Many of us have heard about the Tunguska meteorite. At the same time, few people know about his brother, who fell to Earth in time immemorial. Chicxulub is a crater formed by a meteorite impact 65 million years ago. Its appearance on Earth led to serious consequences that affected the entire planet as a whole.

Where is the Chicxulub crater?

It is located in the northwestern region of the Yucatan Peninsula, as well as at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. With a diameter of 180 km, Chicxulub Crater claims to be the largest meteorite crater on Earth. Part of it is on land, and the second part is under the waters of the bay.

History of discovery

The discovery of the crater was accidental. Since it is enormous in size, no one even knew about its existence. Scientists discovered it quite by accident in 1978 during geophysical research in the Gulf of Mexico. The research expedition was organized by the Pemex company (full name Petroleum Mexican). She was faced with a difficult task - to find oil fields at the bottom of the bay. Geophysicists Glen Penfield and Antonio Camargo, during their research, initially discovered a stunningly symmetrical seventy-kilometer arc under water. Thanks to the gravity map, scientists found a continuation of this arc on the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico) near the village of Chicxulub.

The name of the village is translated from the Mayan language as “demon of ticks.” This name is associated with an unprecedented number of insects in this region since ancient times. It was the examination on the (gravitational) map that made it possible to make many assumptions.

Scientific substantiation of the hypothesis

When they come together, the found arcs form a circle with a diameter of 180 kilometers. One of the researchers named Penfield immediately suggested that this was an impact crater that appeared as a result of the fall of a meteorite.

His theory turned out to be correct, which was confirmed by some facts. Inside the crater was found. In addition, scientists discovered samples of “impact quartz”, which have a compressed molecular structure, as well as glassy tektites. Such substances can only form under extreme pressure and temperature. The fact that Chicskulub is a crater that has no equal on Earth was no longer in doubt, but irrefutable evidence was needed to confirm the assumptions. And they were found.

Hildebrant, a professor at the University of Calgary department, was able to scientifically confirm the hypothesis in 1980 thanks to a study of the chemical composition of the area’s rocks and detailed satellite imaging of the peninsula.

Consequences of a meteorite fall

It is believed that Chicxulub is a crater formed by the fall of a meteorite, the diameter of which is at least ten kilometers. Scientists' calculations show that the meteorite moved at a slight angle from the southeast. Its speed was 30 kilometers per second.

The fall of a huge cosmic body to Earth occurred approximately 65 million years ago. Scientists suggest that this event occurred just at the turn of the Paleogonian and Cretaceous periods. The consequences of the impact were catastrophic and had a huge impact on the further development of life on Earth. As a result of the collision of a meteorite with the earth's surface, the largest crater on Earth was formed.

According to scientists, the impact power was several million times greater than the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. As a result of the impact, the largest crater on Earth was formed, surrounded by a ridge whose height was several thousand meters. But soon the ridge collapsed due to earthquakes and other geological transformations provoked by a meteorite impact. According to scientists, a tsunami began from a powerful blow. Presumably the height of their waves was 50-100 meters. The waves hit the continents, destroying everything in their path.

Global cooling on the planet

The shock wave circled the entire Earth several times. Possessing a high temperature, it caused severe forest fires. Volcanism and other tectonic processes have intensified in different regions of the planet. Numerous volcanic eruptions and the burning of large forests led to the release of huge amounts of gases, dust, ash and soot into the atmosphere. It's hard to imagine, but the raised particles caused the process of volcanic winter. It lies in the fact that most of the solar energy is reflected by the atmosphere, resulting in global cooling.

Such climate changes, along with other severe consequences of the impact, had a detrimental effect on the living world of the planet. Plants did not have enough light for photosynthesis, which led to a decrease in oxygen in the atmosphere. The disappearance of a huge part of the Earth's plant cover led to the death of animals that lacked food. It was these events that led to the complete extinction of dinosaurs.

Extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary

The fall of a meteorite is currently considered the most convincing cause of the mass death of all living things. The version of the extinction of living beings took place even before the Chicxulub (crater) was discovered. And one could only guess about the reasons that caused the climate to cool.

Scientists have discovered high levels of iridium (a very rare element) in sediments that are approximately 65 million years old. An interesting fact is that high concentrations of the element were found not only in Yucatan, but also in other places on the planet. Therefore, experts say that, most likely, there was a meteor shower.

At the boundary of the Paleogene and Cretaceous, all dinosaurs and marine reptiles, which reigned for a long time in this period, became extinct. Completely all ecosystems were destroyed. In the absence of large dinosaurs, the evolution of birds and mammals accelerated, the species diversity of which increased significantly.

According to scientists, it can be assumed that other mass extinctions were triggered by the fall of large meteorites. Available calculations suggest that large cosmic bodies fall to Earth once every hundred million years. And this roughly corresponds to the periods of time between mass extinctions.

What happened after the meteorite fell?

What happened on Earth after the meteorite fell? According to paleontologist Daniel Durd (Colorado Research Institute), in a matter of minutes and hours, the lush and flourishing world of the planet turned into a devastated land. Thousands of kilometers from the place where the meteorite fell, everything was completely destroyed. The impact killed more than three-quarters of all living things and plants on Earth. It was the dinosaurs that suffered the most; they all became extinct.

For a long time, people did not even know about the existence of the crater. But after it was found, the need arose to study it, since scientists had accumulated many hypotheses that needed testing, questions and assumptions. If you look at the Yucatan Peninsula on a map, it is difficult to imagine the real size of the crater on the ground. Its northern part is located far from the coast and is covered with 600 meters of ocean sediments.

In 2016, scientists began drilling in the offshore area of ​​the crater to extract core samples. Analysis of the recovered samples will shed light on events that happened a long time ago.

Events that took place after the disaster

The impact of the asteroid vaporized a huge part of the earth's crust. Debris flew into the sky above the crash site, and fires and volcanic eruptions broke out on Earth. It was the soot and dust that blocked out the sunlight and plunged the planet into a very long period of winter darkness.

Over the following months, dust and debris fell onto the Earth's surface, covering the planet with a dense layer of asteroid dust. It is this layer that is evidence for paleontologists of a turning point in the history of the Earth.

In the area of ​​North America, before the meteorite struck, lush forests flourished with a dense undergrowth of ferns and flowers. The climate in those distant times was much warmer than today. There was no snow at the poles, and dinosaurs roamed not only in Alaska, but also in the Seymour Islands.

Scientists studied the consequences of a meteorite hitting the earth by analyzing the Cretaceous-Paleogene layer found in more than 300 places around the world. This gave reason to say that all living things died near the epicenter of events. The opposite part of the planet suffered from earthquakes, tsunamis, lack of light and other consequences of the disaster.

Those living beings that did not die immediately died from lack of water and food destroyed by acid rain. The death of vegetation led to the death of herbivores, from which carnivores also suffered, being left without food. All links in the chain were broken.

New assumptions of scientists

According to scientists who studied fossils, only the smallest creatures (like raccoons, for example) could survive on Earth. They were the ones who had a chance to survive in those conditions. Since they eat less, they reproduce faster and adapt more easily.

Fossils suggest that Europe and North America had a more favorable situation after the disaster than other places. Mass extinction is a dual process. If something dies on one side, something must arise on the other side. Scientists think so.

The restoration of the Earth took a very long time. Hundreds or even thousands of years passed before ecosystems were restored. It supposedly took the oceans three million years to restore normal life to organisms.

After severe fires, ferns settled into the ground, quickly populating the burned regions. Those ecosystems that escaped fire were inhabited by mosses and algae. The areas least affected by the destruction became places in which some species of living beings could survive. Later they settled throughout the planet. For example, sharks, some fish, and crocodiles survived in the oceans.

The complete disappearance of dinosaurs opened up new ecological niches that could be occupied by other creatures. Subsequently, the migration of mammals to the liberated places led to their current abundance on the planet.

New information about the planet's past

Drilling into the world's largest crater, located in the Yucatan Peninsula, and taking more and more samples will allow scientists to obtain more data about how the crater was formed and the impact of the fall on the formation of new climate conditions. Samples taken from the inside of the crater will allow specialists to understand what happened to the Earth after the severe impact and how life was subsequently restored. Scientists are interested in understanding how the restoration took place and who returned first, how quickly the evolutionary diversity of forms appeared.

Despite the fact that certain species and organisms died, other forms of life began to flourish doubly. According to scientists, such a picture of disaster on the planet could be repeated many times throughout the history of the Earth. And each time all living things died, and then restoration processes took place. It is likely that the course of history and development would have been different if an asteroid had not fallen on the planet 65 million years ago. Experts also do not exclude the possibility that life on the planet originated due to the fall of large asteroids.

Instead of an afterword

The asteroid impact caused intense hydrothermal activity in the Chicxulub crater, which most likely lasted 100,000 years. It could have enabled hypermatophiles and thermophiles (exotic single-celled organisms) to thrive in hot environments by settling inside the crater. This hypothesis of scientists, of course, needs to be tested. It is rock drilling that can help shed light on many events. Therefore, scientists still have many questions that need to be answered by studying the Chicxulub (crater).

Our beloved blue planet is constantly being hit by space debris, but due to the fact that most space objects burn up or fall apart in the atmosphere, this most often does not pose any serious problems. Even if an object reaches the surface of the planet, it is most often small, and the damage it causes is insignificant.

However, of course, there are very rare cases when something very large flies through the atmosphere, and in this case very significant damage is caused. Fortunately, such falls are extremely rare, but it’s worth knowing about them, if only to remember that there are forces in the Universe that can disrupt people’s everyday lives in a couple of minutes. Where and when did these monsters fall to Earth? Let's look at the geological records and find out:

10. Barringer Crater, Arizona, USA

Arizona apparently couldn't get enough of the Grand Canyon, so about 50,000 years ago it added another tourist attraction when a 50-meter meteorite landed in the northern desert, leaving behind a crater 1,200 meters in diameter and deep. at 180 meters. Scientists believe that the meteorite that created the crater flew at a speed of about 55 thousand kilometers per hour, and caused an explosion about 150 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Some scientists initially doubted that the crater was formed by a meteorite, since there is no meteorite itself, but according to modern scientists, the stone simply melted during the explosion, spreading molten nickel and iron throughout the surrounding area.
Although its diameter is not that large, its lack of erosion makes it an impressive sight. Moreover, it is one of the few meteorite craters that look true to its origin, making it a top-notch tourist destination - just as the Universe intended.

9. Lake Bosumtwi Crater, Ghana


When someone discovers a natural lake whose outline is almost perfectly round, it is quite suspicious. This is exactly what Lake Bosumtwi is, with a diameter of about 10 kilometers and located 30 kilometers southeast of Kumasi, Ghana. The crater was formed by a collision with a meteorite with a diameter of about 500 meters, which fell to Earth about 1.3 million years ago. Attempts to study the crater in detail are quite difficult, since the lake is difficult to reach, it is surrounded by dense forest, and the local Ashanti people consider it a holy place (they believe that touching the water with iron or using metal boats is prohibited, making access to nickel at the bottom of the lake is problematic). Still, this is one of the best-preserved craters on the planet today, and a good example of the destructive power of megarocks from space.

8. Mistastin Lake, Labrador, Canada


The Mistatin Impact Crater, located in the Labrador province of Canada, is an impressive 17 by 11 kilometer depression in the earth that formed approximately 38 million years ago. The crater was likely originally much larger, but has shrunk over time due to the erosion it has suffered from the many glaciers that have passed through Canada over the past millions of years. This crater is unique in that, unlike most impact craters, it is elliptical in shape rather than circular, indicating that the meteorite fell at an acute angle rather than flat, as is the case with most meteorite impacts. Even more unusual is the fact that in the middle of the lake there is a small island that may be the central rise of the complex structure of the crater.

7. Gosses Bluff, Northern Territory, Australia


This 142-million-year-old crater with a diameter of 22 kilometers, located in the center of Australia, is an impressive sight from both the air and the ground. The crater was formed by the impact of an asteroid with a diameter of 22 kilometers, which crashed into the Earth's surface at a speed of 65,000 kilometers per hour and created a crater almost 5 kilometers deep. The energy of the collision was approximately 10 to the twentieth power of Joules, so life on the continent faced great problems after this collision. The highly deformed crater is one of the most significant impact craters in the world and never lets us forget the power of one large rock.

6. Clearwater Lakes, Quebec, Canada

Finding one impact crater is cool, but finding two impact craters next to each other is doubly cool. That's what happened when the asteroid broke into two pieces as it entered Earth's atmosphere 290 million years ago, creating two impact craters on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay. Since then, erosion and glaciers have greatly eroded the original craters, but what remains is still an impressive sight. The diameter of one lake is 36 kilometers, and the second is about 26 kilometers. Considering that the craters were formed 290 million years ago and were subject to severe erosion, one can only imagine how large they were originally.

5. Tunguska meteorite, Siberia, Russia


This is a controversial point, since no parts of the hypothetical meteorite remain, and what exactly fell into Siberia 105 years ago is not entirely clear. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that something large and moving at high speed exploded near the Tunguska River in June 1908, leaving behind fallen trees over an area of ​​2000 square kilometers. The explosion was so strong that it was recorded by instruments even in the UK.

Because no pieces of meteorite were found, some believe that the object may not have been a meteorite at all, but a small part of a comet (which, if true, would explain the lack of meteorite debris). Conspiracy fans believe that an alien spaceship actually exploded here. Although this theory is completely unfounded and pure speculation, we must admit that it sounds interesting.

4. Manicouagan Crater, Canada


Manicouagan Reservoir, also known as the "Eye of Quebec", is located in a crater formed 212 million years ago when an asteroid with a diameter of 5 kilometers fell to Earth. The crater with an area of ​​100 kilometers, which remained after the fall, was destroyed by glaciers and other erosive processes, but at the moment it remains an impressive sight. What is unique about this crater is that nature did not fill it with water, forming an almost perfectly round lake - the crater basically remained dry land, surrounded by a ring of water. A great place to build a castle here.

3. Sudbury Crater, Ontario, Canada


Apparently, Canada and impact craters are very fond of each other. Singer Alanis Morrisette's birthplace is a favorite place for meteorite impacts - the largest meteorite crater in Canada is located near Sudbury, Ontario. This crater is already 1.85 billion years old, and its dimensions are 65 kilometers long, 25 wide and 14 deep - it is home to 162 thousand people, and is also home to many mining enterprises, which discovered a century ago that the crater is very rich in nickel. for a fallen asteroid. The crater is so rich in this element that about 10% of the world's nickel production comes from here.

2. Chicxulub Crater, Mexico


The impact of this meteorite may have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, but it is certainly the most powerful asteroid collision in the entire history of the Earth. The impact occurred approximately 65 million years ago when an asteroid the size of a small city crashed into Earth with an energy of 100 teratons of TNT. For those who like precise data, this is approximately 1 billion kilotons. Compare this energy to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, with a yield of 20 kilotons, and the impact of this collision becomes clearer.

The impact not only created a crater 168 kilometers in diameter, but also caused megatsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions across the Earth, greatly altering the environment and dooming the dinosaurs (and apparently many other creatures). This vast crater, located on the Yucatan Peninsula near the village of Chicxulub (from which the crater gets its name), can only be seen from space, which is why scientists discovered it relatively recently.

1. Vredefort Dome, South Africa

Although the Chicxulub crater is better known, compared to the 300-kilometer-wide Vredefort Crater in South Africa, it is an ordinary pothole. Vredefort is currently the largest impact crater on Earth. Fortunately, the meteorite/asteroid that fell 2 billion years ago (its diameter was about 10 kilometers) did not cause significant harm to life on Earth, since multicellular organisms did not yet exist at that time. The collision undoubtedly greatly changed the Earth's climate, but no one noticed it.

At the moment, the original crater is heavily eroded, but from space its remains look impressive and are a great visual example of how scary the Universe can be.

Location of Chicxulub - Yucotan, Mexico. The largest historical asteroid crater on Earth.

Researchers from the University of Glasgow examined soil samples and determined its age at 66,038,000 ± 11,000 years. Today it is the largest known crater. This period coincides with the period of extinction of dinosaurs, but it is still premature to say 100% that dinosaurs became extinct only due to the effects of the consequences of an asteroid collision with the Earth, since there are theories that claim that dinosaurs by species began to decline even before the asteroid collision, although the consequences collisions became a powerful factor in changing all life on Earth.

The crater was discovered by geophysicist Antonio Camargo and Glend Penfield while they were searching for oil in the Yucatan Peninsula in the late 1970s.
Penfield was unable to prove that the geological feature was an asteroid crater and abandoned further research in this area.
In 1990, Penfield obtained soil samples that proved that there was external influence at this site. Evidence of the impact origin of the crater includes altered quartz with a gravity anomaly, as well as tektites in the surrounding areas.

Traces of the visible boundaries of the crater have not been preserved to this day. If you look at the gravitational map, there are anomalies in the form of a ring, which is one of the proofs of external influence.

In 1978, geophysicists Antonio Camargo and Glen Penfield, working for the Mexican state oil company, discovered a huge underwater arc with “extraordinary symmetry” - a ring 70 km across.
Glen Penfield evaluated a gravity map of Yucatan made in the 1960s. Ten years ago, Robert Baltosser reported to his employer about possible external influence in the Yucatan, but was prohibited from publishing his opinion on corporate policy at the time.
Penfield found another arc on the peninsula itself, the ends of which continued north. Comparing the two maps, he discovered that the individual arcs formed a circle, 180 km wide, centered near the Yucatan village of Chicxulub.
He was sure that such a shape was created by a catastrophic event in the geological history of the Earth.

Penfield and Antonio Camargo presented their research results in 1981 at a conference of geophysicists.
Coincidentally, many experts in the field of impact craters were present at this conference.

Artist's reconstruction of the crater

The oil producing company Pemex has drilled exploration wells in the region. In 1951, they were described as drilling into a thick layer of andesite about 1.3 kilometers deep.
This layer may be the result of intense heat generation as a result of impact pressure.
Penfield tried to collect samples of drills, but as the company said, they were lost.
Penfield abandoned his research, published his findings, and returned to his job at Pemex.

In 1980, scientist Luis Alvarez put forward his hypothesis that a large extraterrestrial body collided with the Earth. In 1981, unaware of Penfield's discovery, at Arizona State University, graduate student Alan R. Hildebrand and faculty member William W. Boynton published a theory of an asteroid impact with Earth and began searching for the crater.
Their evidence included greenish-brown clay with excess iridium containing quartz grains and small glass inclusions that looked like tektites.

More recent evidence suggests that the actual crater is 300 km across and has another ring inside with a diameter of 180 km.

Asteroid Chicxulub

The Chicxulub meteorite is estimated to have had a diameter of 10 km or more.
Upon impact with the ground, energy was released (4.2 × 1023 J), comparable to more than a billion atomic explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The largest known volcanic eruption (La Garita Caldera), released an equivalent explosion energy of approximately 240 gigatons of TNT (1.0 × 1021 J), which is only 0.1% of the energy of the Chicxulub impact.
As a result of the impact, almost 200,000 cubic kilometers of material, including water and earth rock, were lifted into the atmosphere.

The shock wave spread over thousands of kilometers, and for hundreds of kilometers around everything was incinerated by the thermal effect. Colossal shock waves caused global earthquakes throughout the Earth, as well as massive volcanic eruptions. Almost all over the Earth, forest fires blazed from the consequences of the impact.

The emission of dust and particles covered the entire surface of the Earth for several years, perhaps decades. There was a large amount of dust and smog in the atmosphere.
Carbon dioxide released from the depths by the destruction of carbonate rocks led to a sudden greenhouse effect.
Sunlight was stopped by dust particles in the atmosphere, and a sharp cooling of the Earth's surface occurred. Plant photosynthesis was also interrupted, affecting the entire food chain.

In February 2008, a team of researchers led by Sean Gulich at the University of Texas at Austin-Jackson used seismic images of the crater to determine its depth.
They suggested that the deeper crater could have led to more sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere.
Sulfate aerosols in the upper atmosphere can have a cooling effect and generate acid rain.

Astronomical origin of the asteroid

There is no single theory about the origin of the asteroid, but there are many contradictory theories. Considering that there are a number of large craters on Earth, including one of them on the territory of Ukraine. In terms of time, they appeared at approximately the same period, this may mean that Chicxulub had satellites or fragments that collided with the Earth at the same time as it.

Chicxulub and the mass extinction

Chicxulub may have had a significant impact on the extinction of numerous animal and plant groups, including dinosaurs.
In March 2010, 41 experts from various countries reviewed the available evidence.
They concluded that the impact of the Chicxulub meteorite triggered the mass extinction.
A 2013 study compared isotopes in rock exposed to the Chicxulub impact with the same isotopes in the extinction boundary layer.
It was concluded that the impact was dated at 66,038 ± 0.049 Ma, and the rupture layer in the geological and paleontological rock was dated at 66,019 ± 0.021 Ma, meaning the two dates were within 19,000 years of each other, or almost coincident within experimental errors.
This theory is now widely accepted by the scientific community. Some critics, including paleontologist Robert Bakker, argue that such exposure would have killed frogs and dinosaurs together, but frogs survived the dinosaur extinction period.
Hertha Keller of Princeton University argues that the latest core samples from the Chicxulub crater indicate that the impact occurred about 300,000 years before the mass extinction, and thus cannot be a causal factor.

However, this conclusion is not supported by radioactive dating and lithology.

Repeated exposure - hypotheses

In recent years, several other craters of approximately the same age have been discovered, such as Chicxulub (Silverpit) in the North Sea and the Boltyshsky crater in Ukraine.
The collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter in 1994 showed that gravitational interactions can fragment comets.
It is possible, but not proven, that the above craters are the result of a collision of Chicxulub fragments.

Future Research

In April and May 2016, the exploration team will obtain the first offshore core samples from the peak ring, in the central zone of the crater, to determine what the total impact energy was. Chicxulub is the only known crater on Earth with a remaining peak impact ring.
But it is under 600 m of sedimentary rocks. The target depth is 1500 m below the ocean floor. The main conclusions will be drawn after studying the core in Bremen, Germany.

In the Gulf of Mexico, scientists will begin drilling a deep well, the target of which will be the bottom of the famous Chicxulub crater, which was formed by the fall of a huge meteorite, which presumably led to the extinction of dinosaurs on our planet. (website)

It is believed that in those times, many millions of years distant from us, the Earth shook from a terrible blow that was several million times greater than the force of the atomic bomb dropped by the Americans on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The wave from such a shock caused the eruption of volcanoes and earthquakes throughout the planet, and the dust and soot raised into the air from the explosion blocked the sun for a long time and provoked acid rain - a long nuclear winter began. All this is for almost all living things on the planet, but the largest land animals - dinosaurs - suffered most from the meteorite fall.

Where is the Chicxulub crater?

By the way, the Chicxulub crater was discovered relatively recently - only in 1978. It was accidentally stumbled upon by oil workers who were looking for black gold deposits in the Gulf of Mexico. First, they found a seventy-kilometer arc under water, and then on land, that is, on the Yutakan Peninsula, they found its continuation. The diameter of the crater is one hundred and eighty kilometers; it can only be seen “in all its glory” from a great height.

A gravitational anomaly was recorded in the Chicxulub crater, and impact quartz, characterized by a compressed molecular structure, was also found. It could only have formed under enormous pressure and the highest temperature, which once again confirms the assumption of a planetary catastrophe caused by the fall of a large meteorite in this place.

Drilling a well will allow scientists to find the simplest microorganisms at a depth of about one and a half kilometers and understand how life was revived at the epicenter of the disaster, and on the entire planet in general.

Mercury, Pluto, the Moon, Titan, other satellites and asteroids of the Solar System - they are all full of craters, traces of large and not so large collisions with meteorites and comets. Our Earth is well protected, in which most space invaders burn out even before the surface - but large and fast ones break through, leaving indelible marks. Today we will look at the largest craters on Earth and restore the meteorites that managed to dig them.

Five minutes of theory

Before we find out where the largest crater on Earth is located, we need to understand the mechanism of their formation. After all, hundreds of years have passed since the fall of the big ones, and many craters are only now being discovered using the circular contours of the landscape from satellites or by analyzing the composition of minerals at the fall site. Folk tales also help to find craters - for example, the history of the Wolf Creek crater in Australia remained in the memory of the aborigines, although thousands of years have passed since the fall.

The main point is that the craters are hundreds of times larger than the meteorites that left them. The thing is that the fall of a cosmic body at enormous speed releases colossal energy - the most massive, dense and fast meteorites that fell to Earth are hundreds of times more powerful than the most powerful nuclear bomb. The shock wave creates a pressure of millions of atmospheres, and the temperature at the epicenter of contact is higher than 15,000 ° C! From such heat, the rocks instantly evaporate and turn into plasma, which explodes and spreads the remains of the meteorite and destroyed rocks over hundreds of kilometers.

In the hot forge of the crater, molten rocks behave like liquids - a small hill forms at the center of the impact (like the one that rises on water when a drop falls), and even if the meteorite struck at an acute angle, the outline of the crater will be invariably round. And pressure gives rise to special rocks - impactites (from the English “impact” - imprint, blow). They are very dense, contain meteoric iron, iridium and gold, and often take crystalline and glassy forms. African impact diamonds, which can cut through regular diamonds, are also the product of a giant meteorite impact.

Scientists use these tracks to look for craters. And while some are visible to a non-specialist, others become sensations - people have been living in crater bowls for centuries and have no idea about it!

Akraman Crater

The world's sixth largest crater is hidden in the south of Australia - formed 590 million years ago, it stretches 45 kilometers to the sides. At the time of the fall, the mess was a shallow, warm sea inhabited by primitive mollusks and arthropods - the meteorite impact scattered their remains with sedimentary rocks for hundreds of kilometers around. Over the years, the outlines of the crater have been smoothed out, but it is clearly visible on satellite images.

Now Arkaman does not look as menacing as his smaller brothers, and a significant part of it is occupied by the seasonal lake of the same name, which dries up in the heat. But 590 million years ago, a meteorite hit shook the entire planet. The diameter of the space traveler was 4 km, and it consisted of a chondrite - a meteorite relative of terrestrial granite. Hitting the ground at a speed of 25 km/sec, the Arkaman meteorite exploded with a force of 5200 gigatons, which is comparable perhaps to the entire nuclear arsenal of the world. Thunder with a volume of 110 dB, causing pain in the ears and damaging hearing, was heard even 300 kilometers from the crash site, and a wind squall with a force of 357 m/s could even blow away skyscrapers!

The Manicouagan crater in Quebec, Canada, is one of the most distinct and beautiful giant craters on the planet. The distance from its centers to the outer edges is 50 kilometers, and inside the crater bowl there is a ring-shaped Lake Manicouagan surrounding the central island. The asteroid that created the crater was 5 kilometers in circumference, and flew into prehistoric Canada 215 million years ago, during the Triassic period. Since the impact of the Manicouagan meteorite was 7 teratons, it has long been considered as the cause of the mass extinction of animals of that period.

And the Manicouagan crater has brothers all over the Earth - astronomers believe that a whole meteor shower took place that year. Possible “cognates” are the Obolon crater in Ukraine, Red Wing in North Dakota and the St. Martin crater in Matoba, Canada. They follow each other in a chain across the planet - perhaps they were generated by the same huge one, which split into pieces, or by a whole flock of them. However, it is not yet possible to find out for sure.

The Popigai crater is the largest trace of a meteorite impact on the territory of modern Russia, located in northern Siberia. Its diameter is about 100 kilometers, and people even live in it - the village of Popigai, with a population of about 340 people, is located 30 kilometers from the center of the crater. Such a large imprint was left by an 8-kilometer-long chondritic meteorite that fell into Eurasia 37 million years ago.

The impact of the asteroid gave the crater special value - deposits of graphite under the surface turned into impact diamonds within a radius of 13.6 kilometers from the impact site. They are very small - up to 1 cm in diameter - and therefore are not suitable for jewelry. But their unusual strength is very useful in industry and science, since “meteorite” diamonds are stronger than even the strongest synthetic ones. And in Popigaya, as in the Manicouagan crater, there are also relatives, traces of meteorite bombardment. These meteorites are believed to have led to global cooling that allowed large, complex mammals to dominate - the ancestors of modern dogs, lions, elephants and horses.

Chicxulub Crater

The impact mark is impressive - the diameter of the crater is 180 kilometers, it extends to land and sea, and the maximum depth reaches 20 kilometers! The force of the meteorite explosion was 100 thousand megatons; The Tsar Bomba, the most powerful thermonuclear charge in the world, is capable of delivering only a tenth of one percent of the total energy of the Chicxulub meteorite. From such an impact, fountains of lava rose on the far side of the Earth, 200 thousand cubic kilometers of rock were thrown into the air, and forests caught fire from the hot wind.

Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions - the consequences of the impact that created the Chicxulub crater changed the Earth's climate for a long time. By the way, the meteorite that did all this belongs to the Baptistina family of asteroids. This group often crosses the orbit of our planet - among other traces of the family, the Tycho crater is noted. These are all, of course, just theories: asteroids can definitely be blamed for the death of dinosaurs only when spacecraft bring back samples of their soil.

An interesting fact is that the crater-like nature of the Chicxulub circular basin was not discovered through scientific research. Symmetrical rings on the continent and ocean floor, as well as impact seals, were noticed by oil prospectors.

Sudbury Crater

Canada is definitely lucky when it comes to craters - Sudbury, the second largest crater in the world with a girth of 250 kilometers, is located in the Canadian province of Ontario. The fall occurred during the Paleoproteozoic era, 1.849 billion years ago - since then the outlines of the crater have been smoothed out, and it began to resemble a huge valley 62 kilometers long, 30 kilometers wide and 15 kilometers deep. A worthy asteroid dug such a crater - according to modern estimates, its radius was 7.5 kilometers.

The Sudbury meteorite impact penetrated all the way to the mantle, and large pieces of rock were found within a radius of 800 kilometers - in total, debris was scattered over an area of ​​1,600,000 km2. But this big bang enriched Canada. Hundreds of millions of years ago, the crater crater was filled with magma rich in heavy elements such as gold, nickel, copper, palladium and platinum - and now the Sudbury Basin belongs to the largest mining areas in the world. And the rich mineral composition of the soil stimulates plant growth; Only the cold climate prevents reaching agricultural heights.

The largest crater on Earth is the Vredefort Crater in South Africa. Its diameter reaches 300 kilometers, and the size of the meteorite that created the crater is estimated at 20 km. This is not only the largest, but also the second oldest crater - a meteorite explosion occurred 2.023 billion years ago. Only the Suavjärvi crater in Russia is older, 2.3 billion years old.

The Vredefort Crater is so large that it could fit several dwarf European countries. It contains several concentric rings that only remain from exceptionally violent impacts, and are rarely preserved on Earth due to tectonic plate movement and erosion. The favorable location helped Vredefort survive - the central depression from the impact is especially clearly visible. Like other meteorite craters, valuable minerals can be found there, particularly gold. However, so far the crater is dominated by farmers - the center of the community is the town of Vredefort, nestled in the center of the crater.

Theoretically, there are even larger craters - a 540-kilometer crater from an asteroid impact is hidden under the ice of Antarctica; The Caribbean Sea and many other bodies of water may also have been created by meteorites. However, this will become known for sure only in the future, with the development of new technologies for scanning soil depths and diving under water - for the most part, it was miners and oil workers who discovered the craters of antiquity. So we will keep an eye on both the miners and the scientists.