An international team of glaciologists, using satellite images and scans, have discovered what is believed to be an impact crater under more than 1.5 km of ice in northwestern Greenland.
The discovery is reported on the website of the Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA). Recall that earlier in Greenland, under the Hyavatha glacier, an almost perfect circular crater with a diameter of 31 km was found.
Researchers continued to scan the area and found another impact crater about 180 kilometers away. It turned out to be larger than the previous one. Its diameter is tentatively estimated at 36 kilometers.
If these data are confirmed, then the found object will take 22nd place in the list of the largest impact craters found on Earth. The researchers used information obtained from the spectroradiometers of the Terra and Aqua satellites.
In addition, the circular shape under the ice was captured using digital modeling in the ArcticDEM system. This data was obtained using commercial satellites. The discovered crater is hidden by a thicker layer of ice than the one in Hyavath, and its shape is not so round, but "blurred".
Scientists have recorded a gravitational anomaly at the site of the study, which is characteristic of impact craters. It has already been established that neighboring craters did not appear at the same time, that is, there is no talk of a double asteroid impact.
The age of the find has not yet been dated. Radar data and core studies have shown that the ice in this area is at least 79,000 years old.
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Then the rate of erosion was studied. Calculations have shown that the initial crater depth could reach 800 meters - an order of magnitude more than now. Given the range of likely erosion rates, scientists estimate that it would take between 100,000 and 100 million years for the ice to break up the crater to its present size.
Denis Peredelski