Barringer Meteorite Crater * Meteorites Craters and Impacts
the Barringer Crater Company
As has been the case since D. Moreau Barringer secured the ownership of the Barringer Meteorite Crater in 1903, the Barringer Crater Company continues to promote its founder's abiding interest in the events surrounding the creation of the Crater. Barringer's descendants, now in their fourth generation, own and operate the company under the same guiding principles which he so strongly advocated. In keeping with his wishes, the company operates as a privately held business, with each of eight branches of his family represented on the Board of Directors.
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The fundamental purpose of the company continues to be the preservation of the Crater as a memorial to the pioneering scientific work of its founder. Recognizing that the Crater is a unique natural land-mark of great scientific importance, strong public interest, and significant educational value, it is the company's long-held policy to maintain the property in as nearly a natural state as possible and to ensure appropriate and controlled access to it by the general public. The company also is committed to making the Crater available to the scientific community for ongoing research and field study.
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In addition to maintaining the Crater itself, the Barringer Crater Company has a strong interest in encouraging and supporting scientific exploration and research within the field of meteoritics, particularly in the area of impact phenomena. Each year the company provides modest research grants to scientists around the world to assist them in conducting essential field work. In addition, the company helps sponsor a limited number of highly regarded doctoral students in attending important international scientific meetings and seminars. The company is advised by several internationally acclaimed scientists, and a number of its directors are actively involved in the Meteoritical Society, a scientific association interested in the study of asteroids, comets, meteors and the solar system. In 1982, the company established an endowed award program within the Meteoritical Society, known as the Barringer Medal, to recognize outstanding scientific achievement in the field of impact cratering.
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The Barringer Crater Company has an ongoing interest in promoting scientific education about the Crater and its role in the evolution of the solar system. The company believes that through its stewardship of the Crater, both the general public and the scientific community will continue to benefit from the educational and scientific value of this unique and fascinating natural phenomenon.
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Hand Built for maximum Impact by The Cyrus Company. 1998.
DANIEL MOREAU BARRINGER AND THE BATTLE FOR THE IMPACT THEORY
by Carla Barringer Rabinowitz
"Textbooks are concerned with presenting the facts of the case (whatever the case may be) as if there can be no disputing them, as if they are fixed and immutable. And still worse, there is usually no clue given as to who claimed these are the facts of the case, or how "it" discovered these facts (there being no he or she, I or we). There is no sense of the frailty or ambiguity of human judgment, no hint of the possibilities of error. Knowledge is presented as a commodity to be acquired, never as a human struggle to understand, to overcome falsity, to stumble toward the truth."
- Neil Postman, The End of Education
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The story of the Barringer Meteorite Crater is a story of scientific adventure and discovery, of a stubborn outsider who stood up against the entire weight of scientific opinion of his time, and was ultimately proven right. In the course of his twenty-seven year battle, Daniel Moreau Barringer saw his theory about the impact origin of his crater vindicated, but failed to discover the fortune in meteoritic iron which he was convinced lay at the bottom. Ultimately, the crater may have contributed to his death. His story provides a fascinating glimpse into the nature of discovery, and the influence of pride, personality, the profit motive, intuitive leaps and rigorous logic on the progress of science.
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The story begins with a scientific patriarch. Grove Karl Gilbert, the first person to conduct a full scientific survey of the mysterious crater in the Arizona desert, was the most renowned geologist of his generation, and has been described as "perhaps the closest equivalent to a saint that American science has yet produced." (Hoyt, p.37) He was tolerant, generous, and fair-minded, with an intense dislike of controversy of any kind. As chief geologist of the U.S. Geological Survey, his prestige was so great that none of his colleagues or successors was willing to publicly question his conclusions - even when it became apparent that some of those conclusions had been wrong.
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In 1891, Gilbert became interested in reports of a large collection of nickel-iron meteorites found in the neighborhood of a gigantic circular crater in the Arizona desert. Since he had already speculated on the possible consequences of a large meteorite striking the earth, he decided to visit the crater and try to determine whether it had been the result of such an impact.
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In keeping with his careful, methodical approach to science, Gilbert considered two alternative hypotheses for the formation of the crater: first, that it had been formed by a meteorite; and second, that it was the result of a massive explosion of steam, produced by volcanic heat at a great distance below the surface. The idea that it might be an actual volcanic crater was ruled out by the absence of any volcanic rocks at the site.
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In his expedition to the crater (then called Coon Butte or Coon Mountain) in October of 1891, he devised what he considered to be two "crucial tests" of the impact hypothesis. First, he reasoned that if the crater had been produced by an explosion, the material ejected from it would be equal in volume to the crater's hollow. If it had been produced by a meteorite, on the other hand, the meteorite would still be there. Lacking our modern understanding of the mechanics of impact at planetary speeds, Gilbert assumed that the size of the meteorite would be similar to the size of the crater, and that it would fill a substantial portion of the hollow. The volume of the hollow would thus be smaller than that of the ejected material on the rim.
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The second test involved the supposed magnetic effect of a large volume of buried iron. If a mass of iron large enough to produce the crater was still present below the surface, its attraction would affect the direction of a compass needle, creating local anomalies.
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Both tests turned up negative. By Gilbert's calculations, the volume of material in the crater rim just equalled the volume removed from the hole. A variety of experiments with magnets produced no indication of a large mass of buried iron. The idea of a volcanic steam explosion was thus, in Gilbert's view, the "only surviving hypothesis." The presence of meteorites in the vicinity of the crater was simply a coincidence.
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Gilbert used his investigation of the crater, and his own abandonment of the impact hypothesis, in a series of 1895 lectures illustrating the application of the dispassionate scientific approach. It was left to an entirely different personality to demonstrate the limitations of that approach.
BARRINGER'S LEAP
Daniel Moreau Barringer, a Philadelphia mining engineer, was a man of immense vigor and intelligence, a charismatic, impatient and hot-tempered individual who enjoyed quoting his wife's description of him as "half gentleman and half savage". As is immediately apparent from his correspondence, he did not suffer fools gladly. After graduating from Princeton University in 1879, at the age of 19, he went on to become president of his class at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, from which he graduated in 1882, receiving his A.M. from Princeton in the same year. But the practice of law bored him. His real interests were in the outdoor life and in big-game hunting in the West, where Theodore Roosevelt and the author Owen Wister were his hunting companions.
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In search of an occupation which would allow him to pursue these interests, he enrolled in a geology course at Harvard, but dropped it when the instructor asked him a question he considered "childish". He later studied mineralogy at the University of Virginia, while writing a book on The Laws of Mines and Mining in the United States, which remained for many years the authoritative work on the subject. By 1902 his successful mining ventures, in particular the discovery of the Commonwealth Silver Mine in Pearce, Arizona, had left him the owner of a considerable fortune.
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In a casual conversation with his friend Samuel J. Holsinger in 1902, Barringer became aware of the existence of the crater and the meteoritic irons associated with it, and of the local theory that it had been created by an iron body falling out of space. As Holsinger later recalled the incident, he "dropped his cigar", and exclaimed, "That must be impossible! If true why have I not heard of this remarkable phenomenon before?" Like Gilbert, Barringer reasoned that if the crater had been formed by such an impact, an enormous mass of meteoritic iron would still lie buried within it.
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A few months later, Holsinger confirmed by letter that small balls of meteoritic iron were randomly mixed with the ejected rocks of the crater rim. This random mixture of rock and iron proved to Barringer that the crater had been created simultaneously with the arrival of the meteorites; if one had preceded the other, the rock and the iron would be found in separate layers. He "no longer doubted, but...knew as well as I know today that the crater...must be due to the impact of a body colliding with our earth." (Barringer to Thomson, 2/7/1912; quoted in Abrahams, p. 40) Without ever having seen the crater, he enlisted his friend, Philadelphia mathematician and physicist Benjamin Chew Tilghman, in the formation of the Standard Iron Company, and began the process of securing mining patents for the crater and the land around it.
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Between 1903 and 1905, Barringer and Tilghman conducted extensive exploration and drilling operations at the crater. They obtained a wealth of new geological information, much of which indicated that the rocks surrounding the crater had been subjected to a sudden and violent shock. Attempts to locate the meteorite, however, were fruitless. Because of the round shape of the crater, Barringer and Tilghman assumed that the meteorite had struck from directly above, and therefore lay directly under the center. Two mine shafts sunk in the center ended in quicksand at 180 feet down, and a series of exploratory drill holes produced nothing.
THE SCIENTIFIC BATTLE
By this time, the search for the mythical fortune had become inseparably linked with the quest for the prestige of being the first person to prove the impact origin of the crater. Fearful that others would claim credit for their discovery, Barringer and Tilghman each prepared a lengthy paper detailing the evidence in support of the impact theory. The papers were published in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia in 1906.
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It is probably significant for the future course of the controversy that Barringer's first paper began with a tactless reference to Grove Karl Gilbert. As he later described it to the inventor and industrialist Elihu Thomson, who had become a strong supporter and good friend, "I gave expression to my surprise that any experienced geologist could have failed to recognize from the evidence, so plainly to be seen, the fact that this crater could not be the result of volcanic forces...It was the expression of that opinion which has rankled with the members of the U.S. Geological Survey and has made me persona non grata to them." (Barringer to Thomson, 2/17/1912)
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The arguments in Barringer's and Tilghman's papers were based on observations which Gilbert had also made, but whose significance Gilbert had missed:
The presence of a vast amount - probably in the millions of tons - of finely pulverized silica. The pressures required to produce such a material, Barringer argued, were too great to be the product of any known volcanic force.
The large quantities of magnetic iron oxide, in the form of globular "shale balls", scattered around the rim and the surrounding plain. Some of the large balls, when split open, displayed the "Widmanstätten patterns" characteristic of iron meteorites. Much of the rest consisted of a fine blackish-gray powder, crystalline in structure, "with intensely fine grains of silica powder adhering so closely to its surface as to suggest adhesion." This powder, Tilghman noted, was "not a constituent of any of the rocks in the neighborhood", and furthermore was "different from any terrestrial magnetite known."
The random mixture of chunks of meteoritic material with the ejected rocks on the crater rim, and its symmetrical distribution around the crater, both of which demonstrated that the material must have been deposited simultaneously with the creation of the crater.
The fact that the different types of rock in the rim and "ejecta blanket" (material thrown out of the crater) appeared to have been deposited in the opposite order from their order in the underlying rock beds - as if the beds themselves had been overturned.
The absence of any naturally occurring volcanic rock in the vicinity of the crater. Regarding Gilbert's failure to find any magnetic anomalies, Tilghman noted that while the presence of a single large mass of iron should produce such an anomaly, a mass of small magnetized fragments would not. He found it difficult to discuss Gilbert's steam explosion hypothesis, since no one had ever seen or known of such a process in actuality, except in association with an ordinary volcano. (Hoyt, pp. 89-99)
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The evidence presented by Barringer and Tilghman in 1906, and at greater length by Barringer in 1909, proved convincing to a small group of influential people. Barringer, with what his sons later described as his "bulldog persistence in the face of apathy, opposition, and even ridicule" (Mark, p. 37), was tireless in inviting others to visit the crater. Most of those who did visit quickly accepted the impact hypothesis. But Gilbert and the U.S.G.S could not be induced to comment publicly; Gilbert perhaps because of his dislike for controversy, and his colleagues because of their reluctance to disagree with a revered superior.
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The most important of the converts was the eminent geologist George Perkins Merrill. Merrill visited the crater in 1907, and subsequently published the series of papers which marked the turning point in the debate over its origin.
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Merrill's conclusions were based to a large extent on his analysis of two previously unknown varieties of metamorphosed sandstone found at the crater, which Barringer had identified as "Variety A" and "Variety B". Merrill described Variety B as a type of quartz glass, closely resembling the fulgurite glass occasionally produced by a lightning strike on sand. (This glass, later dubbed "lechatelierite", has since been accepted as a diagnostic marker for an impact crater.) Both varieties, in his opinion, could only have been produced by a brief but enormous pressure, greater than any known to occur through terrestrial processes. He also pointed to the undisturbed rock beds below the crater, which in his view negated the possibility of any explosive force from below.
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In the same years, Barringer made another discovery. All previous explorations of the crater had been based on the assumption that the meteorite struck from directly above. Barringer, however, began to test that assumption by firing rifles into mud at various angles, and discovered that a projectile traveling at an oblique angle at high velocity would nevertheless create a round hole. Because of the upward bulge of the south rim, and the symmetrical distribution of meteorite fragments around a north-south axis, he concluded that the meteorite was actually located under that rim, and all further drilling was carried out there. By this time, Barringer was estimating the size of the meteorite at "in excess of a million tons." (Hoyt, p.134)
THE REACTION
Not all of Barringer's audience was convinced. Harold Abrahams, in his introduction to the collected correspondence between Barringer and Elihu Thomson, describes Barringer's 1909 address to the National Academy of Sciences at Princeton: "[S]ome persons could scarcely conceal their derisive thoughts. Nevertheless, with vocal encouragement from Thomson in the audience, Barringer ploughed through his paper, painful though it must have been for him, until he completed it."
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L. A. Fletcher, in an article published in Nature in 1906, argued that the crushing of the silica grains could have been produced by an enormous pressure of steam, similar to that observed at Mt. Etna, and that the meteoritic iron might have fallen earlier, and been ejected from the crater along with the local rock. A Yale University geologist suggested that the crater was simply a limestone "sink"; Barringer wrote back to him that his theory was "absurd" and that the only other man who had voiced it was "blind or demented." (Hoyt, p. 108)
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As the arguments for and against the impact hypothesis swirled around the Crater, the U.S.G.S. maintained its silence. William Hoyt, in his definitive book on the history of the controversy, ascribes that silence to a desire "to preserve the fictional infallibility that bureaucracies everywhere and at all times have tacitly claimed." (Hoyt, p. 101) Barringer, characteristically, was more blunt. As he wrote in 1912 to Elihu Thomson, "They know in their heart of hearts that I have got them beaten and yet they are not men enough to admit it." (Barringer to Thomson, 10/29/1912; Abrahams, p. 68)
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Other factors may also have been at work. Barringer's outsider status, his forceful and opinionated personality, and his scornful dismissal of contrary opinions, could not have endeared him to the scientific establishment of his time. Also significant in the resistance to his startling new theory was the generally accepted geological principle of "uniformitarianism", the belief that unique or catastrophic events should not be called upon as explanations for geological phenomena, but rather that all terrestrial landforms have been produced gradually, over immense periods of time, by the ordinary physical processes which we see in action today.
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In spite of this resistance, Barringer's meteorite impact hypothesis continued to gain ground. At the same time, however, he was becoming increasingly agitated at what he perceived as attempts to deny him credit for the discovery. "You will understand my request," he wrote plaintively to Thomson, "for you have boys of your own. Some day this crater is going to be a greatly talked about place, and if the above credit is due, as is certainly the case, I would like to have it generally known for the sake of the children." (Barringer to Thomson, 2/1/1912; Abrahams, p.36.) He correctly predicted that when his theory was finally generally accepted, someone else would claim the credit; the prediction came true when a 1928 National Geographic article attributed the impact hypothesis to Grove Karl Gilbert, and failed to mention Barringer's work at all.
PRACTICAL AND THEORETICAL DISASTERS
Barringer's attempts to convince the scientific community of the truth of his theory were, of course, intimately connected with his growing need to raise capital for continued drilling. At the crater itself, things were not going well. Renewed drilling attempts under the south rim, conducted at enormous expense, had proved fruitless. A discouraged Tilghman had backed out of the venture in 1910.
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Compounding the practical disasters was a growing theoretical threat. Merrill's landmark paper of 1908, while supporting Barringer's theory in other respects, had gone on to raise the possibility that the meteorite had exploded and vaporized as a result of the enormous force of the impact. This suggestion was reinforced in 1924, when the astronomer Algernon Charles Gifford published a paper on the craters of the moon, in which he explained the uniform circularity of those craters as the result, not of the meteorite impacts themselves, but of the violent explosions resulting from those impacts.
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As passionately as Barringer had originally embraced the meteorite hypothesis, he now rejected the explosion corollary. "I have no patience" he fumed to Thomson in 1925, "with certain scientific men who spend days and nights in tremendous efforts to prove conjured up theories, mathematics and whatnot, of the causes of effects which to commonsense thinkers are obvious. So very rarely do we find their reasoning to be clear and crisp and easy to follow, simply because it is not based on common sense." (Barringer to Thomson, 4/27/1925; Hoyt, p. 219)
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At the time of this letter, Barringer was fully occupied with raising funds for a final assault on the meteorite. By this time, his estimate of its size had risen to 10 million tons, and he was envisioning an ultimate profit of $250,000,000 on a $500,000 investment. He had managed to interest a number of wealthy investors, while fighting off renewed scientific attacks on his theory and engaging in a protracted legal battle over his right to sell stock in the new mining enterprise.
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With $200,000 in stock subscriptions, work at the crater recommenced in January of 1928; but in November a new mine shaft hit water in such great quantities that the available equipment could not pump it out. An additional $500,000 was sought in order to allow work to continue. At this point some of the investors, alarmed, consulted the mathematician and astronomer Forest Ray Moulton for his opinion on the probable size of the meteorite.
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Moulton's answer was devastating. Based on his estimate of the amount of energy expended in the formation of the crater, and the probable speed of the incoming meteorite, he estimated its mass at 300,000 tons. That amount was only 3% of the 10 million claimed by Barringer, and, as Moulton realized, too small to justify any further investment. As if that weren't bad enough, Moulton went on to agree with the suggestions of Merrill and Gifford, that the meteorite had probably vaporized as a result of the force of the impact. With his dream collapsing around him, Barringer once again rejected Moulton's "hyfalutin theories" in favor of "common sense".
On September 11, 1929, the directors of the Meteor Crater Exploration and Mining Company voted to suspend all further operations. In a flurry of correspondence over the next three months, Moulton's conclusions were debated by Barringer, his directors and a number of prominent scientists, including the astronomers Henry Norris Russell and Harlow Shapley. Gradually it became clear that Moulton's arguments were persuasive. On November 23, Moulton's second and more thorough analysis arrived; it buttressed the author's original conclusions with 127 pages of reasoning and mathematical analysis. By November 30, Barringer was dead of a massive heart attack.
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More than $600,000 had been spent on the crater at the time of Barringer's death - about $10 million in today's dollars. He had lost nearly all of his own fortune, along with hundreds of thousands entrusted to him by his investors. But he lived to see his theory accepted by most of the scientific establishment. And, although the search for the meteorite was never resumed, his sons carried on his dream. In 1921 his second son "Reau" (D.M. Barringer Jr.) became the discoverer of the second positively identified meteorite crater, in Odessa, Texas. In 1923 his son Richard, then twelve years old, published an article in Popular Astronomy, using his father's experiments with rifles to argue for the impact origin of the craters of the Moon. Reau, Richard, two of their brothers and one sister ultimately became members of the Meteoritical Society, with Brandon and Reau serving as Vice President and President, respectively, and Richard as Councilor. In 1946, the crater was officially awarded the name of "Meteor Crater"; its proper scientific name, as determined by the Meteoritical Society, is the Barringer Meteorite Crater.
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Who better exemplifies the process of discovery - Gilbert, the fair-minded, careful, unbiased analyst, or Barringer, the passionate advocate whose dreams of wealth were mingled with his scientific vision? Gilbert saw the correct answer to the riddle of the crater, but lacked the passion to pursue it further when his first tests failed. Barringer was right when his intuition coincided with his self-interest, but wrong when the truth diverged from it.
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The progress of science is seldom a simple matter. In the words of Neil Postman, quoted at the beginning of this article, it is a "human struggle to understand, to overcome falsity, to stumble toward the truth."
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The definitive work on the history of the Barringer Crater, from which much of this article is taken, is William Hoyt's Coon Mountain Controversies (Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1987; 423 p.)
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A briefer and highly readable account, along with much equally readable material on other impact craters and the history of impact theory in general, can be found in Kathleen Mark, Meteorite Craters (Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1987; 247 p.)
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D.M. Barringer's correspondence with Elihu Thomson is collected in Harold J. Abrahams, Heroic Efforts at Meteor Crater, Arizona (N.J., Associated University Presses, Inc., 1983; 315 p.)
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A delightful short work on the Barringer Crater, meteorites, impacts, astronauts, and other related phenomena is Dean Smith, The Meteor Crater Story, (Meteor Crater Enterprises Inc., 1996; 69 p.) This booklet may be obtained for $4.95, plus postage and handling, from Meteor Crater Enterprises Inc, P.O. Box 0070, Flagstaff, AZ 86002-0070. Other educational materials available from Meteor Crater Enterprises include videotapes and an interactive computer program.
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Two comprehensive and scholarly articles on the history of meteoritics have been published by Ursula Marvin: "Meteorites, the Moon, and the History of Geology", Journal of Geological Education vol 34, p. 140 (1986), and "The Meteoritical Society: 1933 to 1993", Meteoritics vol. 28, p. 261-314 (1993).
D.M. Barringer's collected papers are available to scholars at the Princeton University Library.
WHAT IS THE BARRINGER METEORITE CRATER?
The Barringer Meteorite Crater (also known as "Meteor Crater") is a gigantic hole in the middle of the arid sandstone of the Arizona desert. A rim of smashed and jumbled boulders, some of them the size of small houses, rises 150 feet above the level of the surrounding plain. The crater itself is nearly a mile wide, and 570 feet deep.
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When Europeans first discovered the crater, the plain around it was covered with chunks of meteoritic iron - over 30 tons of it, scattered over an area 8 to 10 miles in diameter.
HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT MADE IT?
The process of scientific discovery involves the development of hypotheses, tentative explanations which may or may not account for the observable facts. A good scientific hypothesis will generate a number of logical consequences or predictions, which are capable of being tested directly. Ultimately, the hypothesis will be accepted as valid only if:
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repeated tests of these predictions, by different investigators, tend to confirm it;
it is consistent with other well-confirmed hypotheses;
it is more useful than other hypotheses in accounting for a broad range of observed facts; and
it is more economical or "elegant" than other hypotheses, in the sense of requiring fewer additional assumptions.
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Although meteorite falls had been reported for thousands of years, until this century no one had ever identified a crater created by such a fall. Even a meteorite as large as the 66-ton Hoba, the largest ever discovered, may be slowed so much by the Earth's atmosphere that it lands without making a significant hole.
In 1891 Grove Karl Gilbert, then chief geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, decided to test two conflicting hypotheses about the crater. The first was that the crater was created by the impact of a giant meteorite; the second, that it was the result of an explosion of superheated steam, caused by volcanic activity far below the surface.
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If an iron meteorite had created the crater, Gilbert assumed that it would have had to be nearly as big as the crater itself. So what predictions could he test?
First, the meteorite should be taking up a lot of space in the hollow of the crater. The volume of the hollow would therefore be less than the volume of the ejected material in the crater rim.
Second, the presence of a large mass of buried iron should affect the behavior of magnets and compass needles.
Neither prediction was confirmed. Gilbert concluded that a steam explosion was the only surviving hypothesis, in spite of the fact that no volcanic rocks had ever been found in the area. The meteorites around the crater were simply a coincidence.
A DIFFERENT APPROACH
Ten years later a very different sort of explorer came along. In 1902 Daniel Moreau Barringer, a successful mining engineer, heard about the crater. When he learned that small balls of meteoritic iron were randomly mixed with the ejected rocks of the crater rim, Barringer immediately concluded that the crater had resulted from a meteorite impact. If the meteorites had fallen at a different time from the time at which the crater was formed, they would have appeared in separate layers from the ejected rock.
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Like Gilbert, Barringer assumed that the meteorite which made the crater would have to be extremely large - large enough, in fact, for a major mining bonanza. Without ever having seen the crater, Barringer formed the Standard Iron Company and began securing mining patents.
The mining venture, starting with this intuitive leap, lasted for 27 years, cost Barringer and his associates over $600,000 ($10 million in today's money), and produced nothing. In the process, however, Barringer succeeded in convincing most of the scientific community that his impact theory was correct.
BARRINGER'S PROOF
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Rather than testing his impact hypothesis, Barringer set out to assemble the evidence in support of it. In 1906, and again in 1909, he presented his arguments for the impact origin of the crater to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. The evidence included:
A. The presence of millions of tons of finely pulverized silica, which could only have been created by enormous pressure.
B. The large quantities of meteoritic iron, in the form of globular "shale balls", scattered around the rim and surrounding plain.
C. The random mixture of meteoritic material and ejected rocks.
D. The fact that the different types of rocks in the rim and on the surrounding plain appeared to have been deposited in the opposite order from their order in the underlying rock beds.
E. The absence of any naturally occurring volcanic rock in the vicinity of the crater.
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In 1908, these conclusions were championed by geologist George P. Merrill. Merrill analyzed a new type of rock discovered by Barringer at the crater, which Barringer called "Variety B". He concluded that it was a type of quartz glass which could only be produced by intense heat, similar to the heat generated by a
lightning strike on sand. Merrill also pointed to the undisturbed rock beds below the crater, which proved that the force which created the crater did not come from below.
CRATERS ON THE MOON
During the same years, a debate was raging among astronomers about the origin of the craters on the moon. As with the Barringer crater, most astronomers initially assumed that those craters were volcanic. Gilbert himself, ironically, was one of the first to argue for an impact origin, in a paper published in 1893. In 1909, a German geologist advanced the same theory, based in part on the evidence presented by Barringer for the Arizona crater.
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One objection to the idea of an impact origin for the lunar craters was the fact that all lunar craters are round. Astronomers assumed that most meteorites would have struck the moon at oblique angles, producing elongated craters. Barringer, however, had experimented by firing rifle bullets into rocks and mud, and had discovered that a projectile arriving at an oblique angle would nevertheless make a round hole. In 1923, Barringer's 12-year-old son Richard published an article in Popular Astronomy, using his father's rifle experiments to argue for the impact origin of the lunar craters; Barringer himself repeated the arguments a short time later in the Scientific American.
The conclusive arguments in the lunar debate were provided by astronomers such as A. C. Gifford, who demonstrated that the force of an impact at astronomical speeds would result in the explosion of the meteorite. Whatever the original angle of impact, the result would be a circular crater.
WHERE WAS THE METEORITE?
In 1928, $200,000 was raised for a final assault on the meteorite. Barringer's directors, however, were growing nervous. When the new mine shaft hit water in such great quantities that it could not be pumped out, they consulted the astronomer F. R. Moulton for his opinion on the size of the meteorite.
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Moulton calculated the amount of energy which would be produced by an impact at the enormous speed typical of a meteorite arriving from space. He concluded that an object big enough to create the crater would probably weigh only 300,000 tons - 3% of the amount estimated by Barringer, and too small to justify any further drilling. In addition, Moulton argued that the explosion caused by the impact would result in the total vaporization of the meteorite.
In 1929, work was halted at the crater. By November of that year, it had become clear that other prominent scientists agreed with Moulton. Within weeks, Barringer was dead of a massive heart attack.
WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED SINCE THEN?
Scientists now believe that the crater was created approximately 50,000 years ago. The meteorite which made it was composed almost entirely of nickel-iron, suggesting that it may have originated in the interior of a small planet. It was 150 feet across, weighed roughly 300,000 tons, and was traveling at a speed of 40,000 miles per hour. The force generated by its impact was equal to the explosion of 20 million tons of TNT.
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In 1946, meteorite collector Harvey H. Nininger analyzed the tiny metallic particles mixed into the soil around the crater, along with the small "bombs" of melted rock within it. He concluded that both types of particles were solidified droplets, which must have condensed from a cloud of rock and metal vaporized by the impact. Here, he believed, was proof that the crater was created by explosion.
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In 1963, geologist Eugene Shoemaker published his landmark paper analyzing the similarities between the Barringer crater and craters created by nuclear test explosions in Nevada. Carefully mapping the sequence of layers of the underlying rock, and the layers of the ejecta blanket, where those rocks were deposited in reverse order, he demonstrated that the nuclear craters and the Barringer crater were structurally similar in nearly all respects. His paper provided the clinching arguments in favor of an impact, finally convincing the last doubters.
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Three years earlier, Shoemaker, Edward Chao and David Milton had also collaborated in the discovery of a new mineral at the Barringer crater. This mineral, a form of silica called "coesite", was first created in a laboratory in 1953 by chemist Loring Coes. Its formation requires pressures of at least 20,000 atmospheres (20 kilobars) and temperatures of at least 700 degrees Celsius - greater than any occurring naturally on earth. Coesite and a similar material called "stishovite" have since been identified at numerous other suspected impact sites, and are now accepted as indicators for the impact origin of a geologic structure.
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Another indicator is the presence of rock structures known as "shattercones". These structures, which can be anywhere from less than an inch to more than six feet tall, can only be created by a sudden intense pressure on existing rock. During the 40's and 50's, investigations by Robert S. Dietz and others revealed the existence of shattercones at many suspected impact sites, although not at the Barringer crater. Deitz was able to demonstrate that the apexes of the cones at most of these sites all pointed upwards, indicating that the force which created them had come from above.
HOW MANY OTHER IMPACT SITES ARE THERE?
Using these methods, meteoriticists have now identified over 150 proven impact sites. Evidence suggests that there have been many thousands of other impacts over the course of the earth's history. Meteorites weighing a quarter of a pound or more hit the earth thousands of times a year. One large enough to form the Barringer crater may arrive as often as once every thousand years. The mysterious Tunguska explosion of 1908, which devastated an area of Siberian forest the size of Rhode Island, may have been our most recent encounter with a visitor of this size.
Go To the Barringer Site
In 1980, a new hypothesis emerged. Scientists Walter and Luis Alvarez discovered that a layer of soil containing extremely high levels of the mineral iridium - rare on earth, but abundant in meteorites - had been deposited all over the earth about 65 million years ago. That date marks the end of the Cretaceous period, a time when not only the dinosaurs, but thousands of other plant and animal species suddenly became extinct.
Go To the Barringer Site
The Alvarezes theorized that the mass extinctions had been caused by the impact of a giant meteorite, perhaps six miles in diameter. Such an impact would throw up a cloud of dust thick enough to obscure the sun for several years, disrupting the planetary food chain and causing the disappearance of vast numbers of species. The recent discovery of two giant craters, roughly 65 million years old, underneath the Yucatan peninsula, plus the worldwide distribution of coesite in the Cretaceous boundary layer, have made the Alvarez hypothesis seem more and more convincing. (For the full story, check out Walter Alvarez' book, T. Rex and the Crater of Doom.)
WHY SHOULD WE CARE?
Daniel Moreau Barringer's struggle to prove his theory about the impact origin of the crater is an example of the enormous difference that one determined individual can make - even if that individual is a non-scientist working to change the prevailing scientific view. His story tells us about the importance of intuitive leaps, careful data-gathering, stubbornness, and yes, self-interest in the progress of science. But it also demonstrates the rigorous testing which a theory must endure before it is finally accepted by the scientific community.
Go To the Barringer Site
Research at the Barringer Meteorite Crater and other impact sites has taught us not only about the history of our own world, but about the history of the solar system out of which it was born. In the words of Gene Shoemaker*, "the impact of solid bodies is the most fundamental of all processes that have taken place on the terrestrial planets....Collision of smaller objects is the process by which the terrestrial planets were born."
*quoted in Kathleen Mark, Meteorite Craters
Hand Built for maximum Impact by The Cyrus Company. 1998.
Summary of the Quiz
Right!
If you haven't yet read "What is the Crater?", click here for the whole exciting story.
Your answer reflects a basic misunderstanding of the nature of science. In one sense, anything we cannot observe directly is "just a theory." What distinguishes a powerful and generally accepted scientific theory, however, is that:
It provides convincing explanations for a broad range of observed phenomena.
It generates a number of predictions which can be proven or disproven; and repeated tests of these predictions by a number of different investigators tend to support the theory.
It is consistent with the evidence obtained from a variety of different scientific disciplines.
It is more economical or "elegant" than competing theories.
You're only partly right.
Barringer's theory was not fully accepted until the evidence was examined and analyzed by numerous other investigators. As late as the 1950's, some doubters remained. Click on "What is the Crater?" for a fuller explanation.
Go To the Barringer Site
Shame on you!
You've missed the entire point of this website! Click on "D.M. Barringer's Adventure" for a fuller explanation.
You're right.
All of the above have been offered as theories, but so far no one knows for sure.
Well, it's possible.
One explanation which has been offered is a very small black hole, which would have passed right through the Earth and exited in the Pacific somewhere. Not too many people take this one seriously.
Not a chance.
Although at least one book has argued this theory, and it pops up with distressing regularity on the Internet, there is not a scrap of evidence (say, for example, radioactivity or spaceship debris) to support it.
You could be right.
An isotopic analysis of peat samples dating from 1908 suggests the presence of comet dust. Answer A is the majority view, however.
Go To the Barringer Site
You could be right.
The most popular explanation at the moment is that a stony meteorite, between 30 and 70 meters in diameter, exploded several miles above the ground. Some evidence for this theory is the presence of tiny grains of cosmic matter (elements abundant in meteorites) embedded in the trees knocked down by the blast. Answer B also has its supporters, though.
Not quite!
We'll give you a hint though...
This explosion, equivalent to more than 100 trillion tons
of TNT, would probably have destroyed all life as we
know it had it hit the earth!
You are correct!
This explosion, equivalent to more than 100 trillion tons
of TNT, would probably have destroyed all life as we
know it had it hit the earth!
Not Quite!
We'll give you a hint....
The total explosive force was equivalent to more than
100 trillion tons of TNT!
Not Quite!
We'll give you a hint....
The total explosive force was as least as large as the
Chicxulub impact.
Wrong.
Martian meteorites are made of igneous rocks (rocks formed by melting.) They lack the tiny spherical grains or "chondrules" found in chondritic meteorites.
Go To the Barringer Site
Right!
That is why carbonaceous chondrites have so much to tell us about the origin of our sun and planets, and perhaps of life itself. The "organic" compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen contained in these meteorites tell us about what was going on in the solar system even before the Earth was formed.
No
That would be an iron meteorite (last question).
Not exactly.
Some of the minerals within these meteorites, however, were probably formed in the atmospheres of red-giant stars, and were then ejected from these stars to become part of the gas-dust cloud out of which our solar system was born.
No
The few meteorites believed to have come from Mars are made of igneous rock similar to terrestrial basalts.
You're wrong on this one - but see the next question.
Right!
Most iron meteorites were originally part of the molten cores of asteroids. The "Widmanstatten pattern", which appears when an iron meteorite is cut and polished, is the result of the slow cooling of an iron-nickel mixture, starting from very high temperatures.
Go To the Barringer Site
You're wrong
But the plutonium which was later incorporated into meteorites and planets was probably created in such an explosion.
Right!
Tektites are small pieces of silica glass which are one of the characteristic markers of meteorite impact. The discovery of microtektites in the K-T boundary layer, at sites around the world, is additional evidence that a meteorite impact at that date had worldwide effects.
YES
Both coesite and microtektites have been found at the K-T Boundary.
You've forgotten that shattercones are formed by the impact of a meteorite on PRE-EXISTING rock. Therefore, the age of the rocks themselves would prove nothing, as long as they were older than 65 million years.
Wrong.
In fact, the existence of huge outpourings of lava in India, 65 million years old, has been used to argue AGAINST the impact hypothesis, and to support the claim that the extinctions at the end of the Cretaceous were due to volcanic activity instead.
Sorry, you've been reading too many comic books.
Meteorites are no more likely to be radioactive than ordinary terrestrial rocks, and no meteorite has yet been found to contain any element not occurring naturally on Earth.
Go To the Barringer Site
Probably not.
However, an iron meteorite only a few times this size will explode. The one that made the Barringer Crater is estimated at 300,000 tons.
You're definitely right.
Although the outer layers of a meteorite will be vaporized by the friction of its passage through the atmosphere, the part that reaches the Earth will retain the deep cold of outer space.
You're probably right.
Some irons of this size will make a large hole, but the 65-ton Hoba meteorite, the largest ever discovered, hardly made a dent.
You might be right if we were talking about a STONY meteorite.
Iron meteorites are tougher, and one of this size will probably reach the ground.
Believe it or not, this is the right answer.
Fireballs observed by the Canadian Camera Network suggest that about 26,000 meteorites this size actually land on Earth each year! Only five or six of them, however, will actually be recovered.
That's still an underestimate.
Meteorites the size of a basketball fall about once a month.
You're much too conservative.
Meteorites weighing several tons have fallen many times this century.
You're way off.
Roughly every thousand years, we get one big enough to form the Barringer Crater!
Go To the Barringer Site
Not as far as we can tell
Toutatis is one of the nearest of the Near Earth Asteroids, and will pass within four lunar distances of the Earth in 2004. It poses no threat to the Earth for the next few hundred years; but because of its weird spin and chaotic orbit, its motion cannot be predicted any further ahead than that.
Not only that, but an asteroid discovered by French astronomers, who were apparently fans of the "Asterix" comic books.
Yes indeed!
Toutatis is an ancient Gaulish god familiar to readers of the French comic book "Asterix". Which is undoubtedly why French astronomers decided to bestow his (or her?) name on an asteroid shaped like a peanut.
Only sometimes.
90% of the meteorites which are seen to fall are "chondrites" - stony types containing tiny spherical objects known as "chondrules". Other types are irons, stony-irons, and achondrites.
Wrong.
It isn't a "meteorite" until it actually gets here.
Right!
Before it gets to the Earth, it's a meteoroid - or an asteroid if it's big enough.
Wrong.
A "meteor" is the fireball or shooting star that we see as it enters the atmosphere
We know that the Barringer Crater was created by a meteorite because:
We have to rely on what scientists tell us.
Daniel Moreau Barringer proved that it was true.
We don't actually know it; it's just a theory.
Scientists from different disciplines tested the impact theory and other hypotheses over the course of more than sixty years. They disagreed vigorously with each other, but over time more and more of these tests seemed to point toward the same conclusions.
Go To the Barringer Site
The "Tunguska Event", a gigantic explosion in Siberia in 1908, was caused by:
a meteorite
a comet
an exploding space ship
a black hole
nobody knows
The impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter (July 16, 1994) created a hole in Jupiter's atmosphere bigger than
the Empire State Bulding
the state of Texas
the Earth
the former Soviet Union.
A stony meteorite containing tiny particles of organic compounds (a "carbonaceous chondrite") was probably formed:
In a supernova explosion.
In the interior of a small planet or asteroid which was then destroyed by an impact with another asteroid.
By condensation out of the original material of the solar nebula.
It was probably knocked off Mars by the impact of another meteorite.
A nickel-iron meteorite was probably formed:
In a supernova explosion.
In the interior of a small planet or asteroid which was then destroyed by an impact with another asteroid.
By condensation out of the original material of the solar nebula.
It was probably knocked off Mars by the impact of another meteorite.
Go To the Barringer Site
A nickel-iron meteorite was probably formed:
In a supernova explosion.
In the interior of a small planet or asteroid which was then destroyed by an impact with another asteroid.
By condensation out of the original material of the solar nebula.
It was probably knocked off Mars by the impact of another meteorite.
Which of the following facts would support the hypothesis that the extinction of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago, was caused by the impact of the giant meteorite which created the Chicxulub crater?
The presence of a huge amount of 65-million-year-old volcanic rock.
The presence of shattercones in 65-million-year-old rocks.
The worldwide distribution of coesite and stishovite at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary.
The presence of tektites at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary.
True or false: Meteorites give out mysterious rays which can cause strange mutations in living organisms.
True
False
An iron meteoroid weighing 50 tons is hurtling towards the Earth. When it gets there, which of the following is most likely to happen?
It will burn up in the atmosphere and never reach the earth.
It will make a small hole in the ground, and just sit there peacefully.
It will be cold to the touch.
It will explode violently on impact, leaving a crater a thousand feet in diameter.
Go To the Barringer Site
Toutatis is:
a French Space Probe.
the God Asterix swears by.
an asteroid shaped like a peanut.
likely to hit the Earth in the near future.
A meteorite bigger than 100 grams (3.5 oz) hits the earth:
Once every thousand years
Once a century
several times a year
thousands of times a year
A small chunk of rock floating in space and heading for the Earth is:
a meteor
a meteoroid
a meteorite
a carbonaceous chondrite
Game Destruction Details
At approximately 11.45 this morning GMT (night time in Japan) a meteorite landed 20 miles south west of the island of Hokkaido in the sea of Japan. Giant tsunamis have destroyed all coastal and island areas for thousands of miles. Damage is devastating for the island of Japan, the Korean peninsula and much of Northern China. Death tolls are expected to reach as high as 100 million. Specific damage reports are as of yet unavailable.
At
approximately 11:45 pm, Tokyo time, a giant meteorite exploded in the
atmosphere five miles above the Sea of Japan, 10 miles southwest of the
island of Hokkaido. The shock wave from the explosion damaged or destroyed
buildings as much as a hundred miles away, while the intense heat scorched
trees and ignited hundreds of fires in coastal areas.
As appalling as the damage is, scientists say we were lucky. This one was
a stony meteorite. An iron one of the same size, like the one which
created the Barringer Crater in Arizona, would have reached the
surface of the Earth and exploded in the ocean, enormously increasing its
destructive power.Go To the Barringer Site
METEORITE LANDS IN CENTRAL TOKYO
At 5:00 PM this afternoon, a enormous fireball was observed over the
east coast of Japan. The fireball appeared to break apart in
mid-air over Tokyo. Seconds later, an iron meteorite weighing
nearly a hundred tons crashed into a downtown fish market, creating a hole nearly ten feet deep. It is the largest such meteorite ever seen, surpassing the 34-ton Ahnighito meteorite discovered in Greenland, and the 66-ton Hoba meteorite of Africa.
A crowd of commuters immediately gathered around the meteorite, and discovered to their surprise that it was cool to the touch. Speculating about why such a
massive object had not made a larger hole, a prominent scientist theorized
that it had entered the Earth's atmosphere at a very low angle, allowing
its speed to be slowed by atmospheric friction.
Rush-hour traffic jams in central Tokyo were observed to be
unusually severe in the aftermath of the fall.
At approximately 10.15 this morning GMT (night time in Japan) a meteorite landed 20 miles south west of the island of Hokkaido in the sea of Japan. Giant tsunamis full of churning debris have destroyed all coastal and island areas for hundreds of thousands of square miles. All of Japan and the Korean peninsula, along with much of China, New Zealand, the Philippines and Indonesia have been totally destroyed, with the loss of over a billion lives.
At this moment, 300-foot high tsunamis are heading for the Pacific coasts of North and South America. Chaos is reported as millions of terrified
people attempt to flee the advancing wall of water, which may sweep inland
as much as a hundred miles. The long-term environmental consequences of the
impact are as yet unpredictable, but are likely to be devastating.
SCIENCE TEACHER STRUCK BY METEORITE
A meteorite the size of a large grapefruit smashed through the roof of a
suburban high school outside of Tokyo today, striking a science
teacher on the hip and causing massive bruises over the lower part of his
body. Students working on astronomy projects in the same room were
unharmed. This is only the second instance in recorded history of a person
being struck by a meteorite.
Scientists who rushed to examine the stony meteorite said that it
undoubtedly originated on the surface of Mars. Microscopic examination of
the meteorite may provide new evidence in the ongoing controversy over the
possibility of life on the red planet.
Go To the Barringer Site
Select the Meteorite's size:
.1 meter dia.
3 meter dia.
50 meter dia.
700 meter dia.
1.7 kilometer dia.
Select your Target:
Paris
San Francisco
Tokyo
New York
At approximately 10:47 this morning PDT Asteroid 2004 Cyrus landed near San Francisco. Since the discovery of its trajectory and probable point of impact about six months ago the U.S. government has done its best to prepare for the impact. Areas within a 150 mile radius of San Francisco have been destroyed. The force of the impact, equal to that of 50,000,000,000 tons of TNT, annihilated the city of San Francisco in an instant. The shock wave from the explosion flattened large areas of Northern California, while the intense heat ignited firestorms across much of California. The cloud
of smoke and dust from the explosion and fires is expected to alter the
climate of the Earth for a period of months or years, causing crop failures
and possible mass starvation. Although most of the population of Northern California had been relocated before the asteroid struck, death tolls are still estimated in the hundreds of thousands.
2:00 PM Tuesday: A giant meteorite exploded in the atmosphere six miles
above San Francisco today, creating a shock wave which is estimated to
have destroyed every building within a five-mile radius. The heat from the
blast ignited a firestorm which incinerated most of San Francisco, causing
thousands of deaths. Cars were overturned and windows shattered as far away
as Sacramento.
Go To the Barringer Site
In spite of worldwide asteroid-detection efforts in recent years,
astronomers had no warning of the incoming meteorite, which was too small
to be picked up by the most advanced telescopes until moments before it hit.
As appalling as the damage was, scientists say we were lucky. This one
was a stony meteorite. If it had been made of iron, like the one which
created the Barringer Crater in Arizona, it would have vaporized San Francisco and devastated most of northern California.
METEORITE LANDS NEAR FISHERMAN'S WHARF; CRUSHES MIME.
At 5:00 PM this afternoon, a enormous fireball was observed over the
west coast of the United States. The fireball appeared to break apart in
mid-air over San Francisco. Seconds later, an iron meteorite weighing
nearly a hundred tons crashed into the front of a T-shirt store
near San Francisco's famed Fisherman's Wharf, crushing a mime in the middle
of a performance and creating a hole nearly ten feet deep. It
is the largest such meteorite ever seen, surpassing the 34-ton Ahnighito
meteorite discovered in Greenland, and the 66-ton Hoba meteorite of Africa.
Although native San Franciscans seemed unimpressed, a crowd
of tourists immediately gathered around the meteorite, and discovered to
their surprise that it was cool to the touch. Speculating about why such a
massive object had not made a larger hole, a prominent scientist theorized
that it had entered the Earth's atmosphere at a very low angle, allowing
its speed to be slowed by atmospheric friction.
Rush-hour traffic jams in central San Francisco were observed to be
unusually severe in the aftermath of the fall.
At approximately 8:19 this morning PDT our worst nightmare became a reality - Asteroid 2004 Cyrus landed 20 miles east of San Francisco. Since the discovery of its trajectory, destination, and estimated damage about one year ago the governments of the US, Canada, and Mexico have done their best to relocate the populations of the western coasts of North America. The force of its blast estimated at 1,000,000,000,000 tons of TNT, The initial shockwave crushed buildings throughout the West. Firestorms are raging uncontrollably for a thousand miles to the east, north and south. The millions of tons of dust and soot blasted into the atmosphere by the impact and the resulting fires are expected to have drastic effects on the world's climate. Predictions are for global cooling on the order of 4-8
degrees celsius (8-20 degrees Fahrenheit) with atmospheric pollution
threatening the health of populations around the world. Massive crop
failures may lead to worldwide starvation and hundreds of millions of
additional deaths.
Go To the Barringer Site
SCIENCE TEACHER STRUCK BY METEORITE
A meteorite the size of a large grapefruit smashed through the roof of a
suburban high school outside of San Francisco today, striking a science
teacher on the hip and causing massive bruises over the lower part of his
body. Students working on astronomy projects in the same room were
unharmed. This is only the second instance in recorded history of a person
being struck by a meteorite.
Scientists who rushed to examine the stony meteorite said that it
undoubtedly originated on the surface of Mars. Microscopic examination of
the meteorite may provide new evidence in the ongoing controversy over the
possibility of life on the red planet.
At approximately 8:15 this evening, Asteroid 2004 Cyrus struck the Earth 5
km west of Paris, France. Since the discovery of its trajectory and
impending impact about six months ago, the governments of Western Europe
have done their best to relocate the populations of France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.The force of the impact, equal to that of 50,000,000,000 tons of TNT, annihilated the city of Paris in an instant. The shock wave from the explosion flattened large areas of London, Brussels, Antwerp and Amsterdam,
while the intense heat ignited firestorms across much of France. The cloud
of smoke and dust from the explosion and fires is expected to alter the
climate of the Earth for a period of months or years, causing crop failures
and possible mass starvation.
METEORITE LANDS IN THE LOUVRE COURTYARD
At 5:00 PM this afternoon, a enormous fireball was observed over Northern Europe. The fireball appeared to break apart in
mid-air over Paris. Seconds later, an iron meteorite weighing
nearly a hundred tons crashed into the courtyard of the Louvre, destroying the glass pyramid
which formerly covered its main entrance and creating a hole nearly ten feet deep. It
is the largest such meteorite ever seen, surpassing the 34-ton Ahnighito
meteorite discovered in Greenland, and the 66-ton Hoba meteorite of Africa.
A crowd of tourists immediately gathered around the meteorite, and discovered to
their surprise that it was cool to the touch. Speculating about why such a
massive object had not made a larger hole, a prominent scientist theorized
that it had entered the Earth's atmosphere at a very low angle, allowing
its speed to be slowed by atmospheric friction.
Rush-hour traffic jams in central Paris were observed to be
unusually severe in the aftermath of the fall.
Go To the Barringer Site
At approximately 3:45 this morning GMT, Asteroid 2004 Cyrus struck Paris,
France. Since the discovery of its trajectory and impending impact about
one year ago, the governments of the European Community have done their
best to relocate the populations of all areas within a 1000-
kilometer radius of Paris. With the force of the blast estimated at
1,000,000,000,000 tons of TNT, Europe as we knew it is no more. Though
many of the world's great works of art have been relocated from the museums
of Europe, all of European architecture now exists only as photographs and
memories. Firestorms are raging across the continent as far as the Urals,
creating a cloud of smoke and dust which is expected to block out the
sunlight over much of the Earth for several years. Massive crop failures,
and a drastic decline in global temperatures,
may cause billions of additional deaths.
SCIENCE TEACHER STRUCK BY METEORITE
A meteorite the size of a large grapefruit smashed through the roof of a
suburban high school outside of Paris today, striking a science
teacher on the hip and causing massive bruises over the lower part of his
body. Students working on astronomy projects in the same room were
unharmed. This is only the second instance in recorded history of a person
being struck by a meteorite.
Scientists who rushed to examine the stony meteorite said that it
undoubtedly originated on the surface of Mars. Microscopic examination of
the meteorite may provide new evidence in the ongoing controversy over the
possibility of life on the red planet.
At approximately 10:47 this evening EDT Asteroid 2004 Cyrus landed on New York City. Since the discovery of its trajectory and
impending impact about six months ago the U.S. government has done its best to prepare for the disaster. The force of the impact, equal to that of 50,000,000,000 tons of TNT, annihilated the city of New York in an instant. The shock wave from the explosion flattened most of the surrounding metropolitan areas, while the intense heat ignited firestorms across much of the East Coast. The cloud of smoke and dust from the explosion and fires is expected to alter the climate of the Earth for a period of months or years, causing crop failures and possible mass starvation.
2:00 PM Tuesday: A giant meteorite exploded in the atmosphere six miles
above New York City today, creating a shock wave which is estimated to
have destroyed every building within a five-mile radius. The heat from the
blast ignited a firestorm which incinerated most of Manhattan, causing
thousands of deaths. Cars were overturned and windows shattered as far away
as New Jersey.
In spite of worldwide asteroid-detection efforts in recent years,
astronomers had no warning of the incoming meteorite, which was too small
to be picked up by the most advanced telescopes until moments before it hit.
As appalling as the damage was, scientists say we were lucky. This one
was a stony meteorite. If it had been made of iron, like the one which
created the Barringer Crater in Arizona, it would have vaporized Manhattan
and devastated most of the east coast.
METEORITE LANDS IN CENTRAL PARK
At 5:00 PM this afternoon, a enormous fireball was observed over the
east coast of the United States. The fireball appeared to break apart in
mid-air over New York. Seconds later, an iron meteorite weighing
nearly a hundred tons crashed into Central Park, rattling windows on the
Upper West Side and creating a hole nearly ten feet deep. It
is the largest such meteorite ever seen, surpassing the 34-ton Ahnighito
meteorite discovered in Greenland, and the 66-ton Hoba meteorite of Africa.
A crowd of joggers and in-line skaters immediately gathered around the meteorite, and discovered to their surprise that it was cool to the touch. Speculating about why such a massive object had not made a larger hole, a prominent scientist theorized that it had entered the Earth's atmosphere at a very low angle, allowing its speed to be slowed by atmospheric friction.
Rush-hour traffic jams in central Manhattan were observed to be
unusually severe in the aftermath of the fall.
At approximately 4:27 this morning EDT Asteroid 2004 Cyrus landed on New York City. Since the discovery of its trajectory and impending impact about one year ago the governments of the US and Canada have done their best to relocate the populations of areas within 500 miles of New York City. With the force of its blast estimated at 1,000,000,000,000 tons of TNT, the shockwave flattened buildings over much of New England and the Mid-Atlantic states. Firestorms are raging across the eastern United States as far as the Mississippi, creating a cloud of smoke and dust which will create life-threatening weather conditions worldwide. Predictions are for global cooling on the order of 4-8
degrees celsius (8-20 degrees Farenheit). Massive crop
failures may lead to global starvation and hundreds of millions of
additional deaths.
SCIENCE TEACHER STRUCK BY METEORITE
A meteorite the size of a large grapefruit smashed through the roof of a
suburban high school outside of NY today, striking a science
teacher on the hip and causing massive bruises over the lower part of his
body. Students working on astronomy projects in the same room were
unharmed. This is only the second instance in recorded history of a person
being struck by a meteorite.
Scientists who rushed to examine the stony meteorite said that it
undoubtedly originated on the surface of Mars. Microscopic examination of
the meteorite may provide new evidence in the ongoing controversy over the
possibility of life on the red planet.