inside Canyon Diablo meteor impact crater
My only 'been there, done that' photo of Barringer Crater (Meteor Crater) in Arizona, many moons ago. I recently saw a 60 kg piece of the impactor in a Canadian museum, image now posted.
There are many Meteor Crater images in the Earth Science Teaching Resource group here on flickr, here's a link to E=mcSCOW, Mark Betts' "pristine" image for starters
www.flickr.com/photos/19387539@N00/12972330303/
The Meteor Crater story is that ~49,000 years ago, an atmosphere-crushed, partially-vaporized chunk of iron-nickel (about half a football field in size) augured this hole and only left behind about 30 tons of itself.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_crater
Looking into Meteor Crater makes for dramatic visualization for the energy levels of high velocity rocks from space. An impact crater event of this size happening today would make humanity sit up and take notice, but it would have neither the scale nor force to physically change the world.
General knowledge and the physics of impact craters have come a long way. Here is a link to a program that calculates the effects from asteroid impacts.
impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/
Canyon Diablo stats = 50 metre wide iron bolide travelling at 12.8 kps suddenly stopped by sedimentary rock.
Meteor Crater's measured diameter is 1.2 km (0.74 miles) across if you want to try out the program.
The dinosaur killer Chicxulub impact crater lays hidden beneath sedimentary rocks in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The asteroid that slammed into Earth 65.4 million years ago was ~10 km (!!) wide. The 180 km (110 mile) wide complex crater in Mexico is -not- visible so here is a link to my pix of its K-T boundary clay layer in Alberta_
inside Canyon Diablo meteor impact crater
My only 'been there, done that' photo of Barringer Crater (Meteor Crater) in Arizona, many moons ago. I recently saw a 60 kg piece of the impactor in a Canadian museum, image now posted.
There are many Meteor Crater images in the Earth Science Teaching Resource group here on flickr, here's a link to E=mcSCOW, Mark Betts' "pristine" image for starters
www.flickr.com/photos/19387539@N00/12972330303/
The Meteor Crater story is that ~49,000 years ago, an atmosphere-crushed, partially-vaporized chunk of iron-nickel (about half a football field in size) augured this hole and only left behind about 30 tons of itself.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_crater
Looking into Meteor Crater makes for dramatic visualization for the energy levels of high velocity rocks from space. An impact crater event of this size happening today would make humanity sit up and take notice, but it would have neither the scale nor force to physically change the world.
General knowledge and the physics of impact craters have come a long way. Here is a link to a program that calculates the effects from asteroid impacts.
impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/
Canyon Diablo stats = 50 metre wide iron bolide travelling at 12.8 kps suddenly stopped by sedimentary rock.
Meteor Crater's measured diameter is 1.2 km (0.74 miles) across if you want to try out the program.
The dinosaur killer Chicxulub impact crater lays hidden beneath sedimentary rocks in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The asteroid that slammed into Earth 65.4 million years ago was ~10 km (!!) wide. The 180 km (110 mile) wide complex crater in Mexico is -not- visible so here is a link to my pix of its K-T boundary clay layer in Alberta_