I picked this up via UC Davis’ Geology News site. Researchers are reconsidering how the Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona may have formed. A long standing mystery revolving around the crater is that there have been no signs of significant amounts of melted minerals. A new study to be published in Nature says, “The high-velocity collision should have released so much heat that the iron-rich impacting rock itself, or at least part of it, should have melted in a flash. But no substantial signs of melted mineral have ever been found there. The reason, according to a new study: the rock was merely the largest chunk from a space bruiser that probably measured 42 meters (136 feet) across.”
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