A supernova event many lightyears away in A.D. 1054 was depicted on a Byzantine coin due to the cosmic phenomena. The cosmic blast was so powerful that it could be seen in the skies during that anno domini year. An intense light shone in the heavens for 23 days and hundreds of nights.
Supernova Explosion Seen in the Byzantine World
The ancient world witnessed the nova explosion known as SN 1054; Chinese astronomers dubbed it the guest star. It was so noticeable in Japan, Iraq, and even America that it was written down and carved into stone, reported Live Science.
Unlike in other parts of Europe, where the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX and the Christian church ruled, except for Byzantium, which has no written record of the astronomical event, strangely, there is no mention of it.
Science arose when the church ignored the stellar event or dumbed it down. However, researchers could have discovered clues in unexpected places, such as a limited-edition gold coin, noted Scribe Story.
In research published in the August 2022 issue of the European Journal of Science and Theology, a research team analyzed a collection of four Byzantine gold coins minted from A.D. 1042 to 1055.
Three of the coins had only one star visible, but the fourth coin was quite different. It captures two bright stars defining an image of the emperor's head; this may be a subtle and potentially heretical portrayal of the 1054 supernova event in the Byzantine coin minted then.
According to the image, the head is the sun, and another circle is Venus (morning star), but SN 1054 is a western star. People could see the nova explosion for nearly a month, even in daylight close to Venus.
Another theory is that the two stars represent the Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic churches. After the turmoil of the Great Schism in 1054, they would split in July, anno domini.
Should the assumption be correct; the rare coin has SN 1054 on it. But scholars in Byzantine were prevented from studying or writing about it because it was against the church.
If the assumption is correct, the rare coin bears the SN 1054. However, scholars in Byzantine times were forbidden from studying or writing about it because it was considered heresy by the church.
Stellar Event Viewed as Against the Church
With the turmoil of disunity at the time, church authorities considered it sensible to overlook the supernova. Even so, one intelligent scholar may have found a way to sidestep censorship.
The authors added that acknowledging the event in the skies was forbidden because it challenged the dogma at the time.
A clever astronomer at the University of Constantinople documented an event using a cipher; a simple coin that year would have gone unnoticed. There were 36 copies of the coin from several collections; studies to check the hypothesis.
Cleverly the western star had no uniform size and got smaller on each coin to show SN 1054 dimming. All hypotheses were tested, but nothing was proven, and there was no actual proof to back up the assumptions. But the SN 1054 is still in the Crab Nebula, seen till now, and no restrictions, citing Head Topics.
A supernova event that the church and political authorities suppressed was depicted in an ancient Byzantine coin that revealed what happened from A.D. 1042 to 1055.
