Investigations suggest that the metallic meteorite that formed the crater crashed at 12,000 kilometers per hour into the Earth’s surface near what is today the border region between Egypt, Sudan and Libya. The impact of a 10-ton block of iron generated a fireball and a plume that must have been visible from more than 1,000 km away, and that pierced ahole 16 meters deep and 45 meters wideon the rocky terrain.
Since then, the crater had been protected from Earth’s geological action and climatic processes, which often render most impact craters almost invisible. It also went unnoticed until now by humans.
But that changed in 2008, when the crater was discovered during a study inGoogle Earthled by mineral expert Vincenzo de Michele of the Museo Civico di Stroia Naturale in Milan, Italy. He was looking for natural resources when he happened to see the rounded impact crater on his PC screen. De Michele contacted an astrophysicist, Mario Di Martino, from the INAF (National Institute of Astrophysics) in Turin, who organized an expedition to the site in February this year, while more accurate satellite images of the area were obtained.
After two weeks of travel, an expedition of 40 people reached the crater. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), more than1,000 kilos of metallic meteorite fragmentsincludinga piece of 83 kilosbelieved to be separated from the main body of the meteorite shortly before impact, as it was found 200 meters from the crater. In addition, the researchers created a 3D model of the terrain using radars.
“This demonstrates thatmetallic meteorites with a mass of the order of 10 tons do not break up in the atmosphereInstead, they explode when they hit the ground and produce a crater “, says Detlef Koschny, specialist in the section onNear Earth Objects(Near Earth Objects) at ESA.
