The Story of My As-Yet-Unverified Impact Crater 250
tetrahedrassface writes "When I was very young, my dad took me on a trip to his parents' farm. He wanted to show me 'The Crater.' We walked a long way through second generation hardwoods and finally stood on the rim of a hole that has no equal in this area. As I grew up, I became more interested in The Crater, and would always tell friends about it. It is roughly 1,200 feet across and 120 feet deep, and has a strange vibe about it. When you walk up to it, you feel like something really big happened here. Either the mother of all caves is down there, or a large object smashed into this place a long, long time ago. I bought aerial photos when I was twelve and later sent images from GIS to a geologist at a local university. He pretty much laughed me out of his office, saying that it was a sinkhole. He did wish me luck, however. It may be sinkhole. Who knows? Last week I borrowed a metal detector and went poking around, and have found the strangest shrapnel pieces I have ever seen. They are composed of a metal that reacts strongly to acids. The largest piece so far reacted with tap water and dish-washing detergent. My second trip today yielded lots of strange new pieces of metal, and hopefully, one day the truth will be known. Backyard science is so much fun. And who knows; if it is indeed a cave, maybe Cerberus resides there."
Looks like a karst depression (Score:5, Interesting)
never heard of metorites reacting with water (Score:4, Interesting)
The Truth is Out There! (Score:1, Interesting)
...but lol anyways. Hey my girl friend has a giant sink hole, here, maybe i should a picture in for analysis.
Re:never heard of metorites reacting with water (Score:5, Interesting)
Looking at the pictures, the depressions to the north, the cutouts running north and south.. I would have to agree with the expert he consulted that what they have there are sink holes.
The metals could have even been dumped there, not as in a hoax, years and years ago as the site could have been a "garbage dump". Unless you know the history of the area, may never know for sure.
Re:Maybe yes, maybe no, hard to say from here... (Score:4, Interesting)
> It could easily be a meteor crater or a sinkhole, or even an old quarry
Given that the posted feature has a second landform that appears largely identical just to the upper left, I'm going with quarry.
Re:Your backyard.. (Score:3, Interesting)
It would have been nice if he would give some idea of location. Is this in the US, Europe, etc.? Someone here might know the local geography. The bits of metal don't look all that weird to me. It could be there because of a battle, a deposit of iron ore or other natural deposit [wikipedia.org]. Are there any old mines in the area?
And do you have any food synthesizers that went down [moddb.com]?
Yeah, I'm wondering if we're being punked with a video game promotion....
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
No idea, but on the second thought this totally reminds me one long-inactive volcano we got here in CZ. Google for 'Komorni hurka' or 'Kammerbühl'.
Images from the actual volcano crater:
http://kurz.geologie.sci.muni.cz/obrazky_ucebnice/obrazek4_23.jpg [sci.muni.cz]
http://regiony.ic.cz/clanky/karlov/hurka_v.jpg [regiony.ic.cz]
Re:You know why? (Score:3, Interesting)
. the submitter acknowledges the possibility of being wrong, and still has a childlike fascination for the things we all know too much about to be inspired by. ...
Yeah. And I wonder about the vociferous put-downs that people are posting. After all, there are hundreds of known impact craters scattered around the planet. The US has had several cases of meteors hitting houses in the past few decades (two of them in Connecticut). Some years back, there was a groups of small craters (in the 1-2m size range) in a farming area in China, probably caused by the pieces of a larger rock that broke up in the atmosphere. Just a year or two ago, there was the impact in eastern Africa that was located from calculations based on several photos of the object in the atmosphere.
It's estimate that 1-3m diameter meteors enter the atmosphere at a rate of around 1 per day. Most break up in the air and become a dust fall, but a few hit the ground.
In general, a meteor impact is a reasonably hypothesis if you even have a roughly circular crater, which the aerial photo does have. Granted, it's only roughly circular, but it does have a hill in the center. So an old, weathered crater is a reasonable thing to consider. Or a karst sink, if the area has a lot of calcium rocks.
OTOH, it's not too surprising if "the authorities" don't find it interesting. They probably know of lots of sinkholes and craters in their general vicinity. A new one might not strike them as very interesting, unless there's something really unusual about it.
The best suggestion might be that the fellow get together a few interested friends, read up a bit on amateur archaeological and paleontological digging, and set to work in the depression. If there are any experts on such digging at nearby schools (or mining companies ;-), ask them for advice. With a bit of careful digging, they may add a bit to our knowledge of local history. The metals may just be from mining, or the rubble from a recent battlegound or campground or whatever. But even that could add to the store of local historical knowledge.
Instead of trying to discourage them, maybe we could encourage a bit of digging and analysis.
And maybe they will turn up evidence of the first real crash site of an alien spacecraft. ;-)