World’s largest asteroid impact zone
Researchers have recently found world’s largest asteroid impact zone in central Australia. The two impact zones total more than 400 kilometres across, in the Warburton Basin in Central Australia. They extend through the Earth’s crust, which was about 30 kilometres thick in this area.
The crater from the impact millions of years ago has long disappeared. But a team of geophysicists has found the twin scars of the impacts, the largest impact zone ever found on Earth, hidden deep in the earth’s crust.
The impact zone was discovered during drilling as part of geothermal research, in an area near the borders of South Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory.
According to the researchers, the two asteroids must have been over 10 kilometres across, and it would have been curtains for many life species on the planet at the time.
The exact date of the impacts remains unclear. The surrounding rocks are 300 to 600 million years old, but evidence of the type left by other meteorite strikes was lacking.
The research is published in journal Tectonophysics.