Impact craters on Google Satellite

[mmcirvin]

Arizona Meteor Crater. Compared with the others, it's not very big, but it is much younger and less eroded.

Manicouagan Reservoir, Québec (linked here before the Google satellite view existed). This thing is freaking huge; you can see it clearly in the view of all of North America. Scientists think its creation was associated with a mass extinction 210 million years ago (update—as the next link explains, this view is disputed, since there seems to be some uncertainty as to relative dates); the fireball alone may have reached as far as the present location of New York City.

Lac L'Eau Claire, also in Québec, a double impact crater 290 million years old. The map distortion is really squishing this one something fierce.

Lake Wanapitei near Sudbury, Ontario. This one is only 37 million years old, but is partly eroded away and doesn't look like a crater; it is thought to be one from gravity and magnetism maps, among other things. It is inside of a much larger crater 1.8 billion years old that is not visible to the unsuspecting eye at all. The area is a rich mining region because the energy of the impact melted the earth's crust and separated out the metals.

Comments

[triple-entendre.livejournal.com]

I immediately misread this title and thought, "oh no! something hit Google Satellite?"

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Also, near-Earth asteroid trackers get some press in the Washington Post. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38306-2005Apr8.html) They mention the slightly scary case of 2004 MN4. It's important to keep these things in perspective, though: at the time I tried to figure out what a 2029 impact of 2004 MN4 would be like, and the answer I came up with was "roughly comparable to the tsunami that just happened while you were worrying about asteroids".

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I should also mention that the meteoroid impact wasn't the only thing responsible for the current appearance of Manicouagan Reservoir; it's filled with water mostly because of the gigantic hydroelectric dam on the river to the south.