Landsat image (color composite) of the newfound Kebira Crater in the Western Desert of Egypt at the border with Libya. The outer rim of the crater is about 19 miles (31 km) in diameter. Image courtesy of Boston University Center for Remote Sensing
Posted on 03/03/2006 8:58:45 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Scientists have discovered a huge crater in the Saharan desert, the largest one ever found there.
The crater is about 19 miles (31 kilometers) wide, more than twice as big as the next largest Saharan crater known. It utterly dwarfs Meteor Crater in Arizona, which is about three-fourths of a mile (1.2 kilometers) in diameter.
In fact, the newfound crater, in Egypt, was likely carved by a space rock that was itself roughly 0.75 miles wide in an event that would have been quite a shock, destroying everything for hundreds of miles. For comparison, the Chicxulub crater left by a dinosaur-killing asteroid 65 million years ago is estimated to be 100 to 150 miles (160 to 240 kilometers) wide.
The crater was discovered in satellite images by Boston University researchers Farouk El-Baz and Eman Ghoneim.
El-Baz named the crater “Kebira,” which means “large” in Arabic and also relates to its location on the northern tip of the Gilf Kebir region in southwestern Egypt.
“Kebira may have escaped recognition because it is so large—bigger than the area of 125 football fields, or the total expanse of the Cairo urban region from its airport in the northeast to the Pyramids of Giza in the southwest,” El-Baz said today. “Also, the search for craters typically concentrates on small features, especially those that can be identified on the ground. The advantage of a view from space is that it allows us to see regional patterns and the big picture.”
The crater has two rings, a common configuration. Over time, it has been eroded by wind and water to make it unrecognizable to the untrained eye.
“The courses of two ancient rivers run through it from the east and west,” Ghoneim said.
The timing of the impact has not been determined.
The impact that carved Kebira might have created an extensive field of yellow-green silica fragments, known as desert glass and found on the surface between the giant dunes of the Great Sand Sea in southwestern Egypt, the researchers said.
Landsat image (color composite) of the newfound Kebira Crater in the Western Desert of Egypt at the border with Libya. The outer rim of the crater is about 19 miles (31 km) in diameter. Image courtesy of Boston University Center for Remote Sensing
Makes for really interesting subsurface structures too!
Wonder when that hit, because that was for sure almost 4 times the size needed to end all life on earth when it hit.
Pre-Bush's fault for sure.
24° 40' 23.24" N, 24° 57' 51.02" E on Google Earth
Any pictures of that?
Here's some info on the Chesapeake crater
http://www.unb.ca/passc/ImpactDatabase/images/chesapeake.htm
Great post!
I wonder what proof exists this is not an older sinkhole, or simply an indentation from that great knuckleball emanating from the Big Bang.
great post,thanks
How was this just discovered now? 19 mile diameter - are we gonna find another "New World" again?
Also known as 'Apollo space program legend Dr. Farouk El-Baz'.
Kibera crater ping
Can you tell em more about that ? Never heard of it .
http://www.bu.edu/remotesensing/Faculty/El-Baz/FEBbio.html
Dr. Farouk El-Baz
He's been doing this kind of stuff a long time.
Dr. Eman Ghoneim
http://www.bu.edu/remotesensing/Faculty/Ghoneim/
She's the youngster of the pair who discovered Kibera.
There are likely quite a few more craters to be identified.
As to new worlds, ya never know what lies beneath our feet or the waves... and how new technologies can help us locate them.
There was one theory I heard, long ago, that Earth was fertile, but lacked that spark for life to begin - kind of like an unfertilized egg.
Without the event of the meteor collisions, the essential element(s) for life weren't present.
Wow! Even with the circle around it, though, it seems kind of hard to miss.
Maybe there's a big chunk of rock in there someone could worship.
I meant 'without'.
What are the subsurface structures like?
I was about to say - 19 miles in diameter would be hard to miss.
Disaster That Struck The Ancients
Iraq - Dated to 2200BC
Just saw a movie that centered aroud a huge crater in Australia in a very remote place called Wolfe Creek. Very huge and impressive. Anybody ever seen it?
At the south-east corner of the Ka'bah, near the door, is the famous black stone, which forms a part of the sharp angle of the building, at four or five feet above the ground. The black stone is an irregular oval. about seven inches in diameter, with an undulating surface, composed of about a dozen smaller storm of different shapes and sizes. According to the rites of the pilgrimage, this stone; which is called ar-Ruknu ‘l-Yamani, or Yaman pillar, should only be touched with ,the right hand as the pilgrim passes it, butSir Richard Burton, who made the pilgrimage in disguise in 1853, have suggested that the Black Stone is really a meteorite. www.bible.ca/islam/ islam-meteorite-worship.htm
meteorite-worship? Oh geez.
Wolfe Creek..
There are a few more shots to view , Click the pic.
Good grief. These folks probably spell words in their cherios and look for faces in the shadows of their shag carpets.
I guess this is the day for finding out just how much scientists are really missing. Did you see this post?
Surprise organ discovered in mice Mice are shown to have two thymus organs, not just one
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1589011/posts
Looks like this is the day for scientists finding things, ping
Pattern recognition is a skill that must be honed regularly. ;-)
No, on the contrary, this was only a mile in diameter and would have only caused localized devastation.
But, yes, I'm sure it was Bush's fault.
Truly, the only people who miss more observations than scientists, are non-scientists.
ROFLMAO!
Too funny!
After how many years of dissecting mice? Oh yeah, here it is...
After a century of scrutinizing the laboratory mouse,...
Truly, the only people who miss more observations than scientists, are non-scientists.
Got some data to back that up? Could we have some citations please?
"Check the Fall Line, large enough to kill all life."
Actually, neither of these statements is accurate. The book "Chesapeake Invader" by C. Wylie Poag, 1999 gives all the details. The 50 mi. diameter crater lies wholely in Virginia. The south end is Norfolk, and the north end is at Exmore, on the Va. end of the Delmarva Peninsula. I have driven down there trying to find it, but haven't yet. The western side is along the west side of the Chesapeake Bay and the jogs in the York and James Rivers indicate its edge.
Nineteen miles diameter is hardly large enough to wipe out all life, although it would certainly mess up your year. The Chesapeake Meteor (50 mi. diameter), a 9md crater off Tom's River, NJ, and another 50md crater in Siberia named Popigai all crashed around 35 million years ago. Although there seem to have been other major impact events, and this is around the end of the Eocene and beginning of the Oligocene, scientist have found no evidence of a major world wide die off tied to these meteors. The dinasaur meteor off Yucatan was about 120 miles in diameter. Scientists are now looking at the Shiva Crater off India which is also about 65 million years old. This crater is 400 x 600 kilometers, and combined with the Yucatan meteor was probably responsible for a 65 to 70% die off.
For more info. Google Meteorite Impact Craters on Earth.
Diagram of Shiva impact area.
Credit: Sankar Chatterjee
>because that was for sure almost 4 times the size needed to end all life on earth when it hit.
Oh, no, not even close. 0.75 miles? Bah. A country-killer, a continent wounder. The Dino-killer was about 10 miles wide. 100 miles wide and you'll kill probably everything more complex than bacteria.
just discovered this huge crater on earth but yet are able to tell whether there is global warming by the melting of ice caps. Something truly wrong with this picture.
How was this just discovered now? 19 mile diameter - are we gonna find another "New World" again? Good point! Hey, maybe if we keep looking hard enough from space, we'll eventually find the Lost City of Atlantis the same way.
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Looking forward to discovering one, a smoking one, in Mecca.
That would help 'soak off' some of the Greenland melt water.
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