'Fried Egg' may be impact crater

BBC News ^ | Friday, December 18, 2009 | Jonathan Amos

[SunkenCiv]

Portuguese scientists have found a depression on the Atlantic Ocean floor they think may be an impact crater.

The roughly circular, 6km-wide hollow has a broad central dome and has been dubbed the "Fried Egg" because of its distinctive shape.

It was detected to the south of the Azores Islands during a survey to map the continental shelf.

If the Fried Egg was made by a space impactor, the collision probably took place within the past 17 million years...

It lies under 2km of water about 150km from the Azores archipelago.

The depressed ring sits roughly 110m below the surrounding ocean bottom, with the circular dome-shaped central uplift 3km in diameter and with a base-to-top height of some 300m...

A volcanic origin for the Fried Egg seems unlikely because the Portuguese team has not been able to find any lava flows within the structure or on its surroundings.

Interestingly, there is another - but much smaller - feature just 3-4km to the west of the egg.

[SunkenCiv]

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[Brilliant]

More interesting to me is the fact that scientists say that if the Earth were struck by an object that large, it would wipe out all higher life forms. So how did the higher life forms we have survive that?

[Ole Okie]

Looks like the fried egg was a straight in impact, if that ‘s what it is.

The smaller egg appears to have been impacted from the right in that picture.

[screaminsunshine]

Atlantis. No Doubt.

[SunkenCiv]

A lot of big impacts are “doublet”, caused by multiple pieces of a former whole, like the SL-9 comet impacts on Jupiter.

[SunkenCiv]

The sea.

The Eltanin impact about 2 million years ago hit in the Southern Pacific (I think it was the Pacific) near Antarctica. The submerged crater was found during the multi-year International Geophysical Year in the 1950s, and named after the boat that carried the researchers. Subsequently the iridium signature of the impact has been identified.

[pepsionice]

Mass populations can’t. But you can find various places on the earth where a society could survive through a bad period, and just continue on.

If you had to pick a realistic threat to society...the impact threat is 99 times more realistic than climate change...yet for every dollar spent on climate change...one cent gets spent on impact and meteor studies.

[SunkenCiv]

It’s in the right place... :’) Shades of Otto Muck!

[stormer]

Overstated, but supported. From http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-ever-happened-to-the "The fossils show a statistical variation in extinction rates having a period of approximately 26 million years. The two periodic peaks of extinction after the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, 65 million years ago, are at the end of the Eocene (roughly 37 million years ago) and in the Middle Miocene (about 17 million years ago).

[stormer]

Or more. Here are examples from the moon and Mars...

[OldDeckHand]

"If you had to pick a realistic threat to society...the impact threat is 99 times more realistic than climate change...yet for every dollar spent on climate change...one cent gets spent on impact and meteor studies."

That's right. It is a mathematical certainty that Earth will again be hit by an asteroid/comet of such size that it will cause near-global level extinction. It's anything but a mathematical certainty that the earth is warming in any significant way do to man.

[Zeppo]

Interesting... Most of those impacts seem to be missing the central uplift of the “fried egg” (or else it is obscured by dust and debris) - perhaps due to differing substrate materials at the point of impact...

[El Gato]

So how did the higher life forms we have survive that?

Who says they did? Think of it as a celestial reset button.

[PIF]

“one cent gets spent on impact and meteor studies.”

That much? I would have thought it was much smaller - like .001 cent, concidering the multi-billions spent worldwide on the Great Hoax.

[PIF]

“So how did the higher life forms we have survive that?

Who says they did? Think of it as a celestial reset button.”

They left before the impact and haven’t been back since -— Earth is still waiting for a higher life form to evolve/be created.

[PIF]

And the cities are round! Just like the theory says - here are still elephants etc under the domes.

[stormer]

Interesting observation. Here's an example from Ganymede - the central mounts seem to be evident. I could only speculate as to any of a number of variables. Substrate, energy at impact, and gravity would seem to be the main culprits.

[NormsRevenge]

I like mine over easy. Very cool..

the amount of energy involved. wow.

and it could happen again. 8-}