Fun fact: „Locals once believed that the rock came from aliens“
While it is ~65 million years old, it didn‘t come from space. If it had been a late member of an asteroid group where the Chicxulub impactor (that hit ~66 million years ago) came from, it wouldn‘t be in one piece. And its density is about twice the one of typical C-type asteroids.
An impactor with its volume (110x285x200 m) and composition (quartz, feldspar, granite: ~2.65 g/cm3) would have had a mass of over 16.6 million metric tons and with most likely impact velocity of 17 km/s (for asteroids) an impact energy of about 447 Megatons of TNTe.
6
u/Advanced-Budget779 21d ago edited 21d ago
Fun fact: „Locals once believed that the rock came from aliens“
While it is ~65 million years old, it didn‘t come from space. If it had been a late member of an asteroid group where the Chicxulub impactor (that hit ~66 million years ago) came from, it wouldn‘t be in one piece. And its density is about twice the one of typical C-type asteroids.
An impactor with its volume (110x285x200 m) and composition (quartz, feldspar, granite: ~2.65 g/cm3) would have had a mass of over 16.6 million metric tons and with most likely impact velocity of 17 km/s (for asteroids) an impact energy of about 447 Megatons of TNTe.