Sadly the size of all these craters listed and many, many others is always in dispute with geologists. So it is best to take them with a pinch of salt. But accurate or not, they look amazing from above…
The Top 10 Largest Meteorite Craters in the World
10 – Kara Crater, Russia (40 Mile Diameter)
Wiki Info: The Kara crater lies in the southeastern end of the Yugorsky Peninsula, while the Ust-Kara site lies offshore, 15 km east of the small Kara or Karskaya Guba inlet. It was formerly believed that these two sites were two separate craters and that they formed a twin impact structure from a large-scale meteorite hit in the late Cretaceous.
9 – Morokweng Crater, South Africa (43 Mile Diameter)
Wiki Info: In May, 2006, a group of scientists drilling into the site announced the discovery of a 25 cm diameter fragment of the original asteroid at a depth of 770 m below the surface, along with several much smaller pieces a few millimetres across at other depths. This discovery was unexpected, since previous drillings on large impact craters had not produced such fragments, and it was thought that the asteroid had been almost entirely vaporised.
8 – Chesapeake Bay Crater, United States (53 Mile Diameter)
Wiki Info: The continual slumping of the rubble within the crater has affected the flow of the rivers and shaped the Chesapeake Bay. The impact crater created a long-lasting topographic depression which helped predetermine the course of local rivers and the eventual location of Chesapeake Bay.
7 – Acraman Crater, Australia (56 Mile Diameter)
Wiki Info: The discovery of the crater and independent discovery of its ejecta were first reported in the journal Science in 1986. The evidence for impact includes the presence of shatter cones and shocked quartz in shattered bedrock on islands within Lake Acraman.
6 – Manicouagan Crater, Canada (61 Mile Diameter)
Wiki Info: The Manicouagan Crater is one of the oldest known impact craters and is the largest ‘visible’ impact crater on Earth, located primarily in Manicouagan Regional County Municipality in the Côte-Nord region of Québec.
5 – Woodleigh Crater, Australia (75 Mile Diameter)
Wiki Info: The Woodleigh impact event, originally thought to have occurred between the Late Triassic and Late Permian, is now thought to date from 8 million years ago.
4 – Sudbury Basin, Canada (81 Mile Diameter)
Wiki Info: The basin is located on the Canadian Shield in the city of Greater Sudbury, Ontario. The former municipalities of Rayside-Balfour, Valley East and Capreol lie within the Sudbury Basin, which is referred to locally as “The Valley”. The urban core of the former city of Sudbury lies on the southern outskirts of the basin.
3 – Vredefort Crater, South Africa (118 Mile Diameter)
Wiki Info: The Vredefort crater is the largest verified impact crater on Earth, more than 300 km across when it was formed. What remains of it is located in the present-day Free State Province of South Africa and named after the town of Vredefort, which is situated near its centre.
2 – Chicxulub Crater, Mexico (186 Mile Diameter)
Wiki Info: The crater was discovered by Antonio Camargo and Glen Penfield, geophysicists who had been looking for petroleum in the Yucatán during the late 1970s. Penfield was initially unable to obtain evidence that the geological feature was a crater and gave up his search. Later, through contact with Alan Hildebrand in 1990, Penfield obtained samples that suggested it was an impact feature.
1 – Popigai Crater, Russia (190 Mile Diameter)
Wiki Info: The shock pressures from the impact instantaneously transformed graphite in the ground into diamonds within a 13.6 km radius of the impact point. These diamonds are not only inherited the tabular shape of the original graphite grains but they additionally preserved the original crystals’ delicate striations!
By: Mahmoud Alomda
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