What is the significance of meteor crater

Barringer also noted the absence of any volcanic material to a depth of 1, feet below the surrounding desert plain. A steam explosion seemed out of the question. Barringer concluded correctly that the crater must have been the result of an impact from space. The earlier work of Foote and especially Gilbert, with his reputation, continued to color the interpretation of the site for many years. And then came a renaissance for the ideas of Daniel Barringer. The mountain of additional confirming evidence came from the work of Gene Shoemaker — , geologist and one of the founders of planetary science.

Reexamining the problem and studying Meteor Crater for his PhD. He conducted immensely detailed studies of the geology of the crater and correlated them with features found in the nuclear-bomb crater Teapot Ess in Nevada.

Along with geologist Edward Chao — , Shoemaker discovered telltale shocked quartz from impact energy in the form of the minerals coesite and stishovite. Shoemaker went on to train Apollo astronauts at Meteor Crater and nearby Sunset Crater, a volcanic cinder cone , and pioneered the field of astrogeology with the founding of the U.

Geological Survey Astrogeology Branch in Flagstaff. This aerial view of Meteor Crater shows some of the features labeled. Gene Shoemaker was very much on my mind when I arrived at Meteor Crater in June for our journey down to the crater floor. Our group began our hike into the crater on a sweltering day. We expected the adventure to last at least three to four hours.

Members of our group were all well acclimated; I was not, having come from an elevation of feet in Wisconsin two days beforehand. The difference in altitude and heat would come back to haunt me later in the journey. After getting our stuff together and assembling our group, we traversed through the beautiful visitor center and headed west along the crater rim trail.

This would take us several hundred feet to a century-old trail leading downward into the crater. Great care must be taken about where to step so as not to disturb the placement of rocks, damage water-needy plants, or leave impressions and prints here and there. The crater is very much an active research laboratory in which many factors are studied, the disturbing the positions of artifacts can disrupt the knowledge to be gained. As our group descended the rough walls of the crater, planetary scientist David Kring lectured on the geologic history of the crater.

David J. One of the first things we noticed in climbing down was to turn our heads back up to see the raised rim, and the enormous blocks of uplifted rock above us that were thrown out of the crater. David then took us to a point and showed us close-up views of some white Coconino Sandstone, the plentiful rock that is made almost entirely of finely ground quartz, pulverized into small particles. This is sedimentary rock, the lowest layer of the upper portion of the native landscape, and preserves a cross-layered structure that formed from fossilized sand dunes, left from a time when Northern Arizona was dune field similar to the modern Sahara Desert.

Other types of rock are exposed in the crater walls, and include — rising above the Coconino — the Toroweap Formation, a thin layer of sandstone and dolomite, and above it, the Kaibab Formation, a thicker layer of dolomite, dolomitic limestone, and thin sandstone. The represents a time when the area was covered in a sea, and abundant fossils exist in these layers. They include trilobites, brachiopods, cephalopods, gastropods, and pelecypods, and date from the Permian, more than million years ago.

Lastly, there is the reddish siltstone Moenkopi Formation, closest to the surface. Walking down into Meteor Crater gives you an appreciation of what it must be like to climb down into a crater on the Moon. Looking upward at the crater walls, you see blocky uplifts like this one where the explosive force of the event threw huge chunks of rock outward.

As we kept winding our way downward, slowly, along the trail, the heat was astonishing. We stopped here and there to look at a wall of Coconino Sandstone, appreciating the finely pulverized quartz that makes it up, and to look at the reddish Moenkopi, and to gaze at fossils in the Kaibab.

As we stopped to rest, David continued his narrative of the structure of the crater for us. The crater has a simple bowl-shape, typical for impact craters that are less than roughly 2 km in diameter in sedimentary rock and smaller than 4 km in crystalline targets. The crater has no features of large craters visible on the Moon such as central peaks, rings, modification zones of collapsed walls, or deformational rings surrounding the impact. Meteor Crater does have so-called tear faults that cross-cut the terrain in four areas, giving the crater a squarish appearance.

Joints in the landscape are thought to have existed before the impact, and the creation of the crater fractured these faults. In , Gene Shoemaker produced the definitive geological map of Meteor Crater. His work demonstrated that the upper crater walls and uplifted crater rim are composed of Coconino, Toroweap, Kaibab, and Moenkopi formation rocks.

This geologic map of Meteor Crater was produced by the planetary scientist Gene Shoemaker in In addition to identifying different varieties of bedrock, Shoemaker mapped the interior deposits of breccia, exterior areas of debris, and faults that cross-cut the crater walls.

Geologists have a special term for rock that has been smashed and mixed up and fused back together — breccia. Shoemaker mapped several types of brecciated rock from the impact within the crater. Some of them contain fragments of rock from more than one of the geological formations. Some of them contain shock-melted rock along with debris from the meteorite. The crater has changed dramatically since it formed.

Erosion and the accumulation of sediments have played major roles in remaking Meteor Crater. This has reduced the steepness of the walls. As the rim shrank in height and the upper walls eroded, the apparent diameter grew. The ancient lake sediments have comingled with material shedding downward from the crater walls.

Following the impact, the environment in this area became far more arid, and the lake evaporated. So standing on the floor of the crater is now standing well over feet higher than one would have stood just after the impact.

The environment of what is now northern Arizona was far different tens of thousands of years ago. Ground water and precipitation partially filled the crater during the Late Pinedale of the Late Pleistocene, producing a crater lake as recently as about 11, years ago.

It has become a training ground for astronauts and robot hardware as well as a learning lab for planetary geologists who are investigating impact cratered terrains on other planets. When a cosmic interloper slammed into Earth tens of thousands of years ago, more than million metric tons of rock were excavated and deposited on the crater rim and the surrounding terrain in a matter of a few seconds, said David Kring, a senior staff scientist and geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

Kring has been engaged in studies of the crater for decades. He uses the site as a teaching tool for students, as well as a locale for honing the exploration skills to lunge beyond Earth. There are a lot of activities at the crater, Kring said. He made two trips there in October alone, he added. First of all, the crater is being used to instruct postdoctoral researchers in the field of lunar science, as well as educate graduate students who are studying impact craters on the moon , Mars, and elsewhere.

Furthermore, Kring added, Meteor Crater is being used to tutor astronauts for planetary surface operations, which require different talents than those needed for past space shuttle flights and work on the International Space Station. In terms of active research, the crater is telling the story of how material is ejected and deposited after a space rock impact. The only life on earth at that time was single-celled organisms, so nothing was there to witness the colossal impact, which sent hunks of debris flying as far as present-day Minnesota, about miles away.

Illustration of the Chicxulub crater, shortly after its formation, off the coast of present-day Mexico. The asteroid that caused this is widely believed to have provoked the extinction of the dinosaurs and other species at this time.

About 66 million years ago, an asteroid or comet measuring between 9 and 18 miles across crashed into the Gulf of Mexico with the explosive violence of million atomic bombs and created a fireball that burned at 18, degrees Fahrenheit.

Even before the molten debris rained down from the sky, lighting unquenchable fires across the world, a shockwave of air pulverized all plant and animal life within a 1,mile radius of the impact site. That was followed by magnitude 10 earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and killer tsunamis up to 1, feet tall.

The deadliest consequences of the asteroid impact took more time to take effect. The collision ejected billion tons of sulphate-rich dust into the atmosphere that, along with the smoke from raging fires, blocked out the sun. They occur at an average rate of about once in years.

Before its impact origin was appreciated, the crater was called Coon Mountain or Coon Butte. Later it was called Meteor Crater, which is the popular or common name used today. However, the name recognized by the Meteoritical Society, composed in part of professional geologists who study impact craters, is the Barringer Meteorite Crater, in recognition of the work of Daniel Moreau Barringer who championed an impact origin for the crater.

Concept and content by David A. Kring and Jake Bailey.