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Meteor Crater, or Barringer Crater, is a
meteorite A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid, that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or moon. When the original object ...
impact crater about east of Flagstaff and west of Winslow in the desert of northern
Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...
, United States. The site had several earlier names, and fragments of the meteorite are officially called the Canyon Diablo Meteorite, after the adjacent Cañon Diablo. Because the United States Board on Geographic Names recognizes names of natural features derived from the nearest
post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional se ...
, the feature acquired the name of "Meteor Crater" from the nearby post office named Meteor. Meteor Crater lies at an elevation of above sea level. It is about in diameter, some deep, and is surrounded by a rim that rises above the surrounding plains. The center of the crater is filled with of rubble lying above crater bedrock. One of the interesting features of the crater is its squared-off outline, believed to be caused by existing regional jointing (cracks) in the strata at the impact site. Despite historic attempts to make the crater a public landmark, the crater remains privately owned by the Barringer family to the present day through their Barringer Crater Company, which proclaims it to be the "best-preserved meteorite crater on Earth". Since the crater is privately owned, it is not protected as a national monument, a status that would require federal ownership. It was designated a National Natural Landmark in November 1967.


Formation

The crater was created about 50,000 years ago during the
Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...
epoch In chronology and periodization, an epoch or reference epoch is an instant in time chosen as the origin of a particular calendar era. The "epoch" serves as a reference point from which time is measured. The moment of epoch is usually decided ...
, when the local climate on the Colorado Plateau was much cooler and damper. The area was an open grassland dotted with woodlands inhabited by
mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus'', one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks an ...
s and
giant ground sloths ''Megatherium'' ( ; from Greek () 'great' + () 'beast') is an extinct genus of ground sloths endemic to South America that lived from the Early Pliocene through the end of the Pleistocene. It is best known for the elephant-sized type species ...
. The object that excavated the crater was a
nickel Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow t ...
-
iron Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in ...
meteorite about across. The speed of the impact has been a subject of some debate. Modeling initially suggested that the meteorite struck at up to , but more recent research suggests the impact was substantially slower, at . About half of the impactor's bulk is believed to have been vaporized during its descent through the atmosphere. Impact energy has been estimated at about 10 megatons TNTe. The meteorite was mostly vaporized upon impact, leaving few remains in the crater. Since the crater's formation, the rim is thought to have lost of height at the rim crest as a result of natural
erosion Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust, and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is d ...
. Similarly, the basin of the crater is thought to have roughly of additional postimpact sedimentation from lake sediments and
alluvium Alluvium (from Latin ''alluvius'', from ''alluere'' 'to wash against') is loose clay, silt, sand, or gravel that has been deposited by running water in a stream bed, on a floodplain, in an alluvial fan or beach, or in similar settings. ...
. Very few remaining craters are visible on Earth, since many have been erased by erosive geological processes. The relatively young age of Meteor Crater, paired with the dry Arizona climate, has allowed this crater to remain comparatively unchanged since its formation. The lack of erosion that preserved the crater's shape greatly accelerated its groundbreaking recognition as an impact crater from a natural celestial body.


Discovery and investigation

The crater came to the attention of scientists after American settlers encountered it in the 19th century. The crater was given several early names, including "Coon Mountain", "Coon Butte", "Crater Mountain", "Meteor Mountain", and "Meteor Crater". The Meteoritical Society refers to the crater as Barringer Meteorite Crater because Daniel M. Barringer was one of the first people to suggest that it was produced by meteorite impact, and because the Barringer family filed mining claims on the crater and purchased the crater and its surroundings in the early 20th century. Meteorites from the area were called Canyon Diablo meteorites, after Canyon Diablo, Arizona, which was the closest community to the crater in the late 19th century. The canyon also crosses the strewn field, where meteorites from the crater-forming event were found. The crater had initially been ascribed to the actions of a volcanic steam explosion, because the San Francisco volcanic field lies only about to the west.


Albert E. Foote

In 1891, mineralogist Albert E. Foote presented the first scientific paper about the meteorites of Northern Arizona. Several years earlier, Foote had received an iron rock for analysis from a railroad executive. Foote immediately recognized the rock as a meteorite and led an expedition to search and retrieve additional meteorite samples. The team collected samples ranging from small fragments to over . Foote identified several minerals in the meteorites, including diamond, albeit of little commercial value. His paper to the Association for the Advancement of Science provided the first geological description of the crater to a scientific community.


Grove Karl Gilbert

In November 1891, Grove Karl Gilbert, chief geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, investigated the crater and concluded that it was the result of a volcanic steam explosion. Gilbert had assumed that if it were an impact crater, then the volume of the crater, as well as meteoritic material, should exist in the rim. Gilbert also assumed a large portion of the meteorite should be buried in the crater and that this would generate a large magnetic anomaly. Gilbert's calculations showed that the volume of the crater and the debris on the rim were roughly equivalent, so that the mass of the hypothetical impactor was missing, nor were there any magnetic anomalies; he argued that the meteorite fragments found on the rim were coincidental. Gilbert publicized his conclusions in a series of lectures. In 1892, however, Gilbert would be among the first to propose that the Moon's craters were caused by impact rather than volcanism.


Daniel M. Barringer

In 1903, mining engineer and businessman Daniel M. Barringer suggested that the crater had been produced by the impact of a large iron-metallic meteorite. Barringer's company, the Standard Iron Company, staked a mining claim to the land and received a land patent signed by
Theodore Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...
for 640 acres (1 sq mi, 260 ha) around the center of the crater in 1903. The claim was divided into four quadrants coming from the center clockwise from north-west named Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. In 1906, Roosevelt authorized the establishment of a newly named Meteor, Arizona, post office (the closest post office before was away in Winslow, Arizona). This new post office was located at Sunshine, a stop on the
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The railroad was chartered in February 1859 to serve the cities of Atchison and Topeka, Kansas, and ...
, 6 mi north of the crater. Standard Iron Company conducted research on the crater's origins between 1903 and 1905. It concluded that the crater had indeed been caused by an impact. Barringer and his partner,
mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...
and
physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
Benjamin Chew Tilghman, documented evidence for the impact theory in papers presented to the U.S. Geological Survey in 1906 and published in the ''Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences'' in
Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...
. Barringer's arguments were met with skepticism, as a reluctance existed at the time to consider the role of meteorites in terrestrial geology. He persisted and sought to bolster his theory by locating the remains of the meteorite. At the time of discovery, the surrounding plains were covered with about 30 tons of large, oxidized iron meteorite fragments. This led Barringer to believe that the bulk of the impactor could still be found under the crater floor. Impact physics was poorly understood at the time, and Barringer was unaware that most of the meteorite vaporized on impact. He spent 27 years trying to locate a large deposit of meteoric iron, and drilled to a depth of , but no significant deposit was ever found. Barringer, who in 1894 was one of the investors who made US$15 million in the Commonwealth silver mine in Pearce, Cochise County, Arizona, had ambitious plans for the iron ore.Southgate, Nancy; Barringer, Felicity (2002). ''A Grand Obsession: Daniel Moreau and His Crater''. Barringer Crater Co. He estimated from the size of the crater that the meteorite had a mass of 100 million tons. Iron ore of the type found at the crater was valued at the time at US$125/ton, so Barringer was searching for a lode he believed to be worth more than a billion 1903 dollars. "By 1928, Barringer had sunk the majority of his fortune into the crater – $500,000, or roughly $7 million in
017 Seventeen or 17 may refer to: *17 (number), the natural number following 16 and preceding 18 * one of the years 17 BC, AD 17, 1917, 2017 Literature Magazines * ''Seventeen'' (American magazine), an American magazine * ''Seventeen'' (Japanese ...
dollars." In 1929, astronomer F.R. Moulton was employed by the Barringer Crater Company to investigate the physics of the impact event. Moulton concluded that the impactor likely weighed as little as 300,000 tonnes, and that the impact of such a body would have generated enough heat to vaporize the impactor instantly. Daniel M. Barringer died just ten days after the publication of Moulton's second report. By this time, "the great weight of scientific opinion had swung around to the accuracy of the impact hypothesis ... Apparently an idea, too radical and new for acceptance in 1905, no matter how logical, had gradually grown respectable during the intervening 20 years."


Harvey H. Nininger

Harvey Harlow Nininger was an American meteoriticist and educator, and although he was self-taught, he revived interest in scientific study of meteorites in the 1930s, and assembled the largest personal collection of meteorites up to that time. While based in
Denver Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...
,
Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the ...
, Nininger published the first edition of a pamphlet titled "A Comet Strikes the Earth", which described how Meteor Crater formed when an asteroid impacted the Earth. In 1942, Harvey Nininger moved his home and business from Denver to the Meteor Crater Observatory, located near the turn-off for Meteor Crater on Route 66. He renamed the building the "American Meteorite Museum" and published a number of meteorite and Meteor Crater-related books from the location. He also conducted a wide range of research at the crater, discovering impactite, iron-nickel spherules related to the impact and vaporization of the asteroid, and the presence of many features still unique to the crater, such as half-melted slugs of meteoric iron mixed with melted target rock. Nininger's discoveries were compiled and published in a seminal work, ''Arizona's Meteorite Crater'' (1956). Nininger's extensive sampling and fieldwork in the 1930s and 40s contributed significantly to the scientific community's acceptance of the idea that Meteor Crater formed by the impact of an asteroid. Harvey Nininger believed that the crater should be nationalized as a public park, and in 1948, successfully petitioned the American Astronomical Society to pass a motion in support by giving the false claim that the Barringers were willing to sell it, when in fact they intended to continue mining there. Nininger was operating a private meteorite museum on the premises at the time, and perhaps he saw public ownership of the crater as an opportunity to move his museum to the rim, obtain a government salary, and possibly found a Federal institute of meteorite science. The Barringer family promptly terminated his exploration rights and ability to conduct further fieldwork at the crater.


Eugene M. Shoemaker

Later research by
Eugene Merle Shoemaker Eugene Merle Shoemaker (April 28, 1928 – July 18, 1997) was an American geologist. He co-discovered Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 with his wife Carolyn S. Shoemaker and David H. Levy. This comet hit Jupiter in July 1994: the impact was televi ...
confirmed that the crater had formed due to a significant asteroid impact. A key discovery was the presence in the crater of the minerals coesite and
stishovite Stishovite is an extremely hard, dense tetragonal form ( polymorph) of silicon dioxide. It is very rare on the Earth's surface; however, it may be a predominant form of silicon dioxide in the Earth, especially in the lower mantle. Stishovite ...
, rare forms of
silica Silicon dioxide, also known as silica, is an oxide of silicon with the chemical formula , most commonly found in nature as quartz and in various living organisms. In many parts of the world, silica is the major constituent of sand. Silica is ...
found only where
quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica ( silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical f ...
-bearing rocks have been severely shocked by an instantaneous overpressure. It cannot be created by volcanic action; the only known mechanisms of creating it are naturally through an
impact event An impact event is a collision between astronomical objects causing measurable effects. Impact events have physical consequences and have been found to regularly occur in planetary systems, though the most frequent involve asteroids, comets or ...
, or artificially through a
nuclear explosion A nuclear explosion is an explosion that occurs as a result of the rapid release of energy from a high-speed nuclear reaction. The driving reaction may be nuclear fission or nuclear fusion or a multi-stage cascading combination of the two, ...
. In 1960,
Edward C. T. Chao Edward Ching-Te Chao (; November 30, 1919 – February 3, 2008) was one of the founders of the field of impact metamorphism, the study of the effects of meteorite impacts on the Earth's crust. Born in Suzhou, China, he was best known for ...
and Shoemaker identified coesite at Meteor Crater, adding to the growing body of evidence that the crater was formed from an impact generating extremely high temperatures and pressures. The impact would have vaporized much of the main body of iron mass. The pieces of Canyon Diablo meteorite found scattered around the site would have broken away from the main body before impact. Geologists used the nuclear detonation that created the
Sedan crater Sedan Crater is the result of the Sedan nuclear test and is located within the Nevada Test Site, southwest of Groom Lake, Nevada (Area 51). The crater was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 21, 1994. The crater is the r ...
, and other such craters from the era of atmospheric nuclear testing, to establish upper and lower limits on the kinetic energy of the meteor impactor.


Geology

The impact created an inverted
stratigraphy Stratigraphy is a branch of geology concerned with the study of rock layers ( strata) and layering (stratification). It is primarily used in the study of sedimentary and layered volcanic rocks. Stratigraphy has three related subfields: lithost ...
, so that the layers immediately exterior to the rim are stacked in the reverse order to which they normally occur; the impact overturned and inverted the layers to a distance of 1–2 km outward from the crater's edge. Specifically, climbing the rim of the crater from outside, one finds: * Coconino Sandstone (
sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicat ...
formed 265 million years ago) nearest the top of the rim *
Toroweap Formation The Middle Permian Toroweap Formation is a thin, darker geologic unit, between the brighter colored units of the Kaibab Limestone above, and Coconino Sandstone below. It is a prominent unit in Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA, found through sections ...
(
limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms w ...
formed 255 million years ago) *
Kaibab Formation The Kaibab Limestone is a resistant cliff-forming, Permian geologic formation that crops out across the U.S. states of northern Arizona, southern Utah, east central Nevada and southeast California. It is also known as the Kaibab Formation ...
( dolostone formed 250 million years ago) *
Moenkopi Formation The Moenkopi Formation is a geological formation that is spread across the U.S. states of New Mexico, northern Arizona, Nevada, southeastern California, eastern Utah and western Colorado. This unit is considered to be a group in Arizona. ...
(
mudstone Mudstone, a type of mudrock, is a fine-grained sedimentary rock whose original constituents were clays or muds. Mudstone is distinguished from '' shale'' by its lack of fissility (parallel layering).Blatt, H., and R.J. Tracy, 1996, ''Petrology.' ...
formed 245 million years ago) nearest the outer foot of the rim Soils around the crater are brown, slightly to moderately alkaline, gravelly or stony loam of the Winona series; on the crater rim and in the crater itself, the Winona is mapped in a complex association with rock outcrop.


Recent history

During the 1960s and 1970s,
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...
astronaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...
s trained in the crater to prepare for the Apollo missions to the
Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...
. On August 8, 1964, two commercial pilots in a Cessna 150 flew low over the crater. After crossing the rim, they could not maintain level flight. The pilot attempted to circle in the crater to climb over the rim. During the attempted climb out, the aircraft stalled, crashed, and caught fire. The plane is commonly reported to have run out of fuel, but this is incorrect. Both occupants were severely injured, but survived. A small portion of the wreckage not removed from the crash site remains visible. In 2006, a project called METCRAX (for METeor CRAter eXperiment) investigated "the diurnal buildup and breakdown of basin temperature inversions or cold-air pools and the associated physical and dynamical processes accounting for their evolving structure and morphology."


Tourist attraction

Meteor Crater is a popular tourist destination with roughly 270,000 visitors per year. The crater is owned by a family company, the Barringer Crater Company. Meteor Crater is an important educational and research site. It was used to train Apollo astronauts and continues to be an active training site for astronauts. The Meteor Crater Visitor Center sits on the north rim of the crater. It features interactive exhibits and displays about
meteorites A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid, that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or moon. When the original object ...
and
asteroids An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...
,
space Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consi ...
, the
Solar System The Solar System Capitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar ...
, and comets including the American Astronaut Wall of Fame and such artifacts on display as an Apollo boilerplate command module (BP-29), a meteorite found in the area, and meteorite specimens from Meteor Crater that can be touched. Formerly known as the Museum of Astrogeology, the Visitor Center includes a Discovery Center & Space Museum, a movie theater, a gift shop, and observation areas with views inside the rim of the crater. Guided tours of the rim are offered daily, weather permitting.


See also

*
Barringer Medal The Barringer Medal recognizes outstanding work in the field of impact cratering and/or work that has led to a better understanding of impact phenomena. The Barringer Medal and Award were established to honor the memory of D. Moreau Barringer Sr. ...
* List of impact craters on Earth *
Elugelab Elugelab, or Elugelap ( mh, Āllokļap, ), was an island, part of the Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. It was destroyed by the world's first true hydrogen bomb test on 1 November 1952, a test which was codenamed shot " Mike" of Operatio ...
– a smaller-volume nuclear blast crater, despite being created by an object with an almost identical estimated energy release as the Barringer event, 10.4 megatons.


References


External links


Barringer Crater official site

Meteor Crater Visitor Center
nbsp;– official site
USGS Meteor Crater Sample Collection
nbsp;– historical documents, interactive map and sample requests *
Impact Meteor Crater Viewer
Google Maps Page with Locations of Meteor Craters around the world

shows that the meteor may have been traveling more slowly than previously thought
Computer generated movie
based on satellite imagery and topography data
Aerial Exploration of the Barringer Structure

Geologic Map of the Eastern Quarter of the Flagstaff 30ʹ x 60ʹ Quadrangle, Coconino County, Northern Arizona
United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, ...
*
Herman Leroy Fairchild: An Early Promoter and Defender of Meteorite Impact Cratering
nbsp;– includes details of early investigations into Meteor Crater
3 Dimensional stereoscopic image pair of the Barringer Crater by Volkan Yuksel (arranged for crossed-eye viewing technique)

Guidebook to the Geology of Barringer Meteorite Crater, Arizona (a.k.a. Meteor Crater)

"Mine Shaft is Sunk to Solve Meteor Mystery"
''Popular Mechanics'', January 1930
''Milwaukee Sentinel'' – Dec 14, 1941 "Metal in Arizona Meteorite may solve defense problem"
US Govt. considered mining nickel from the crater for the war effort. {{authority control Impact craters of the United States National Natural Landmarks in Arizona Pleistocene impact craters Tourist attractions along U.S. Route 66 Museums in Coconino County, Arizona Science museums in Arizona Geology museums in Arizona Landforms of Coconino County, Arizona Tourist attractions in Coconino County, Arizona