Below is an image of the Barringer Metorite Crater, located in Arizona, North America. The crater is

Below is an image of the Barringer Metorite Crater, located in Arizona, North America. The crater is 1.2km in diameter, 170m deep, and is surrounded by a crater rim that extends 45m about the elevation of the surrounding area. The impact occurred 50k years ago, during the Pleistocene. It is believed that the meteorite responsible was a nickel-iron type (for information about types of meteorites see http://www.novaspace.com/METEOR/Types.html), that was roughly 50m across, and weighed 300,000 tons. It has been estimated that the object was travelling at 12km a SECOND when it impacted! The explosion that followed was roughly the same force as 2.5 million tons of TNT or 150 Hiroshima bombs. Upon impact most of the meteorite was pulverised, and was spread out over the surrounding area in a fine dust of molten metal. Millions of tons of “native” sandstone and limestone were ejected from the site on impact and were spread approximately 1.6km in each direction. The impact occurred when North America was in the grips of an ice age, and a lake formed in the bottom of the impact site; as the ice age ended and the climate changed, the area turned to desert. Without this change though, the crater would not have been preserved as well as it has been. The origin of the crater was hotly debated for many years, with theories ranging from a natural land form, to a volcanic steam ejection. In 1902 and 1909 Daniel Moreau Barringer, a mining engineer, collected evidence to prove that the site was an impact crater, and for the next 30 years he battled to get the USGS to accept his theory. He died in 1929, with his theory still unaccepted. It took until 1960 and analysis by Eugene Shoemaker, to prove that the site was indeed caused by an impact. The final proof came with the finding of Coesite, a silicate mineral only formed under intense heat and pressure (greater than anything that naturally occurs on Earth). In 1963 this work was published, and the matter finally solved. -LL For more information head to the following links;http://www.barringercrater.com/http://www.meteorcrater.com/http://www.meteorite.com/meteor_crater/ -- source link

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