Largest asteroid impact zone

March 23, 2015 18:39
Largest asteroid impact zone

Scientists have discovered a 400 km-wide impact zone from a huge meteorite in central Australia. A team led by Dr Andrew Glikson from the Australian National University (ANU) found a 400 kilometre-wide impact zone from a huge meteorite that broke in two, moments before it slammed into the Earth in central Australia. Glikson from the ANU School of Archaeology and Anthropology, said the impact zone was discovered during drilling as part of geothermal research, in an area near the borders of South Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory.

"The two asteroids must each have been over 10 kilometres across - it would have been curtains for many life species on the planet at the time," said Glikson. "Large impacts like these may have had a far more significant role in the Earth's evolution”. “It's a mystery; we can't find an extinction event that matches these collisions. I have a suspicion the impact could be older than 300 million years," he said. "There are two huge deep domes in the crust, formed by the Earth's crust rebounding after the huge impacts, and bringing up rock from the mantle below," Glikson said.

Magnetic modelling of the deep crust in the area traced out bulges hidden deep in the Earth, rich in iron and magnesium, corresponding to the composition of the Earth mantle.

By Premji

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Tagged Under :
Asteroid  meteorite  Australia