- Scientists have found traces of what they believe may be the world’s largest asteroid impact.
- The structure is hidden underground in Australia and is believed to be about 300 miles in diameter.
- The collision occurred 450 million years ago and may have wiped out 85 percent of the planet’s species.
The world’s largest asteroid impact, with a diameter of 300 miles, may be hidden under the ground in Australia.
Scientists are tracking magnetic and gravitational patterns that spread out in a circle from a point about 16 miles away from Denilikin in New South Wales, Australia.
Scientists say the structure could be the remnants of a giant asteroid that hit Earth hundreds of millions of years ago.
If confirmed, it would be the largest asteroid impact on record.
The memory of the impact is hidden in the ground
One would think that finding the world’s largest asteroid impact would be fairly easy. But the reality is very different.
It’s true that asteroids collide Create huge geological structures.
The force of the impact is so strong that it can bend the earth’s crust and cause ripples similar to those that rocks make when they hit a pond, said paleogeophysicist Andrew Grickson of the Australian Geological Survey.・As stated in a post on Conversation August. Ten.
But if this collision had occurred, erosion over hundreds of millions of years would have erased most of the visible features of the event.
Still, with a little patience, scientists can look for the remaining telltale signs, Grickson said.
Glixon and colleague Tony Yates said a five-year geological survey around the Denikirin region had found “radial faults,” circular faults radiating from the central structure. Peer-reviewed papers Published last year.
These involve “small magnetic anomalies” around a central point. These were probably caused by the oozing of molten rock into the peaks and valleys left by the impact.
Grickson said the so-called Denilikin structure is “520 kilometers in diameter, or about 300 miles.”
It will have a greater impact than any other recorded impact on Earth. Among them are the Vredefort impact structure in South Africa, thought to be 160 to 200 miles wide, and the Chicxulub impact, about 90 miles in diameter, which scientists believe triggered the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs. is also included.
To confirm this finding, scientists will aim to obtain physical evidence from the scene itself.
“To prove an impact, we need to collect physical evidence of the impact, which can only be obtained by drilling deep into the structure,” Grickson said in a post.
Asteroid may have caused one of Earth’s mass extinctions
It would be difficult to know exactly when the asteroid hit before scientists drilled into the site.
Grickson believes the shock occurred when Australia was still part of the continent of Gondwana. Gondwana is a supercontinent that separated from Pangea and later became South America, Africa, Arabia, Madagascar, India, Australia and Antarctica.
That means it is at least 180 million years old, and possibly older.
“Specifically, I suspect it triggered the so-called Hirnantian Ice Age, which lasted from 445.2 to 443.8 million years ago,” Grickson said in a post.
This mass extinction event was caused by the ice age and caused extinction 85% of all species on earthAccording to Grickson, the dinosaurs went extinct 350 million years ago.
But the influence may be even older. Grixon said it could be dated back up to 514 million years ago.
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