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Huge Crater on Earth!

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Uploaded by on Jun 14, 2009

In the broadest sense, the term impact crater can be applied to any depression, natural or manmade, resulting from the high velocity impact of a projectile with larger body. In most common usage, the term is used for the approximately circular depression in the surface of a planet, moon or other solid body in the Solar System, formed by the hyper-velocity impact of a smaller body with the surface. This is in contrast to the pit crater which results from an internal collapse. Impact craters typically have raised rims, and they range from small, simple, bowl-shaped depressions to large, complex, multi-ringed impact basins. Meteor Crater is perhaps the best-known example of a small impact crater on the Earth.

Impact craters provide the dominant landforms on many solid Solar System objects including the Moon, Mercury, Callisto, Ganymede and most small moons and asteroids. On other planets and moons that experience more-active surface geological processes, such as Earth, Venus, Mars, Europa, Io and Titan, visible impact craters are less common because they become eroded, buried or transformed by tectonics over time. Where such processes have destroyed most of the original crater topography, the terms impact structure or astrobleme are more commonly used. In early literature, before the significance of impact cratering was widely recognised, the terms cryptoexplosion or cryptovolcanic structure were often used to describe what are now recognised as impact-related features on Earth.

In the early Solar System, rates of impact cratering were much higher than today. The large multi-ringed impact basins, with diameters of hundreds of kilometers or more, retained for example on Mercury and the Moon, record a period of intense early bombardment in the inner Solar System that ended about 3.8 billion years ago. Since that time, the rate of crater production on Earth has been considerably lower, but it is appreciable nonetheless; Earth experiences from one to three impacts large enough to produce a 20 km diameter crater about once every million years on average. This indicates that there should be far more relatively young craters on the planet than have been discovered so far.

Although the Earths active surface processes quickly destroy the impact record, about 170 terrestrial impact craters have been identified. These range in diameter from a few tens of meters up to about 300 km, and they range in age from recent times (e.g. the Sikhote-Alin craters in Russia whose creation was witnessed in 1947) to more than two billion years, though most are less than 200 million years old because geological processes tend to obliterate older craters. They are also selectively found in the stable interior regions of continents. Few under sea craters have been discovered because of the difficulty of surveying the sea floor, the rapid rate of change of the ocean bottom, and the subduction of the ocean floor into the Earth's interior by processes of plate tectonics.

Impact craters are not to be confused with other landforms that in some cases appear similar, including calderas and ring dikes.

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Uploader Comments (MyPlanett)

  • Absolute intresting documentary !!!

  • Thanks for your message!

  • Very interesting!!!!:) I like to watch these kind of documentary of our Earth!!!!:) Thank you!!!!!:)5*****

  • Thanks for your comment! :-)

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All Comments (35)

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  • @Sashomei Um, the world is over a billion years old. Get your facts right.

  • thats where my mom fell over......

  • Chuck Norris :D

  • The shiva crater in the indian ocean is bigger than chixilub its about 65 million years old

  • its not proved that its 200 milion years or milion years ....

    the world is 8000 years old! please stop to lie scientists!

  • @eehpong it disintegrates around the area... it blows up

  • WoOooOoOOW,, it is very large

    thank you for the video

  • Interesting but not all craters are caused by 'impacts'. Far more likely is EDM (electric discharge machining) which always produces perfect circular craters with steep sides and flat bottoms. 2 planteray bodies of dissimilar voltage, coming close together will settle their differences through high energy giant 'lightning' bolts. These machine out material, within seconds.

  • well thats what happens when chuck norris gets angery!

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