![]() People look over an outcropping of a copper and nickel deposits 2750 feet below the surface at the Podolsky Mine, owned by the FNX Mining Company Inc., in the Sudbury Basin, in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, June 10, 2008. Similar to the meteor that killed off the dinosaurs, scientists theorize that the Manicouagan impact site and others of the late Triassic period may have triggered a mass extinction event that wiped out 60 percent of species at the time. (The rock took as long as 5,000 years to fully cool.) Scientists believe the fireball created by the impact may have expanded as far as present-day New York City, almost 800 miles away, and debris from the impact has been identified in the United Kingdom. Roughly 212 million years ago, a meteor measuring more than three miles in diameter smashed into the earth, liquifying the crust as deep as 5.5 miles below the surface. That’s because the Manicouagan Crater is not only very big but its outer ring is filled with water and serves as a hydroelectric reservoir.Ī crater this big required an epic impact event. Known as “The Eye of Quebec,” the Manicouagan Crater is the fifth largest impact crater in the world and the only one that’s clearly visible from space. Location: Lake Manicouagan, Quebec, Canadaĭate of Impact: About 212 million years ago Satellite image of Manicouagan Reservoir, also known as Lake Manicouagan, an annular lake in northern Quebec, Canada, the remnant of an impact crater made millions of years ago. The debris includes rock embedded with microscopic diamonds formed in mere seconds under the intense pressure of the impact. In the 1960s, NASA astronauts trained at the crater in preparation for the Apollo moon missions. The crater was found by white settlers in the 19th century and was first identified as a meteor impact site by mining engineer Daniel Barringer in 1903, who noted the concentric pattern of the debris field stretching for miles in all directions. The rock, measuring 100 feet across, was barely slowed by the Earth’s atmosphere and struck with an explosive force greater than 20 million tons of TNT. It was formed 50,000 years ago when a hunk of iron called the Canyon Diablo meteorite struck the earth at an estimated speed of 26,000 mph. ![]() deepĪ popular tourist destination, the bowl-shaped Barringer Crater or “Meteor Crater” in Arizona is one of the most recognizable impact craters in North America. Declared a World Heritage Site in 2005, it is promoted as a tourist attraction and a place for adventure-seekers, although some issues have arisen with the upkeep and management of the site.Crater Size: 4,000 ft. The crater gets its name from the dome-shaped feature that was created when the blast pushed the rock up and out. The Vredefort Dome is one of Earth's largest and oldest astroblemes (the scar or deformation left by an ancient, high-impact meteorite strike). To this day, it is thought to be the single greatest release of energy our planet has ever seen. While algae was likely the only life existing on the planet before the impact, the event caused immense evolutionary and geological changes. The impact of the meteorite was almost twice as big as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. ![]() Over 2 billion years ago, a meteorite six miles in diameter and moving at the rate of 12.5 miles per second struck Earth about 75 miles southwest from present-day Johannesburg, South Africa. ( Image courtesy of Flickr user Abri le Roux) Today, the crater is still owned by the Barringer family, who say it is the “the world’s best-preserved meteorite impact site.” Located near Winslow and right off of Interstate-40, the complex has a museum, movie theater and its own gift shop. Merrill championed his theory was it accepted it by geologists worldwide. Soon, the crater was renamed in Barringer's honor. The high levels of iron and the position of the rock strata provided evidence that a high-velocity asteroid was indeed the cause of the crater, but only after geologist George P. Barringer’s claim was based on his theory that a meteorite full of iron ore had caused the massive indention in the desert until Barringer, it was widely believed that an explosion of steam made the crater. staked a claim to what was then called Canyon Diablo Crater. The fireball hit the Earth so hard, most of the meteorite vaporized upon impact.Ībout 50,000 years later, in 1902, mining mogul Daniel Barringer Jr. Right around the dawn of the human species, a massive, rocky fireball broke through the Earth’s atmosphere and crash-landed into what is now northern Arizona, igniting an explosion with the force of 2.5 million pounds of dynamite.
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