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Giant Impact Crater Found In Australia
An anonymous reader writes "One of the largest meteorite impacts in the world has been discovered in the South Australian outback by geothermal researchers. It may explain one of the many extinction events in the past 600 million years, and may contain rare and exotic minerals. The crater is said to have been 'produced by an asteroid six to 12 km across' — which is really big!"
Uh... where was it hiding?
Okay so they give widely varying estimates of the crater's size - assuming the centre value of 120 Km a +/- 60 Km ia one hell of a margin of error. I imagine that the energy released from such an impact is orders of magnitude greater than any nuke we could ever throw at each other. The article metions the release of CO2, but i thought that by definition asteroids were just lumps of rock. So where does the CO2 come from after the impact?
TFA doesn't mention a location. There is a roughly circular sort of feature in about the right place and about the right size centred here:
http://maps.google.com.au/?ie=UTF8&ll=-28.614665,141.139984&spn=0.806518,1.234589&t=h&z=10
You can see it better if you zoom out a couple of steps. It's not very well defined, and may just be wishful thinking on my part!
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In case someone has some spare time to look for the crater on Google Maps: map link Cooper Basin
Seriously, a 80-160 km crater is not giant. Big, okay, they don't form every day, but there are much bigger craters than that. Like Menrva on Titan.
The Gish Bar Times - Blog covering Jupiter's moon Io
This makes you wonder how many possible asteroid impacts happened in the Ocean.
"You call that a meteorite? THIS is a meteorite!"
Monstar L
she was so fat, when she sat on Australia the entire world went extinct.
This must be where The Lost City of Pnakotus was located!
--
"I have also mastered pomposity, even if I do say so myself." -Kryten
'produced by an asteroid six to 12 km across' — which is really big!"
Well, thank you for telling me! If it hadn't been for this, I would've thought that this is quite tiny instead.
Are they sure the crater is that old? I just read something about a problem with nuclear warheads.
Kind of like at the Indy 500: "Hey, show us your crater!"
Well this explains why Adelaide is a giant hole devoid of life.
There's an article on the University of Queensland's web site (where the researchers hail from).
The land surface that the asteroid hit is now buried under layers of sedimentary rock and Dr Uysal thinks the original crater most likely eroded away.
"Dr Uysal and Dr Glikson will present their findings at the Australian Geothermal Energy Conference in Adelaide, 16-19 November 2010."
To read more about their research, see their conference paper (pdf). (This may not be specifically on the impact, but on their geothermal research, instead.)
In short, not the biggest, oldest, newest, or any other superlative. Still, given the estimated size of the impact, I'd expect it to have had a major impact on the Earth's weather for quite a while.
they're not even in the periodic table!
bundaegi is good for you
On TV you see lots of computer sims but none look realistic to me. Would there be a light covering the sky so bright you couldn't see it or would it traverse the atmosphere so quick it wouldn't have time to heat up and you really would see this huge space rock impact. And what would the explosion look like? WOuld it be a fireball initially or would you simply see billions of tons or rock being launched into orbit?
Maybe the impact crater is just the final resting place of Paul Hogan's acting career. Carbon dating would probably reveal around 2001.
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
And there may be a pony in there, too.
That is so not new news,,,,,,,
"One of the largest meteorite impacts in the world has been discovered in the South Australian outback by geothermal researchers."
Sounds to me like they only found Adelaide.
Chicxulub crater from the eastern tip of Mexico is totally infuriated and angry by this news.
Chicxulub states "I am the ORIGINAL extinction crater, and DON'T YOU FORGET IT!"
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Every time I see the map, it seems like if you follow the western perimeter of lake michigan around to the entry to the georgian bay and down the east side of lake huron, through London Ontario, and the southeast.... This is known to be a rock ridge, but it sure looks like a giant circle to me. They say its' from the glacier, but it sure looks round :-)
http://www.geodynamics.com.au/IRM/content/home.html
It is not smoke in the pictures ... it is steam. Steam in the deserts of South Australia, steam from hot rocks.
http://www.hotrockltd.com/irm/Content/about_hotfracturedrock.html
http://www.csiro.au/science/Geothermal-energy.html
Maybe in the near future there will no longer be nothing to see in the far north outback of South Australia.
http://www.geodynamics.com.au/datacentre/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdYMXGtXbEA
The equivalent of 50 billion barrels of oil, or twice the oil reserves of the USA.
Maybe it's where the beer atom was split?
croikey! that'd been won helluvah barbie!
Limestone is calcium carbonate, which releases tons of CO2 when burned.
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"Pump your brakes kid... That man is a national treasure!"
For what it's worth, these craters are probably not as uncommon as people think. I'm sitting inside one right now.
...if The Creation Museum has an exhibit on this yet?
> The impact would have been impressive, producing "catastrophic effects - including a fireball, major earthquakes,
> atmospheric clouding, CO2 release, tsunami effects, [and] the extinction of species"
Thank GOD the world's only six-thousand years old. Just imagine!.... :-P
Just like this one http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/10/26/1348257/Possible-Meteorite-Leaves-a-Crater-In-Latvia
Only 76 comments... this story must be not having much of... an impact!
YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Interesting.
Not going to ask, I have to call my ex while I am still laughing.
And feeling vaguely vindicated.
No brain, no pain.
Bah some people have no sense of humour :)
I hope it left an unknown element. We could call it Australium.