Diagram of Shiva impact area.
Credit: Sankar Chatterjee
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.
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.
BULLETIN: New Race Discovered Living Six Inches Under Denver -- All Named 'Mortonson'
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
Looking forward to discovering one, a smoking one, in Mecca.
That would help 'soak off' some of the Greenland melt water.
Shiva impact area.
I was very interested to see how the impact area overlaps the Deccan Traps. For those who don't know the DTs are more than 300 mils square and 9,000 feet thick. Given this location it would appear the meteor cracked the earth and allowed the magma to rise up. From written descriptions I had thought the Shiva crater was all off shore.
Now this brings up another speculation. We know that the great Permian extinction (death to 95% of all life forms), occurred around the same time as formation of the Siberian Traps, which I think were about the area of the United States. Perhaps a great meteor, much larger even than the others we know about plunged into Siberia, and is now completely covered by this monsterous outpouring of lava.
What do you think?
Amateurs built the Ark. Professionals built the Titanic...
Wow, that is some crater.
LOL. It certainly is to mine. It'll be interesting to see how old it is. Thanks for the thread, NR!
I put the public impact crater database on Google earth, I'll have to add this one if it's not already there.
In some places the ripples are quite large ~ for example, I live just about in the center of one of the "chunks". The "top" edge, which is to the outside of the ripple area, is about 2 miles West of me. The "bottom" edge, which is closer to the crater proper, is about 4 miles East of me. It is perceptibly LOWER than the "top".
In early times folks panned gold on the "top" edge.
Unfortunately this are is not as dramatic as Bohemia where the impact left a surrounding ring of very high hills, or short mountains. Still, where the subsurface areas were revealed to the surface as the layers of rock were turned on end, the areas were mined for gold, silver and other important metals.
The "dollar" is named after the "thaler" which is named after the site/mine in Bohemia where silver was found in abundance in ancient times. I've always thought it more than coincidental that George Washington was rumored to have "tossed a dollar" across the Potomac right there in the vicinity of the Fall Line (which is where the most pronounced "edge" to the ripple area is found. If you were going to mine silver in Virginia, that would be the place.
lines right up with Akeneu 1 and 2 in libya alright...
Thanks for post, Norm, and coordinates, martin.
It might be interesting to note that these monstrous disasters are often associated with subsequent explosion of new species.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.