© cngcoins.com/Filipovic et alCould one of the two stars near the Emperor's head show a 'forbidden' supernova that lit up the sky over Byzantium for more than a year?
In A.D. 1054, a nearby star ran out of fuel and blew up in a dazzling supernova explosion. Though located 6,500 light-years away, the blast was clearly visible in the skies over
Earth for 23 days and several hundred nights after.
The explosion, now known as
SN 1054, was so bright that Chinese astronomers dubbed it a "guest star," while skywatchers in Japan, Iraq and possibly the Americas recorded the explosion's sudden appearance in writing and in stone. But in Europe — which was largely ruled at the time by the
Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX and the Christian church — the big,
bedazzling explosion in the sky was never mentioned, not even once.Why not? Did the church simply ignore this spontaneous star, or was a more nefarious plot to cover up the reality of the cosmos at play? According to new research, a clue to the answer may hide in an unexpected place: a limited-edition
gold coin.
In a study published in the August 2022 issue of the
European Journal of Science and Theology, a team of researchers analyzed a series of four Byzantine gold coins minted during the reign of Constantine IX, from A.D. 1042 to 1055. While three of the coins showed only one star, the authors suggest that the fourth coin — which shows two bright stars framing an image of the emperor's head — may be a subtle, and possibly heretical depiction of the supernova of 1054.
Comment: There's no reason to think anything is different in Ukraine today.