Some 780,000 years ago , a colossal space tilt smash into Earth . Scientists have known about this world - shaking event for some time thanks to strange glassful debris that ’s straw across Australia and Asia . However , curiously enough , no one has ever found the wallop crater – perhaps until now .
An external squad of researcher believe they have found the location of the mysterious crater buried beneath a lava seam in Laos , according to a new study in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
One of the main clues that lead to the potential impact site was the glass blobs , known astektites , that were kvetch out by the meteorite blast into the terra firma . Researchers have document numerous types of tektite , relate them back to the original impact crater . For example , tektites ground in North America most likely originated from the impact that take form the Chesapeake Bay crater in Virginia .
However , no one has ever been capable to decipher the root of tektites find out across a orotund part of Earth ’s Eastern Hemisphere , an sphere referred to as the Australasian strewnfield . Considering the size of it of the strewnfield – stretching from southern China to southern Australia and across much of the Indian Ocean – the meteorite must have been a big shock .
Altogether , their calculations are consistent with a hidden impact crater , measuring around 13 kilometers ( 8 miles ) by 17 kilometers ( 10.5 miles ) widely , lurking beneath the Bolaven volcanic field .
" There have been many , many attempts to find the impact site and many trace , ranging from northern Cambodia to central Laos , and even southern China , and from eastern Thailand to offshore Vietnam , " Professor Kerry Sieh , study author and principal investigator with the Earth Observatory of Singapore , toldCNN .
" But our study is the first to put together so many lines of evidence , ranging from the chemical nature of the tektite to their physical characteristics , and from gravity measure to measurements of the age of lavas that could inhume the volcanic crater . "
Although gage up by some sturdy evidence , this remains speculative at the moment . After all , the crater is now obliterate beneath muckle of volcanic rock produced by a lava flow many millennia ago . To confirm their theory , the team must grasp deep into the lava study and its geology .
