Numerous alien, cosmic bodies have slammed into Earth's atmosphere during
the course of its 4.5 billion-year history. While some of them burn up
before even impacting the surface of the earth, others have left very
long-lasting effects, including one historical event that wiped out an
entire species (cue the dinosaurs).
These ancient star wounds, also known as meteor impact craters, are still
there today, and three of them are located in India: Ramgarh in Rajasthan,
Lonar in Maharashtra, and Dhala in Madhya Pradesh.
Of these three, the Dhala crater in Madhya Pradesh's Shivpuri, located in
the actual center of India, has recently attracted attention.
According to earlier research, the enormous 11 kilometer-diameter Dhala
structure is the seventh-biggest impact crater in the world and the largest
in Asia.
Researchers from Allahabad University and the University of Bern in
Switzerland have recently discovered that the Dhala crater was created when
an incredibly uncommon and old meteorite called a ureilite crashed into
India between 250 and 1700 million years ago.
A small percentage of the meteorites on Earth are "ureilites," a rare kind
of early meteorites. They are made up of metal sulfides, a few fine-grained
silicates, and a silicate rock made up primarily of olivine and pyroxene
with less than 10% carbon (diamond or graphite) intermingled.
According to Prof. JK Pati from Allahabad University's Earth and Planetary
Sciences department, scientists believe that a ureilite meteorite with a
diameter of about one kilometer spiraled into Earth's atmosphere before
crashing at an extraordinary speed of 15 km/s on the granitoid rocks of the
Bundelkhand craton and creating the Dhala impact structure.
Now that the riddle of the impactor material has been resolved, experts are
working to learn more about this unusual meteorite crater in order to gain a
deeper understanding of the inner workings of our young solar system. Future
investigations may reveal how it contributed to the arrival of water on
Earth and the emergence of life.
This
link
will take you to a thorough summary of the study's results from the journal
Meteoritics and Planetary Science.
