charred tree stump found in its place - the result of a giant fire caused by a meteorite bombardment - is about 5800 years old.
… Even some six or seven thousand years ago, two Moons could be seen in the night sky above the Earth. And then … Then, probably, the same catastrophe happened, about which the legends and myths of many peoples of the world tell: “The stars fell from heaven, crossing the firmament with a fiery train, the earth rumbled, trembled and cracked, shaken by jolts. The world was crumbling. The consequences of this catastrophe were the displacement of the earth's axis by 30 degrees, tectonic shifts and, possibly, the flooding of large areas of land. And maybe it is on the plain of Campo del Cielo that the mystery of Atlantis is hidden?