The most famous meteorite craters on Earth. The most impressive impact craters on earth

Ecology

One of the most terrible disasters for the inhabitants of the Earth is probably the fall of a meteorite. And it is no coincidence, since there are almost 200 large craters on our planet and these are only those whose outlines are still visible. Some of the cosmic bodies that fell on our planet in time immemorial were so huge that they caused deadly tsunami waves, terrible earthquakes and killed all living things. The craters that remained after these terrible disasters are just a reminder to earthlings that it is possible that this could happen again.

1) Vredefort Crater

The Vredefort Crater is located in the Free State province of South Africa and was formed by the fall of a large meteorite, which was estimated to reach from 5 to 10 kilometers in diameter. This happened quite a long time ago - about 2 billion years ago. The crater itself is the largest impact crater, the outlines of which we can observe; it has a diameter of 250-300 kilometers. It is competed by another crater, which is located in Antarctica and, according to some estimates, is 500 kilometers in diameter, but its origin has not yet been proven.

2) Sudbury Crater

The Sudbury Basin is also the site of an ancient meteorite impact and is the second largest. A huge cosmic body crashed onto the surface of the Earth approximately 1.849 billion years ago. According to the researchers, since this event occurred, many geological processes have taken place in the area, which influenced the shape of the crater and its size. Today it is even difficult to believe that this was an impact crater, since it is oval in shape, unlike most other impact craters, which are round in shape.

3) Chicxulub Crater

Chicxulub is located on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. It was discovered in the 1970s by geophysicist Glen Penfield, who was searching for oil in the area. Instead of oil, the scientist found something more interesting (but not as profitable), namely an ancient crater that was half flooded by the ocean. But the most interesting thing was to discover that the age of this crater is 65 million years, that is, it was formed around the time the dinosaurs disappeared. Scientists have suggested that the fireball that fell to Earth at this point could have been related to the extinction of the dinosaurs, and perhaps even caused this event.

4) Popigai Crater

This Siberian crater is the fourth largest impact crater on the planet. Its age is approximately 35 million years, and its diameter is 100 kilometers. Scientists believe that the asteroid that created this huge crater caused another mass extinction of early mammals in Europe, known as Eocene-Oligocene extinction.

5) Manicouagan Crater

This crater is located in what is now Canada. Scientists believe that it is 215 million years old, and several more asteroids fell to Earth at the same time, forming craters in other places. It is believed that the 5 craters were formed due to fragments of the same asteroid, which broke into pieces. The crater is filled with the waters of Lake Manicouagan, which create a kind of water ring that is clearly visible from space.

6) Chesapeake Bay Crater

The crater, called Chesapeake Bay, was formed 35 million years ago when a huge asteroid hit the east coast of North America. It is one of the best preserved craters in the world and the largest crater in the Americas.

7) Akraman Crater

Acraman is one of the most eroded craters located in southern Australia. The age of this crater is 580 million years. At the very beginning, its diameter was 85-90 kilometers. The dry lake Akraman, which is 20 kilometers in diameter, indicates the location of an ancient crater.

This is another large crater located in Russia, in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug. It is obvious that after the fall of a meteorite 70 million years ago, a crater with a diameter of 120 kilometers was formed in this place, but today it is almost invisible, as it was seriously susceptible to erosion.

The most famous meteorite crater on Earth is Arizona. He is only 50 thousand years old

The likelihood that you will be killed by a meteorite is negligible, although several cases of space rocks hitting buildings, cars and people have been officially recorded. On the other hand, the probability that humanity will ever be destroyed by a stray asteroid tends to one. Moreover, in the history of the Earth there have already been cases when space aliens became the causes of mass extinctions, which significantly thinned out the “population” of the planet. Where on the surface of the Earth can you find scars from space disasters and what consequences did meteorite falls lead to in the past?

Why are there fewer craters on Earth than on the Moon?

Huge Herschel Crater makes Mimas, Saturn's moon, very popular with Star Wars fans

There are fewer visible meteorite craters on Earth than on the Moon, Mars, satellites of the giant planets and large asteroids. Significantly less. However, the Earth is bombarded by meteorites no less often than its natural satellite. According to astronomers, hundreds of meteorites with a total mass of 5–6 tons fall to Earth every day, which gives a total of 2 million kg of celestial stones every year.

Only some of the space guests reach the surface of the planet. Most small and medium-sized meteorites burn up in the atmosphere, leaving a beautiful fiery streak across the night sky. Larger stones lose speed and simply fall to the ground without causing significant damage. But there are disasters in the history of the Earth that are remembered for a long time, such as the well-known meteorite fall on Podkamennaya Tunguska in June 1908.

Map of meteorite impacts from 2300 BC. to 2013. The size of the point corresponds to the mass of the object

About once every 4 years, a meteorite with a diameter of about 10 m falls on the Earth. Once every millennium, a larger “gift” arrives - an asteroid up to 100 m. “Rocks” 1 km away fall once every 250 thousand years, and once every 70 million years to the Earth “ lucky" to catch a celestial body with a diameter of 10 km. It would seem that only these huge meteorites over the long history of the Earth should have completely covered the surface of the planet with craters of considerable size. So where are the tracks?

Hundreds of meteorites with a total mass of 5–6 tons fall to Earth every day, that is, up to 2 million kg of “rocks” per year

Unlike our celestial neighbors, the Earth has an atmosphere, which means winds, rains, snows and other hurricanes are the planet’s free cosmetologists. Over millennia, and even more so over millions of years, erosion phenomena can not only “hide” a meteorite crater of any size, but also erase entire mountain ranges into sand. Don't forget about sedimentary rocks - many impact craters are simply buried under a hundred or more meters of organic sediment. Even less fortunate were the meteorites that fell into water, which, let me remind you, covers 71% of the earth's surface - their traces can no longer be found, they disappeared into the abyss. Plus other masking factors: movement of tectonic plates, volcanic eruptions, mountain building processes, etc., etc.

The relatively young impact crater Pingahualuit in Canada. Diameter – 3.44 km. Age – about 1.4 million years

In a word, meteorite craters on Earth are perfectly camouflaged. And if traces of small meteorites that fell recently on a geological scale can still be found, the scars left by large celestial bodies millions of years ago are still a subject of debate among scientists. Let's get acquainted with the most famous and largest meteorite craters on Earth.

Old Scars of the Earth

To designate large, more than 2 km in diameter, impact craters on the Earth's surface, the beautiful word astrobleme is used. The classification and accounting of impact craters on Earth is carried out by the Planetary and Space Science Center (PASSC) in Canada, which maintains the Earth Impact Database (EID), a database of such objects. Until scientists agree on the origin of a crater or geologic feature, it will not be included in the EID. The largest officially confirmed astrobleme, according to PASSC, is the Vredefort crater in South Africa, with a diameter of 160 km from ridge to ridge. Moreover, if we consider all the geological structures affected by the impact, we can assume the diameter of the same Vredefort to be 300 km. We will indicate the maximum crater size.

The largest crater in the solar system is located on Mars. This is the North Polar Basin, occupying about 40% (!) of the planet's surface. It is assumed that the crater was left by a huge asteroid with a diameter of 1600–2700 km, moving at a low speed of 6–10 km/s. Essentially, it was a collision of two planets.

The largest crater in the solar system is located on Mars and occupies 40% (!) of the planet’s surface

But let's return to Earth. Below we look at the most interesting of the large impact craters.

Warbarton Basin (Australia, diameter 400 km)

Warburton Basin Map

The latest discovery by scientists that has not yet been included in the Earth Impact Database. At the end of March 2015, Australian researchers reported that, based on analysis of deep drilling results, the Warbarton Basin, which lies on the border of the regions of South Australia, Northern Territory and Queensland, is of impact origin. The reason for the occurrence of this astrobleme is the fall of an asteroid, which split before the impact into two fragments of about 10 km each. The diameter of the crater itself, traces of which have already been erased by time, is almost 400 km. The estimated age of the Warbarton basin is 300–600 million years.

Interestingly, not far from this site there is another proposed astrobleme - the Australian impact structure, with a diameter of 600 km, located between and including two popular attractions of the Northern Territory - the red rock of Uluru and Mount Connor. The age of the structure is about 545 million years.

Vredefort Crater (South Africa, diameter 300 km)

Vredefort Crater, the remains of a multi-ring structure are clearly visible

The largest officially confirmed astrobleme and one of the rare ringed (multi-ring) impact craters on Earth. Plus one of the oldest. Appeared about 2 billion (2023 ± 4 million) years ago as a result of an impact by an asteroid with a diameter of about 10 km. The outer diameter of the structure is 300 km, the inner diameter is 160 km. There are three towns inside the crater, and the astrobleme itself is named after one of them.

Sudbury Crater (Canada, diameter 250 km)

Sudbury Crater is a well-lived place

Over the 1849 million years since the formation of the Sudbury crater, tectonic processes have distorted its original shape, turning the once round crater into an elliptical one. The culprit behind the appearance of the second largest crater on Earth is an asteroid 10–15 km in size. The impact was so strong that the fragments covered an area of ​​1,600,000 km2, and individual fragments flew 800 km, they are found even in Minnesota. The meteorite literally ripped open the earth's crust, the crater was filled with hot magma, rich in metals - copper, nickel, platinum, gold, palladium. That's why Sudbury is one of the world's largest mining regions today. The mineral-rich soil also makes the crater the best agricultural land in Northern Ontario. On the edge of the crater is Greater Sudbury, a city with a population of 160 thousand inhabitants.

Chicxulub Crater (Mexico, diameter 180 km)

Approximate dimensions of the Chicxulub crater

The celestial body “responsible” for the appearance of the Chicxulub crater is also accused of mass murder. A 10-kilometer-long meteorite that fell 66 million years ago on the Yucatan Peninsula caused a 100-meter-high tsunami that reached far inland, as well as massive forest fires across the Earth. Soot particles lifted into the air blocked out the sun and caused a kind of nuclear winter. It was this event, according to scientists (not all of them), that led to the mass Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, the victims of which were, in particular, dinosaurs.

The initial depth of the crater was 20 km with a diameter of 180 km, and the impact energy reached 100 teratons in TNT equivalent. The largest hydrogen “Tsar Bomb” created in the USSR had a power of only 0.00005 teratons. Unfortunately, time has erased visible traces of the Chicxulub crater.

The meteorite that created the Chicxulub crater is responsible for the extinction of dinosaurs

Some researchers adhere to the multiple impact theory, according to which several meteorites hit the Earth almost simultaneously, which was the cause of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction. One of the components may have fallen on the territory of modern Ukraine, creating the Boltysh crater with a diameter of 24 km in the Kirovograd region. The term “simultaneously” should be taken on a geological scale, which means with a difference of “only” thousands of years.

Acraman Crater (Australia, diameter 90 km)

The characteristic shape of Lake Akraman suggests the reason for its occurrence

This crater, which became the “foundation” for the drying up Lake Acraman in South Australia, was created by a fast (25 km/s) meteorite with a diameter of 4 km about 580 million years ago. The debris scattered over a distance of 450 km.

Manicouagan Crater (Canada, diameter 85 km)

Manicouagan Crater from Space Shuttle Columbia

One of the most visible large craters on Earth. Now the ring lake of the same name. It appeared 215 million years ago as a result of the impact of an asteroid with a diameter of about 5 km. For a long time, the meteorite that created the crater was believed to be responsible for the Late Triassic mass extinction, but recent research has cleared these accusations.

There is a theory according to which, simultaneously or almost simultaneously (on a geological scale) with the asteroid that “created” Manicouagan, four more celestial bodies fell to Earth, including the meteorite responsible for the Ukrainian Obolon crater in the area of ​​the village of Obolon, Poltava region.

Impact craters very often become lakes. The largest include Lake Karakul in Tajikistan (25 Ma, crater diameter 52 km) and Lake Taihu in China (360–415 Ma, 65 km).

Meteor craters in Ukraine

Astroblems of Ukraine

Thanks to the stability of the Ukrainian crystalline shield, several large astroblemes have been preserved on the territory of our country; moreover, their density is the highest in the world. All craters on the territory of Ukraine are under a layer of organic sediments with a thickness of 100 to 500 m, that is, no signs of astroblemes are visible on the surface of the Earth.

The largest of the Ukrainian astroblemes, Manevicheskaya in the Volyn region, near the village of Krymno, has a diameter of 45 km and probably arose 65 million years ago. The origin of this structure is still a matter of debate.

The Boltysh crater in the Kirovograd region has a diameter of 24 km and arose 65 million years ago, only 2-5 thousand years earlier than the Chicxulub crater, which confirms the theory of multiple impacts as the cause of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction.

All impact craters on the territory of Ukraine are under a layer of organic sediments with a thickness of 100 to 500 m

The Obolon crater in the Poltava region appeared 170 million years ago and has a diameter of 20 km. According to some researchers, it arose simultaneously with the craters of Manicouagan (Canada), Rochechouart (France), Saint-Martin (Canada) and Red Wing (USA).

The Ternovsky crater on the outskirts of Krivoy Rog is 280 million years old and has a diameter of 12 km. Right in the crater there is the Ternovsky district of the city and several mining quarries.

The Ilyinets crater in the Vinnytsia region with a diameter of 7 km appeared 400 million years ago, and the Belilovsky crater (6.2 km) in the Zhytomyr region 165 million years ago. The Rotmistrovsky crater in the Cherkasy region is 120 million years old and has a diameter of 2.7 km.

The Zelenogai astrobleme in the Kirovograd region consists of two craters. A large one, with a diameter of 2.5 km and a smaller one, with a diameter of 800 m. The age of both impact structures is about 80 million years, so it can be assumed that they arose as a result of the impact of two fragments of one celestial body.

Fake astroblemes

At first glance, the Nastapok arc looks like a typical astrobleme

It would seem that with the current level of technology, the presence of a huge number of satellites photographing the Earth from all imaginable angles and optical ranges, the search for astroblemes should be simplified, but this is not so. Moreover, many cyclic structures clearly visible from space, which at first glance cannot be anything other than impact craters, in fact are not such.

Thus, the ideal arc of Nastapok in Hudson Bay has long been considered the outer rim of a huge, 450-kilometer crater hidden under water. Studies in 1976 showed a complete absence of minerals and debris characteristic of impact structures. It is now generally accepted that the arc arose naturally during the process of mountain building.

Cosmonaut Valentin Lebedev compared the Richat structure to a children's pyramid of multi-colored rings

Another good example of a fake astrobleme is the “Eye of the Sahara,” the Richat ring structure, 50 km in diameter in Mauritania. It was initially thought that Richat was a typical impact crater, but the flat shape of the bottom and the absence of impact rocks refute this idea. According to the current version, the structure owes its shape to the erosion of sedimentary rocks.

The biggest stone

The Goba meteorite most closely resembles an ancient altar

The largest meteorite found on Earth came to us 80 thousand years ago and was found in 1920, near the Goba West farm in Namibia. Based on the name of the area, he was given the name Goba. The heavenly stone was found by accident, while plowing a field; no crater remained around it; it is assumed that the fall occurred at low speed and was not accompanied by a significant release of energy.

The Goba iron meteorite measures 2.7 x 2.7 x 0.9 meters and is composed of 84% iron plus 16% nickel. The mass of the “bar,” which was never weighed, was estimated in 1920 at 66 tons. Due to oxidation, the collection of scientific samples and vandalism, the meteorite lost weight to 60 tons. However, it still remains the largest piece of miraculous iron on the planet.

Over 95 years, scientists, vandals and the laws of physics have “bitten off” 6 tons, or 10% of the mass, from the Goba meteorite

Crater of the name of stupidity

Bullet hole in the Earth - a nuclear crater with a diameter of 1.9 km

The crater on the site of the island of Elugelab, which was once part of the Enewetak Atoll, which in turn belongs to the Marshall Islands, has nothing to do with astroblemes, but it perfectly illustrates human stupidity.

The crater, 1.9 km in diameter and 50 m deep, was left after the world's first hydrogen bomb test on November 1, 1952. The Ivy Mike device, which had no practical military value due to its size, was intended solely to test a two-stage design in which a nuclear bomb was used as a “fuse” for a hydrogen one. The power of the explosion is estimated at 10–12 megatons of TNT.

Victim #1

The only documented case of a meteorite hitting a person occurred on November 30, 1954 in the United States. The 3.86 kg meteorite, later named the Sulacoga meteorite, crashed through the roof of the Hodges family home, bounced off a radio on the table and hit 31-year-old Ann Elizabeth Hodges, who was dozing on the sofa. The heavenly stone was slowed down by the Earth's atmosphere and broken ceilings, so it did not cause serious injuries to Ann Hodges; the woman escaped with bruises on her side. The next day, a second fragment of the same meteorite, weighing 1.68 kg, was found by Julius K. McKinney, a neighbor of the Hodges family.

Ann Hodges didn't make money from her popularity, but her neighbor sold the meteorite and fixed up his farm

Strategic Defense Initiative

This is how NASA scientists see the capture of a small asteroid for study

The press, especially the yellow press, often flashes reports about another asteroid approaching the Earth, capable of destroying all life. Indeed, modern detection means, space and ground-based telescopes, are capable of detecting even a relatively small celestial body. But detection usually occurs just a couple of days before the passage of a space object at a minimum distance from the Earth. And often after maximum approach.

Asteroids ranging in size from 10 to 150 m fly past our planet, including at a distance of only 14 thousand km (slightly more than the diameter of the Earth), almost every year. Such objects were discovered in 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2014, but none of them received any significant danger rating.

Asteroid 2009 VA, 7 m in size, flew on November 6, 2009, only 14 thousand km from Earth. It was discovered 15 hours before the approach

Theoretical research on the issue of destroying or deflecting potentially dangerous asteroids is being carried out by space agencies and private companies in many countries around the world; even the Ukrainian Yuzhmash has a similar blueprint. Various options for destroying the uninvited space guest are being considered, up to a scenario close to that shown in the movie epic Armageddon. But, in fact, now earthlings have no protection from threats from space. However, planetary defense is a topic for another large study, perhaps we will return to it later.

In the meantime, NASA plans not to reflect, but rather to drag a small asteroid closer to Earth to study it and develop technologies for possible mining on asteroids in the distant future. The first stage of the program is planned for 2026; you can read more about the Asteroid Redirect Mission on the NASA website.

For self-study

• Earth Impact Database - Officially recognized impact craters sorted by age, diameter and region.
• Meteor Impact Viewer – Google map with meteorite craters, built on the Earth Impact Database.
• KMZ file for Google Earth based on Impact Database.

👁 1 190

Constantly exposed to “space bombardment” by large and small space projectiles. Relatively small cosmic bodies (tens of meters in size), as a rule, completely burn up and fall to Earth in the form of dust.

Large bodies, more than 100 m in size, easily pierce the atmosphere and reach the surface of our planet. At a speed of several tens of kilometers per second, the energy released during a collision significantly exceeds the energy of the explosion of a TNT charge of equal mass and is more comparable to nuclear weapons. In such collisions (scientists call them impact events), an astrobleme is formed.

Crater diagram

Battle scars

Currently, more than one and a half hundred large astroblemes have been found on Earth. However, almost until the middle of the 20th century, such an obvious reason for the appearance of craters as impacts was considered a very dubious hypothesis. People began to consciously search for large craters of meteorite origin starting in the 1970s, and they continue to be found today - one to three annually. Moreover, such craters still form today, although the probability of their occurrence depends on size (inversely proportional to the square of the crater diameter).

About a kilometer in diameter, forming 15-kilometer craters upon impact, fall quite often (by geological standards) - approximately once every quarter of a million years. But truly serious impact events, capable of forming a crater with a diameter of 200-300 km, occur much less frequently - approximately once every 150 million years.

The oldest: Suavjärvi crater (Russia), D = 16 km, age - 2.4 billion years. The world's oldest crater, Suavyarvi, is located in Karelia, not far from Medvezhyegorsk. The diameter of the crater is 16 km, but it is extremely difficult to detect even on satellite maps due to geological deformations. It's no joke - the meteorite that created Suavjärvi hit the Earth 2.4 billion years ago! However, some do not agree with the version of Suavjärvi. It is believed that the impact rocks found there were formed as a result of a series of small collisions much later.

Popular geochemistry

How to distinguish an impact crater from other relief features? “The most important sign of meteorite origin is that the crater is superimposed on the geological relief randomly,” explains “PM” the head of the meteoritics laboratory of the Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry. V.I. Vernadsky (GEOKHI) RAS Mikhail Nazarov. “The volcanic origin of the crater must correspond to certain geological structures, and if they are not there, but the crater is there, this is a serious reason to consider the option of an impact origin.”

The most inhabited: crater Ries (Germany), D = 24 km, age - 14.5 million years. Nördlingen Ries is a region in Western Bavaria formed by a meteorite fall more than 14 million years ago. Surprisingly, the crater is perfectly preserved and can be seen from space - and it is clearly visible that a little to the side of its center in the impact depression there is... a city. This is Nördlingen, a historic town surrounded by a fortress wall in the shape of a perfect circle, which is precisely due to the shape of the impact crater. By the way, Kaluga, also located in an impact crater formed 380 million years ago, can compete with it in terms of habitability.

Another confirmation of meteorite origin may be the presence of meteorite fragments (impactors) in the crater. This feature works for small craters (hundreds of meters - kilometers in diameter) formed by impacts of iron-nickel meteorites (small stony meteorites usually crumble when passing through the atmosphere).

Impactors that form large (tens of kilometers or more) craters, as a rule, completely evaporate upon impact, so finding their fragments is problematic. But traces nevertheless remain: for example, chemical analysis can detect an increased content of platinum group metals in the rocks at the bottom of the crater. The rocks themselves also change under the influence of high temperatures and the passage of the shock wave of the explosion: minerals melt, enter into chemical reactions, rearrange the crystal lattice - in general, a phenomenon called shock metamorphism occurs.

The largest: Vredefort crater (South Africa), D = 300 km, age - approximately 2 billion 23 million years. The world's largest impact crater, Vredefort, is located in South Africa, 120 km from Johannesburg. Its diameter reaches 300 km, and therefore the crater can only be observed on satellite images. Vredefort arose as a result of the collision of the Earth with a meteorite with a diameter of approximately 10 km, and this happened approximately 2 billion 23 million years (± 4 million) ago - that is, it is the second oldest known crater. Interestingly, a number of unconfirmed “competitors” lay claim to the title of “largest”. These include the Wilkes Land crater, a 500 km geological formation in Antarctica, and the 600 km Shiva Crater off the coast of India.

The presence of the resulting rocks - impactites - also serves as evidence of the impact origin of the crater. Typical impactites are diaplect glasses formed at high pressures from quartz and feldspar. There are also exotic things - for example, in the Popigai crater, diamonds were recently discovered that were formed from graphite contained in the rocks at high pressure created by a shock wave.

The most beautiful: Kaali crater (Estonia), D = 110 m, age - 4000 years. One of the most attractive craters for tourists and romantics is the Estonian Kaali on the island of Saaremaa. Like most medium- and small-sized impact craters, Kaali is a lake, and due to its relative youth (only 4000 years old) it has retained a perfectly regular round shape. The lake is surrounded by a 16-meter, again regularly shaped, earthen rampart; nearby there are several smaller craters, “knocked out” by satellite fragments.

Landscape design

When a large meteorite collides with the Earth, traces of shock loads inevitably remain in the rocks surrounding the explosion site - shaking cones, traces of melting, cracks. An explosion usually forms breccias (rock fragments) - authigenic (simply crushed) or allogeneic (crushed, moved and mixed) - which also serve as one of the signs of impact origin. True, the sign is not very accurate, since breccias can have different origins. For example, the breccias of the Kara structure were considered for a long time to be deposits of glaciers, although later this idea had to be abandoned - for glacial ones they had too sharp angles.

Another external sign of a meteorite crater is the layers of underlying rocks squeezed out by the explosion (basement shaft) or ejected crushed rocks (fill shaft). Moreover, in the latter case, the order of occurrence of rocks does not correspond to the “natural” one. When large meteorites fall in the center of the crater, due to hydrodynamic processes, a slide or even an annular rise is formed - much the same as on water if someone throws a stone there.

The most visual: Barringer crater (USA), D = 1.2 km, age - 50,000 years. Barringer crater near the city of Winslow (Arizona) is apparently the most spectacular crater, since it formed in a desert area and was practically not distorted by relief or vegetation , water, geological processes. The diameter of the crater is small (1.2 km), and the formation itself is relatively young, only 50 thousand years old - so its preservation is excellent. The crater is named after Daniel Barringer, a geologist who first suggested that it was an impact crater in 1906 and spent the next 27 years of his life drilling and searching for the meteorite itself.

Sands of time

Not all meteorite craters are located on the Earth's surface. Erosion does its destructive work, and the craters are covered with sand and soil. “Sometimes they are found during drilling, as happened with the buried Kaluga crater - a 15-km structure approximately 380 million years old,” says Mikhail Nazarov. “And sometimes even from their absence interesting conclusions can be drawn. If nothing happens to the surface, then the number of impact structures there should approximately correspond to estimates of the average density of craters.

The fall of a meteorite in Chelyabinsk caused a wave of discussions around the world. However, in the distant historical past of our planet, collisions with cosmic bodies caused shock waves of much greater power than even the sensational Tunguska meteorite in 1908.

Large asteroids left behind giant marks on the Earth's surface, many of which are visible even now. There are hundreds of craters around the world, but fewer than 50 are considered large (more than 20 km in diameter).

Interestingly, in the Kirovograd region, in Ukraine, there is an ancient crater with a diameter of 24 km, which was formed as a result of a meteorite impact 65 million years ago. But it cannot be compared with the giant craters of the top ten.

Vredefort Crater is the largest impact crater on Earth, which is located in the Free State province, South Africa.

The asteroid, as a result of the collision with which the crater was formed, is considered the largest cosmic body that has come into contact with the Earth over the past 4 billion years. According to experts, its diameter was more than 15 kilometers.

The diameter of the modern crater is 300 kilometers. Due to its enormous size, it was included in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2005.

The age of the crater is estimated at more than 2 billion years. The second oldest known crater on Earth, Vredefort is at least three hundred million years younger than the Suavjärvi crater in Russia.

Vredefort Crater is one of the few ringed (multi-ring) impact craters on Earth, more commonly found in other parts of the Solar System.

The most famous example of this type of crater is the Valhalla crater on Callisto, a moon of Jupiter.

Unfortunately, the existence of the crater is under threat, as mining may begin in it.

Sudbury Crater or Sudbury Structure is a huge impact crater in Ontario, Canada.

It is the second largest on Earth, and also one of the oldest. It is believed that the crater was originally much larger than the present one, which is 200 km in diameter.

It is believed that the meteorite that created the crater was more than 10 km in diameter and fell to Earth 1.849 million years ago.

The impact was so strong that debris scattered over an area of ​​more than 1,600,000 km2 around the epicenter. Fragments of fragments are found even in Minnesota.

Chicxulub Crater is a huge ancient crater hidden beneath the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. The crater is more than 180 km in diameter, making it the third largest scientifically proven impact crater on Earth.

It is believed that the crater was formed about 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period as a result of a meteorite impact with a diameter of about 10 km. The impact energy is estimated at 5·1023 joules or 100,000 gigatons of TNT equivalent (for comparison, the largest thermonuclear device had a power of about 0.05 gigatons).

The impact is also believed to have caused a tsunami of 50-100 meters in height. The raised dust particles caused climate changes similar to nuclear winter, so that the Earth's surface was covered by a dust cloud from direct sunlight for several years.

The approximate timing of the collision with the mass extinction of animals at the Mesozoic-Cenozoic boundary allowed physicist Luis Alvarez and his son, geologist Walter Alvarez, to suggest that it was this event that caused the death of the dinosaurs.

Manicouagan Crater is one of the oldest craters on Earth and is located in the Cote-Nord region of Quebec, Canada. According to experts, it was formed more than 215 million years ago by the impact of an asteroid with a diameter of 5 km.

Initially, the diameter of the crater was 100 km, but during the process of erosion it was reduced to 71 km. There are several ringed structures, as well as a circular lake.

Recent studies have shown that the rocks molten from the collision are 214 ± 1 million years old. Thus, this collision occurred 13 ± 1 million years before the end of the Triassic period.

The Popigai crater is located in Siberia and shares, along with the Canadian Manicouagan crater, the 4th largest crater on Earth.

This impact crater is about 100 km in diameter. The asteroid impact that created the crater occurred more than 35 million years ago.

Geologists could not explore the crater for a long time, since the area was closed due to the mining of diamonds in the area, which were formed as a result of an asteroid impact.

Finally, in 1997, research began. The meteorite is classified as either a chondrite, 8 km in diameter, or a rocky asteroid, 5 km in diameter.

The Chesapeake Bay Crater was formed by a meteorite that struck the east coast of North America about 85 million years ago.

It is one of the best preserved wet craters and the largest crater in the United States. Its diameter is about 90 km.

Layering of sedimentary rocks over the crater debris formed the modern appearance of Chesapeake Bay.

The initial impact caused massive destruction as millions of liters of water, sediment and rubble were thrown kilometers into the atmosphere within seconds of impact.

The impact also caused a tsunami so strong that it covered the peaks of the Blue Ridge mountain range.

Acraman Crater is a highly eroded geological feature in southern Australia.

Its location is marked on the shore of Lake Akraman, which has a perfectly round shape and was formed after an asteroid impact.

The diameter of the crater is 90 km. The catastrophe occurred approximately 580 million years ago. After the impact, energy was released at a level of 5.2 x 106 megatons of TNT.

Evidence of a huge impact can be found up to 300 km east of the crater.

8. Puchezh-Katunsky crater

The Puchezh-Katunsky crater is a meteorite crater in the Chkalovsky region, in Russia. The age of the crater is about 167 million years, which dates its appearance to the Jurassic period.

It has a diameter of 80 km, located 80 km north of Nizhny Novgorod. The crater was discovered in 1965, the first in Russia.

For research purposes, the Vorotilovskaya deep well (5374 m) was drilled in the area of ​​the impact center. The crater, which is no longer visible on the surface, is distinguished by changes in vegetation and terrain.

This crater is one of the few craters whose appearance dates are not associated with the period of mass extinction of life on the planet.

Arizona Meteor Crater or Barringer Crater

Barringer Crater, located near the city of Winslow in the northern Arizona Desert (USA), is not only one of the most beautiful, but also one of the best preserved craters on Earth.

The discovery of this crater was the starting point in geology. Until Daniel Barringer finally proved that the crater was the result of a meteorite colliding with the Earth and was not of volcanic origin, geologists did not believe that meteorites could play any role in Earth's geology.

Even the craters on the Moon were attributed to volcanic origin. Since Barringer made this discovery, numerous impact craters have been discovered throughout the planet.

The Arizona Meteor Crater is 1.2 km in diameter and 229 meters deep. The edges of the crater rise 46 meters above the surrounding plain. The crater was formed 50,000 years ago as a result of the fall of a meteorite with a diameter of 50 m and a weight of 300,000 tons.

Pingualuit Crater

The crater, 400 meters deep, rises 160 meters above the surrounding tundra. At 267 meters deep, the crater is filled with water, forming one of the deepest lakes in North America. The lake is also considered one of the cleanest in the world, with clear waters visible up to 35 meters.

Wolfe Creek Impact Crater

It measures approximately 880 meters in diameter and has a mostly flat floor 55 meters below the crater rim and almost 25 meters below the sandy plain that surrounds it.

Surprisingly large trees grow in the center of the crater, drawing moisture from the crater's water reserves remaining after the summer rains. The crater was formed 300,000 years ago.

Amguid Crater

The flat central part of the crater is covered with aeolian deposits that refract light, making the crater appear white from space.

Experts estimate that the d'Amguid crater could have formed less than 100,000 years ago, but in any case, it is more than 10,000 years old.

Aorounga Meteor Crater

Lonar Crater

Gosse's Bluff Crater

The crater is believed to have been formed by an asteroid or comet impact approximately 142 million years ago. Initially, the rim of the crater was 22 km wide, but was washed away due to erosion. The 180 m high, 5 km diameter structure now visible is the eroded remains of the central part of the crater.

Tenoumer Crater

Tswaing Crater

Surface springs, groundwater and rainwater have filled the crater, turning it into a lake rich in dissolved carbonate and sodium chloride (table salt), which has been collected since 1956.