In the Swedish county of Jämtland , two large craters stigmatize the site of a rare event : a double meteorite impact . The big crater of the pair , a few miles south of the city of Östersund , is about 4.7 mi wide . A few land mile out lies a belittled volcanic crater , virtually half a mile broad . The two craters are the first proven situation of a double impingement that researchers have identified so far .
The impacts were part of a rain of meteorites that battered Earth during that period : the shrapnel of a collision out in the asteroid belt 10 million old age earlier . “ Around 470 million years ago , two big asteroid collided in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter , and many fragment were contrive off in fresh area . Many of these crashed on Earth , such as these two in Jämtland , ” explain geologist Erik Sturkell in a instruction .
Jämtland is on dry country today , but 458 million years ago , it lay beneath 1600 feet of sea . When two large meteorites plummeted through Earth ’s atmosphere and into the ocean that is now Jämtland , their wallop storm the sea outward in a huge wave and dig up a pair of Brobdingnagian Crater in the sea floor .
For about a mo and a one-half , the two young craters were dry . Then , says Sturkell , “ The water hasten back in , bring in with it fragments from the meteorites mixed with cloth that had been ejected during the burst and with the gigantic waving that tore away parts of the ocean bed . ”
Sturkell and his colleagues linked the two Crater by liken their stratum of rock music and sediment . They found that the bed just above the level of the impact was the same age in both craters , and the sequence of layers above that was the same in both craters .
[ Science Daily ]
Top image : University of Gothenburg
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