- Scientists have uncovered traces of what they believe may be the world’s largest asteroid impact.
- Hidden in the ground in Australia, the structure is believed to be about 300 miles across.
- Someone said the impact may have occurred 450 million years ago, wiping out 85 percent of Earth’s species.
The world’s largest asteroid impact, 300 miles across, could be hidden in Australian territory.
The scientists were tracking “magnetic” and “gravitational” patterns spreading in circles from a point about 10 miles from Deniliquin in New South Wales, Australia.
Scientists say the structure may be the remnants of a massive asteroid collision that struck Earth hundreds of millions of years ago.
If confirmed, it would be the largest asteroid collision ever.
The memory of the effect is hidden in the ground
One would think that finding the world’s largest asteroid collision should be fairly easy. But the reality is very different.
It is true that asteroid collision Create huge geological structures.
The force of the collision is so strong that it can flex the Earth’s crust, creating ripples similar to those created by rocks when they hit a pond, Andrew Glickson, a paleogeophysicist from the Australian Geological Survey, said in a publication in The Conversation August. 10.
But if this impact occurred, hundreds of millions of years of erosion would have erased most of the visible features of the event.
However, with a little patience, scientists can look for telltale signs left behind, Glickson said.
Glickson and his colleague Tony Yates said at A peer-reviewed paper published last year.
This is accompanied by a “small magnetic anomaly” around the center point. These were likely caused by leaching of molten rock into the peaks and basins left by the impact.
Glickson said the so-called Denliquin structure “spans up to 520 kilometers in diameter,” or about 300 miles.
This would be an impact greater than any other documented impact on Earth. These include the Vredefort shock structure in South Africa, which is believed to be between 100 and 200 miles across, and the Chicxulub impact, about 90 miles away, which scientists believe caused the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs.
To confirm the finding, scientists will aim to obtain physical evidence from the site itself.
“To prove impact, we will need to collect physical evidence of impact, which can only come from drilling deep into the structure,” Glickson said in the post.
The asteroid may have caused a mass extinction event on Earth
Before scientists can dig into the site, it will be difficult to know exactly when this asteroid will strike.
Glickson believes the impact occurred when Australia was still part of Gondwana, a supercontinent that broke away from Pangea and later transformed into South America, Africa, Arabia, Madagascar, India, Australia, and Antarctica.
This means that it will be at least 180 million years old, and possibly more.
“Specifically, I think it may be caused by the so-called Hearnian Glaciation phase, which lasted between 445.2 and 443.8 million years ago,” Glickson said in the post.
This mass extinction event was caused by the Ice Age that wiped it out 85% of the planet’s species350 million years before the dinosaurs were wiped out, Glickson said.
But the effect may be greater than that. Glickson said he can see it dating back 514 million years.
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