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Odd Impact Crater found in the North Sea

Posted by michael on from the cosmic-billiards dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Just noticed this on MSNBC. It seems they discovered an impact crater in the North Sea that doesn't look like anything else seen on Earth. Supposedly it looks like something usually seen on moons of Jupiter."

2 of 27 comments (clear)

  1. No, that's the hard way... by eyepeepackets · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...to catch space rocks. If you let them hit the water, they splash all over everything and heat up the air. Better to catch them _before_ they enter the atmosphere.

    See, if the dinosaurs had been smarter, they wouldn't be extinct. Q.E.D.

    --
    Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
  2. What *is* odd about this is... by Randym · · Score: 4, Informative
    ...the concentric circles. Most asteroids, because of their angle of impact, leave an elliptical footprint, with a bit of a "splash" [ejecta], sometimes forming a hill or mountain beyond the impact point. Concentric circles seem to indicate a "straight-in" impact, which leads to the idea that the object was going pretty darned fast (not slowed down much by atmosphere) *and* at just the right angle to compensate for the rotational speed of the Earth.

    Concentric circles would be more common on worlds with little atmosphere to slow the object. Since we know that Earth at that time had a (relatively) thick atmosphere, it just makes the puzzle all the more interesting. What would be interesting to find out is the metal composition at the center of the impact site -- that could tell us a great deal about what hit. Probably iron, but it *could* be something as heavy as uranium.

    --
    DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.