Impact craters remained on the surface of our planet after the fall of giant meteorites, they are also called Astroblems. Throughout the history of its existence, our planet has been repeatedly attacked from the depths of the Cosmos, which in turn often became the causes of global catastrophes. On the territory of our country, scientists have discovered 15 "star wounds", and, 2 of them in the Urals. Nowadays, only a change in the landscape reminds of the catastrophic past of the local environs - the fairly crumbling craters from the ground are practically indistinguishable and resemble a gigantic lowland, but from the satellite the perfectly flat boundaries of the "star wound" are clearly visible.
Ashap astrobleme.
As often happens, very interesting objects that are difficult to see from the ground can be found using satellite images. In the previous article dedicated to the "Kasli anomaly", it was already said that sometimes viewing familiar surroundings through the lens of a satellite can present very unusual discoveries.
The first would like to tell about the Ashapsky impact crater, located in the Ordinsky region of the Perm region near the village of Mikhailovka. Now this settlement every year becomes closer to the transition to the status of the next "ghost settlement". Nowadays, only a few families live here, and even then, apparently, from fatal hopelessness. Due to the "successful" location near a giant crater, which looks like a kind of huge ravine, there is no reception of a cellular signal in the village and in order to make a regular phone call, a few residents have to climb the surrounding mountains or stomp several kilometers to the neighboring village, where a "common" satellite phone is installed.
The dimensions of the crater are so large that it is impossible to estimate the scale by eye. However, with the help of Yandex. Maps, you can easily look at the "star wound" that has not healed for millions of years. The funnel with a diameter of almost 7.6 kilometers and a depth of about 500 meters is clearly distinguishable against the background of the rest of the landscape.
Scientists from the Academy of Sciences, who studied this Ashap astrobleme, believe that the dimensions of the meteorite that crashed into our planet were truly impressive! According to Rough estimates, the diameter of the space projectile was about 300 m! At the same time, the architecture of this formation itself is heterogeneous: from one end the earth shaft is higher than from the other with a difference of 200 meters! The main texture of the earth wall is observed in the north-western part of the crater, while in the eastern part the earth's surface line is slightly disturbed. The formed funnel gradually pulls the upper layers of the soil towards the center, pulling the village located on the outskirts of the crater. However, there is nothing surprising in such a heterogeneous arrangement of the edges. It is only ordinary people who believe that stones from the sky fall exactly from top to bottom, but in reality the situation is different:along a ballistic trajectory, a meteorite enters the earth's atmosphere at an acute angle and falls to the ground like a projectile, changing its trajectory to a vertical one just before contacting a solid surface. At the same time, at the moment of contact with the ground, the body already spends all its initial energy, which sufficiently compensates for the impact potential of the cosmic cobblestone.
Stages of formation of astroblems.
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Based on the traces of formations, displacement and location of earth shafts raised from the very depths of the crater with a colossal charge of energy, experts have estimated the explosion power in the TNT equivalent understandable to us at more than 50,000 tons! Obviously, the consequences of such a fall were critical. However, unfortunately, there is no exact data on the time when the earth took on such a powerful blow. Scientists also did not find the giant meteorite itself, since even a small part of it is difficult to find in such a huge area completely swampy and dotted with ravines. Equipping an expedition in a difficult terrain is not cheap and no one guarantees any result. One of the few expeditions organized to the Ashapsky crater was the trip of a researcher of the GEOKHI RAS (Committee on Meteorites) D. D. Badyukov in 2009. Despite the vast experience of field research, as well as the highest level of qualifications, the scientist could not find traces of the fallen meteorite. The reason for this was the same difficult accessibility of the terrain and the impossibility, without the use of special equipment, to remove multi-meter layers of the earth in order to get to the bottom of the truth. All traces of a catastrophe of a cosmic scale are hidden by centuries-old layers of many layers of forest soil.
Ragozin astrobleme (inside the red circle).
Another no less remarkable "star wound" is the Ragozinsky crater, located in the Sverdlovsk region, 100 kilometers from Nizhny Tagil. Like the Ashap astroblema, "Ragozinka" has a diameter of many kilometers, about 9 km across and a crater depth of 500 meters. Scientists from the Academy of Sciences also carried out a thorough study of this object. Experts in the field of studying changes in soil morphology came to the conclusion that under the influence of the impact force of a giant meteorite, the structure of the crater epicenter was slightly changed, which turned out to be filled with breccia and deformed quartz. In one of the shafts, in the northern part of the crater, which also have a heterogeneous structure and difference in geophysical heights, one can observe outcrops of impactites - a special rock,formed as a result of a powerful explosion after the impact of a large meteorite. According to experts, this breed is formed only with a sharp change in pressure and a rise in temperature up to 3000 Celsius!
Impact.
In addition to unique geological rocks near the Ragozinskaya astroblema, geophysicists have recorded several large sources of magnetic and gravitational anomalies, as well as a contour of deep geotectonic faults 7 kilometers wide. Scientists believe that all this is traces of the fall of a giant meteorite that broke the earth's firmament.
The boundaries of the Ragozinskaya astrobleme on the geophysical map.
Describing giant meteorite craters, it is difficult to even imagine the scale of the catastrophes that caused both meteorites. By the way, if such an incident happened in our century, then most likely, the fall of any of them would become fatal for the majority of the inhabitants of our planet. Looking at photographs of giant craters, one involuntarily recalls the events of 2013, when the fall of a tiny meteorite, in comparison with these giants, caused a wave of panic among the residents of Chelyabinsk. However, on that February morning, a meteorite that lit up the sky over the capital of the Southern Urals could be the last thing that millions of residents of our region saw, be it the size of the Ragozinki or Ashapsky asteroid. Realizing the scale of past catastrophes, comes the realization of the fact that our world is defenseless against a fatal blow from the abyss of the Cosmos,which can be applied at any moment …
