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Impact Craters On Our Earth

Bolaven extraterrestrial impact crater


Research has suggested that approximately 800,000 years ago, a large meteorite struck what is now a part of the Bolaven Plateau in southern Laos.

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The strike is believed to be the last major impact on Earth by an asteroid. It is also believed that when the impact occurred, a massive amount of ejecta was strewn across parts of southern Laos and eastern Thailand.

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Ejecta gravel in an outcrop about 60 kilometers west-northwest of the impact site. Credit: Kerry Sieh

But oddly, the location of the impact has never been positively identified—the crater, researchers believe, has been hidden by tree growth, a blanket of soil or both. In this new effort, the research team attempted to find the location of the impact by inferring its position using characteristics of tektites.

During the years 2015 to 2023, the research team conducted field research, collecting tektites believed to be from the Bolaven impact and marking on maps where they were found. They found not only small samples that would fit in the hand, but large deposits up to 9 meters thick.

The maps indicated a radial pattern of thickening ejecta that converged around a single plateau—a clear indication, they claim, of the site where the asteroid crashed into the Earth.

https://phys.org/news/2023-12-case-bolaven-extraterrestrial-impact-crater.html

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