L’isola vivente

On 6 June 2002, at 04:28, an object from space, classified as a meteorite, was recorded by Earth observers. The object passed through the Earth’s atmosphere, flew over the eastern Mediterranean in an area between Crete and Libya, and sank into the sea at coordinates 34° north latitude and 21° east longitude, at a depth of over 2,569 metres, releasing energy equal to 26 kilotons. The cosmological event, which was entirely natural, as on average ten such events occur each year in the Earth’s atmosphere, was forgotten after initial media interest due to its proximity to an area of intense political turmoil. For some time, only scientific records remained in the appropriate archives of astronomical events, as documentation in the annals of cosmological observations. At that time, no one could have imagined that this was not a normal meteorite but a spacecraft that had travelled for millions, perhaps billions, of years to reach Earth with a specific purpose.