Biggest Impact Crater Ever Discovered May Have Just Been Found in Australia
It was long believed that the Vredefort crater in South Africa was the epicenter of the largest asteroid impact to ever occur on Earth. However, now experts say that another mega impact zone may have just been discovered in Australia overshadowing the Vredefort by a magnitude.
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00:00 It was long believed that the Vredefort crater in South Africa was the epicenter of the largest
00:08 asteroid impact to ever occur on Earth.
00:11 The falling space rock that caused it is thought to have been around 9 miles wide, causing
00:15 a 186 mile wide crater.
00:18 However, now experts say that another mega impact zone may have just been discovered
00:23 in Australia, overshadowing that one by a magnitude.
00:26 The impact structure went undiscovered until now because it's deep underground, buried
00:30 under New South Wales.
00:32 They call it a structure rather than a crater because when an asteroid hits, it creates
00:35 a central uplifted section, which The Conversation reports is similar to what happens when you
00:40 drop something into water.
00:41 As Newton's third law comes into play, the newly discovered structure, they say, is some
00:46 323 miles wide, nearly twice the size of the one in South Africa.
00:51 And they say it could have occurred much more recently, around 444 million years ago.
00:56 Experts say they are basing that estimation on an extinction event that happened around
00:59 then, a mass dying off of species that was twice the scale of the one that killed the
01:03 dinosaurs.
01:04 But they add it could have also been created much earlier, kicking off the Cambrian explosion,
01:09 and was in some way responsible for bringing life to Earth.
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