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Friday, September 24, 2021

CONTEXT: Meteor Crater in Arizona—A Lunar-like Impact Crater on Earth

The impactor is estimated to have been an iron-rich asteroid around 50 metres in diameter, which released around 10 megatons TNT equivalent energy when it struck the Earth at 12.8 km/second. The energy is comparable to that of the Tunguska impact, but the latter formed no crater because it was probably a stony rubble pile which disintegrated in an airburst instead of an nickel-iron bullet that reached the surface.

When I was a kid, all of the books called this feature “Barringer Meteor Crater” after Daniel M. Barringer, who was one of the first to suggest it was an impact crater and not volcanic. Barringer later purchased the crater in hopes of mining iron from it, and the Barringer family still owns the crater today, There is a Barringer Crater, but it's on the far side of the Moon and 58 times bigger than the one on Earth.

Posted at September 24, 2021 11:58