Jakarta –
Mainland Australia may hold a big secret underground. Geologist Andrew Glikson describes his latest research showing that the giant structures may have been impact craters asteroid gigantic, buried under the continent.
As quoted detikINET of Futurism, according to whom all evidence points to it being the largest known asteroid crater on the planet, by a huge margin from any other crater.
Known as the Deniliquin structure, Glikson estimates in a study published in the journal Tectonophysics, it is more than 514 kilometers in diameter.
That would dwarf the largest confirmed impact structure, the about 100-mile-wide Vredefort Crater in South Africa, as well as the similarly sized Chicxulub crater, which is believed to have been caused by an asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. “The history of the ‘bombing’ of Earth by asteroids is largely hidden,” Gilkson wrote.
The existence of Deniliquin structures was first brought to the fore in the late 90s by Tony Yeates, who co-authored this new study. A follow-up analysis completed in 2020 confirmed that there was a large structure beneath an area in southern New South Wales, though without conclusive evidence that it was caused by an impact.
How did such a huge structure get buried under our feet unknowingly? “When an asteroid hits, it creates a crater with an uplifted core. This is similar to how a drop of water splashes up from a crater when you drop a pebble into a pond,” he explained.
This raised dome in the center can erode over millions of years, becoming less prominent. If the crater isn’t just buried in sediment, collisions between Earth’s tectonic plates can also cloud its structure, as one of the colliding plates gets pushed under another.
Along with the discovery of the dome, there have been several other strong clues identifying the structure as an asteroid impact crater. But most of the evidence gathered at Deniliquin so far has only been surface and Glikson emphasized the need for deep drilling to get any impact evidence.
His latest research suggests that the asteroid impact that created it occurred roughly 445 million years ago, coinciding with what is known as an apocalypse-like event, namely the Ordovician mass extinction that wiped out 85% of all life on Earth.
According to Glikson, that is more than double the scale of the extinction of the dinosaurs. Can imagine the scale of the giant space rock that hit Deniliquin.
Watch Video “NASA Beware of Giant Asteroids That Will Pass Earth”
(fyk/fyk)
2023-08-14 15:00:09
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