science

Asteroid alert: 19-mile crater found in Greenland – with massive consequences


Researchers, using state-of-the-art radar techniques, located a 19-mile wide asteroid crater which struck around 12,000 years ago. The crater, which is thought to be the result of an iron asteroid about one kilometre in size, was found beneath the Hiawatha Glacier in remote northwest Greenland. Scientists are unsure of the exact date in which the asteroid hit but it is likely to be around 12,000 years ago in the late Pleistocene period when the last ice age was taking place.

It has taken experts the best part of two decades to confirm the crater is there, according to the results published in the journal Science Advance.

Co-author John Paden, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Kansas, said: “We’ve collected lots of radar-sounding data over the last couple of decades, and glaciologists put these radar-sounding data sets together to produce maps of what Greenland is like underneath the ice.

“Danish researchers were looking at the map and saw this big, crater-like depression under the ice sheet and looked at satellite imagery and – because the crater is on edge of the ice sheet – you can see a circular pattern there as well.

“The two combined made a really strong case for this being an impact-crater site.”

Prof Paden added that upon the impact, debris could have been ejected about 435 miles (700km) into the air, where the atmosphere begins.

He said: “There would have been debris projected into the atmosphere that would affect the climate and the potential for melting a lot of ice.

“So there could have been a sudden freshwater influx into the Nares Strait between Canada and Greenland that would have affected the ocean flow in that whole region.

“The evidence indicates that the impact probably happened after the Greenland ice sheet formed, but the research team is still working on the precise dating.”

Work will now be done to pinpoint a more accurate year for the asteroid impact.



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