Scientists have found a quick way to find ancient craters hidden under the Earth

At the moment of collision with the earth's atmosphere,asteroids and other space objects move at speeds up to 72 kilometers per second. But later they collide with an unimaginable number of air molecules and gradually lose speed. Despite this, after a direct collision with the Earth's surface, they leave behind huge craters. Scientists can easily detect some of them even without special equipment. But ancient craters are currently masked by layers of mud or destroyed by natural phenomena such as hurricanes, landslides, and so on. To find hidden craters, researchers have to look for cones of destruction - fractures that have appeared as a result of the fall of space objects. Recently, American scientists have found an easier way to detect them.

There are many craters on the surface of the Earth, we just don't see them.

Interesting fact: the largest crater on Earth is consideredVredefort. It is located 120 kilometers from the city of Johannesburg (South Africa) and has a diameter of about 300 kilometers. Only the Wilkes Land crater in Antarctica can be larger than it, but it is poorly studied and it is too early to speak with confidence about its record size.

Crater Vredefort

How do asteroids change the Earth?

The new method of searching for ancient craters wasdescribed in the scientific publication Science Alert. During the study of the Santa Fe crater formed in the Sangre de Cristo mountains (New Mexico), scientists found that the surrounding rocks have a level magnetism only about 0.1%.This is a very strange phenomenon, because mountains usually have up to 3% natural magnetization. It turns out that space objects that have fallen to the ground somehow deprive rocks of their magnetic properties?

Santa Fe crater destruction cones

Magnetism Is the property of objects to attract to themselvesiron and steel objects. Rocks have this feature because they always contain some amount of magnetite, hematite and a number of other minerals with magnetic properties.

Rock magnetism

The reason for the disappearance of magnetism has been foundpretty fast. According to geologist Gunther Kletetschka, the magnetic properties have been minimized due to the plasma that forms when space objects fall to Earth. Plasma is usually called ionized gas, which contains free electrons and positive and negative ions. They interact with electrons in the atoms of rocks and thereby deprive them of their magnetic properties. In the course of further study, scientists found that after the fall of a large object, the rocks have no chance of restoring magnetism.

When a meteorite falls, a plasma is formed, which deprives the rocks of magnetism

Thus, it turns out that studying the levelmagnetism of rocks, it is possible to find places of falling of ancient meteorites. If the rock is devoid of magnetic properties, it means that once upon a time an asteroid or other space object fell into this place. If you start to actively apply this method in practice, you will not even need to look for cones of destruction. Also, scientists can get the opportunity to find out the exact size of ancient meteorites, which at the moment is taking a very long time. On top of all this, researchers will be able to better understand the physics of meteor impacts.

See also: Where do meteorites that have fallen to Earth disappear and how to find them?

Features of the Santa Fe crater

As for the Santa Fe crater, it was discovered in2005 year. According to scientists, at the moment it is about 1.2 billion years old. The site of the fall of a space object consists of cones of destruction visible to the naked eye - they are areas of rock with unusual features of faults. Such geological structures are formed only when exposed to a shock wave from a rapidly moving object. So the crater was definitely formed as a result of the fall of an asteroid.

Santa Fe Crater Feature Video

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Craters are disappearing not only from the surface of the Earth.This phenomenon also occurs on the Moon, and millions of years ago, the depressions were erased in a very short time. The fact is that earlier the surface of the Moon of soap was covered with magma - a molten mass from the bowels of a space object. At the moment, scientists know about the existence of 109,000 lunar craters, but in fact there were many more. You can read more about this in my recent article.