Dec 22, 2018 11:01 PM
https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...lands-ice/
EXCERPT: Earth hides its scars well; the planet has endured countless millennia of eruptions and collisions, but scientists are still stumbling upon the evidence of all that geologic drama.
Now, one such team has announced that it spotted a scar hidden below Greenland’s ice, a giant crater nearly 20 miles (31 kilometers) wide. The researchers said a giant iron meteorite likely created the mark by slamming into Earth sometime in the past 3 million years.
Other scientists aren’t necessarily sold yet that a space rock created the feature. “I think that the authors have presented some intriguing evidence of a possible impact site, and I think that’s the right word—intrigued,” David Kring, who studies impact craters at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston and who wasn’t involved with the new research, told Space.com. “I’m intrigued. I’m not wholly convinced that this is an impact crater.”
[...] He [Kring] said he’s particularly struck by the apparent lack of any measurable climate upheaval that such a large impact would have caused. The team wants to narrow down the date more precisely with future research but is confident that the crater formed between 3 million and 12,000 years ago, likely on the later end of that range. “It certainly should have created global effects, and we just have no hint or signature of that at this time,” Kring said....
MORE: https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...lands-ice/
EXCERPT: Earth hides its scars well; the planet has endured countless millennia of eruptions and collisions, but scientists are still stumbling upon the evidence of all that geologic drama.
Now, one such team has announced that it spotted a scar hidden below Greenland’s ice, a giant crater nearly 20 miles (31 kilometers) wide. The researchers said a giant iron meteorite likely created the mark by slamming into Earth sometime in the past 3 million years.
Other scientists aren’t necessarily sold yet that a space rock created the feature. “I think that the authors have presented some intriguing evidence of a possible impact site, and I think that’s the right word—intrigued,” David Kring, who studies impact craters at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston and who wasn’t involved with the new research, told Space.com. “I’m intrigued. I’m not wholly convinced that this is an impact crater.”
[...] He [Kring] said he’s particularly struck by the apparent lack of any measurable climate upheaval that such a large impact would have caused. The team wants to narrow down the date more precisely with future research but is confident that the crater formed between 3 million and 12,000 years ago, likely on the later end of that range. “It certainly should have created global effects, and we just have no hint or signature of that at this time,” Kring said....
MORE: https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...lands-ice/