The Poet as Seismologist: Dante's Hidden Physics A new study is reimagining Dante Alighieri's Inferno as a precursor to modern impact physics, challenging long held interpretations of the 14th century poet's work.
Timothy Burbery's analysis suggests that Dante may have been envisioning a catastrophic asteroid impact centuries before scientists understood meteoritics.
Dante's descriptions of Satan's fall are compared to modern theories of asteroid impacts and crater formation.