Help Us Explain Crater Formation!

[terrykali]

It occurred to me while looking at moon craters that they all appear roughly circular; if they were formed by meteorites striking the surface then they would have to fall in a perpendicular direction to form a circular crater. I don’t think there are many elongated craters that should be more abundant if random falling rocks were striking the moon at varying oblique trajectory angles. Once again this is more evidence that the moon and planets have been struck by lightening bolts or plasma discharges that would strike in a perpendicular direction.

[terrykali]

Ha - I just posted this and then read Lloyd's post that said exactly the same...synchronisity !

[601L1n9FR09]

Hi terrykali,
I saw a PBS show decades ago where they "demonstrated" high speed impacts leaving circular craters regardless of trajectory. I am not saying I buy it, but there are those with credentials that do. Myself, I like the electric model mostly because I have no credentials and I can state my preferences without risking anything. I have seen elongated structures on solid steel that most certainly resulted from high velocity impacts. There I said it. Now some PHD can tell me I should stick to mopping floors.

Jay

[terrykali]

Thanks Jay -- I agree -- I am not PHD either but so not was Newton Maxwell and many others.
Think for yourself logically - I don't think metorites would always form round craters do you ?
Terry

[terrykali]

PS = mopping floors is good Zen...hahah _ I wish I had the time to do it!

[mharratsc]

I bet baliistic experiments have failed to come up with flat-floored, terrace-sided craters with central peaks containing yet another little mini-crater on the tip tho... o.O

[jjohnson]

I think, electric "cratering" aside, that the relative elasticity of ballistic impacts has a lot to do with the result. A hardened steel ball or bullet impacting a steel plate at a shallow angle at approximately 350 m/s isn't going to cause a lot of fracturing, nor a round hole or crater. A gouge or tear, possibly; steel is tough and fairly tightly bound.

A fairly hard, as in tightly knit rocky body, impacting against a planetary surface at almost any angle going 10 to 15 km/s is going to be decelerated so fast that it will melt and ionize, and its kinetic energy is basically imparted spherically at the point of impact, so the elastic rebound tends to blow the ejecta out rather evenly, despite any initial transverse momentum. Compared with a water impact, dirt and rock are pretty compressible. I saw that TV show, too. It was shooting ball bearings into dry sand and powder, or something along those lines. Round every time, if I recall it right. I don't know who put that on, or why.

I think the conventional explanation for flat floored craters is that the melted rock flowed back in and cooled as a level surface, or the craters were flooded with lava at a later time, probably from vents within the caldera or crater, as it likely wouldn't have spilled in over the rim without that's being obvious. I like the EU's electric discharge machining hypothesis much better. It's direct, clean, and probably fairly fast. It's happening on Jupiter's little sulfurous moon Io all the time. Look up Io, Tvashtar Catena.

Another description of the effects of a large meteor impact was in one of the science fiction magazines (F&SF? -can't recall) many years ago. The author figured out that if a 10 km wide meteor entered the atmosphere at around 20 km/s, not even air would be able to move laterally fast enough to get out of the way, so it simply compresses, heats up, ionizes into plasma, and radiates hard x-rays during the couple of seconds it takes to traverse down to the ground. By then the leading edge is pretty well melted. As it struck the ocean, there was still a column of hard vacuum in the atmosphere behind it starting to close back up, followed by a thunderclap that you could only describe as "non-linear".

The inertia and kinetic energy allow the object to penetrate the water and the sea bed, during which most of its kinetic energy goes into vaporizing several cubic km of water and object and sea floor, with widely shocked seabed surfaces around the strike zone. The ejecta rebound is essentially vertical, with a lot of the matter at or above escape velocity. As usual, it was conjectured that material ejected at an angle out of the atmosphere through a conical shaped discharge at less than escape velocity might re-enter around the opposite side of the planet ("antipode") although I have some doubts about that, looking at the possible scatter of elliptical orbit possibilities with different initial velocities and angles. That was fun to read, though. I'm still not sure I could criticize it or model it any differently. If I can find the SF mag, I'll reference it here.

[webolife]

I already mentioned this before, but just try this at home yourself:
Fill a baking pan with an inch or two of white flour, then dust some cocoa or whole wheat flour over the top for contrast. Toss marbles or whatever into the pan from a variety of angles and look at the results.

Then consider the meaning of Newton's 3rd law of motion [the equal action and reaction postulate]. While you're at it recall or look at some high speed videos or photos of bullet impacts in apples or whatever, to see why the angle of impact has little to do with the shape of a crater. Now relative masses or densities of the impacting materials may have some effect, and I'm sure electrical interactions [eg. discharges] between [nearly] colliding bodies play some part as well, but the circularity of craters is no proof either direction.

Hexagonal/polygonal cratering... now that's another question [and another thread]!

[Lloyd]

Web said: Hexagonal/polygonal cratering... now that's another question [and another thread]!

* Actually, that's also part of this thread. It was mentioned in an early post as evidence against conventional theory. And I agree with Mike H:

I bet baliistic experiments have failed to come up with flat-floored, terrace-sided craters with central peaks containing yet another little mini-crater on the tip tho....

[webolife]

My bad Yes I know hexagonal cratering is a prime issue here as well... I just don't like the setting up of straw men [low angle cratering shapes] as a means of promoting or discarding hypotheses.

[Lloyd]

* Speaking of hexagonal craters, here's a ...
Concentric Hexagonal Crater in Chad
Uri [Crater] (Chad) 21° 17' N # 19° 20' E

http://www.b14643.de/Sahara/Doming-Craters/index.htm

Comment [by whom?]: No impact crater.
EVIDENCE OF TWO NEW POSSIBLE IMPACT STRUCTURES IN CHAD: SEPARATE IMPACTS, BINARY ASTEROIDS OR AOROUNGA IMPACT CHAIN?
Emilio Gonzalez and Sergio Alonso, Astroseti.org, Barcelona, Spain
- The Uri structure presents a 5 km diameter and a multi-ring morphology. The structure is harder to appreciate because it is in a mountainous area, and because it is also more eroded than the northern one. Despite the previous description, there are two continued rings -separated by a depressed zone- and even a third one extending the affected area to 8 km. There is presence of some volcanic buildings developed from linear fractures in the rings, suggesting that the fractures and magma emissions are more recent than the structure formation. The depressions between rings indicate a compressed genesis rather than accumulation of pyroclastic elements and lava coming from fractures.
- Source: http://www.geo.su.se/file.php?id=4928

* How's that for weird? And it's right here on Earth, or I mean over there on Earth.

[Lloyd]

* Seasmith posted a nice image of the Luizi Structure, located in southeastern Congo, here: http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=994&p=67584#p67566. Here's the original image location: http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/78000/78267/luzi_ali_2012154.jpg.
* It looks like a 2 km circular crater within an 8 km long oval within a 10 km circle, kind of resembling an eyeball. It has shattercones and shocked quartz.

[flippinrocks]

I stumbled over the Nevada Test Site at Groom Lake on Bing.

Using the birds eye tool seems to be the best detail, here is a link, hope it works. Otherwise just go to Bing maps and find it, not too difficult.

http://binged.it/MOz8dG

[dahlenaz]

What began at the link below is continued here as an effort to connect the dots of a historic event, a mystery
and the region on Northern Arizona.
Please continue your comments here rather than at the link below. Thanks d...z

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=42&start=120#p69486
______________
Here is part of the discussion's beginnings
---------------

To be sure that no possibility has been overlooked in the determination of possible mechanisms
behind formation of planetary features we may want to revisit the mechanism of hydraulic cratering.

These are formed in sediment under shallow water
and represent examples of a progression from oldest to newest.
Video was captured for the second half of these features.
During the next session i will take photos after each crater's formation
which will show the many details that give this mechanism value.



A larger image is named: http://para-az.com/hydraulic-craters/hydro-cratering-805c.jpg

I have proposed that there is great value in looking at this process as it may correlate directly with
plasmoid-formed craters, offering us a simple tool to demonstrate a complex and intensely dynamic
process. This is classroom friendly and it may even be the best explanation for one feature often talked
about but not considered in the context of Hopi lake, which once spread out into north-east Arizona from
where meteor crater resides, within its ancient shores. The possibility of a bolide event over the lake offers
some interesting factors to explain the history of that area and
the mysterious disappearance of the Anasazi.

The subject of hydraulic cratering will be continued at:
http://www.para-az.com/hydraulic-craters/mechanism.html ....... 3dzp ......

Other developments: http://www.para-az.com/ess-npa12

__________
Lloyd's reply followed
__________

* That last image, a Martian feature, is very similar to Death Valley.
Meteor Crater in Hopi Lake

DZ said: plasmoid-formed craters ... may even be the best explanation for one feature often talked about but not considered in the context of Hopi lake, that once spread out into north-east Arizona [... --] meteor crater resides within its ancient shores. The possibility of a bolide event over the lake offers some interesting factors to explain the history of that area and the mysterious disappearance of the Anasazi.

* The idea that Meteor Crater formed within Hopi Lake when it was still a large lake is very interesting. I see that the elevation of Hopi Lake is said to have been about 1,813 m (5,950 ft) and the elevation of Meteor Crater is 1,740 m (5,709 ft) at the rim and about 1,540 m at the bottom. So the "impactor" would have displaced 67 m (240 ft) of lake water above the lake bottom there. I thought that might have caused a tidal wave that would have breached the lake's banks and caused rapid erosion and draining of the lake. But this webpage http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/GrandCanyon5.html says Grand Lake just north of Hopi Lake started draining first and that undercut the bank of Hopi Lake, which caused it to drain too. It looks like that idea is plausible, according to this map, so maybe the crater formed after the lake drained. [The Anasazi should not have been affected much by the draining of Hopi Lake, since it must have occurred a few thousand years ago and they were still in the area until about 1300 A.D.]

_______
I replied back
-----------

You caught onto one thought that crossed my mind, Lloyd, a tidal wave resulting from an impactor's force.

If this were to have occurred the wave could have exceeded the capacity of Grand Lake leading to
a breach in any directions unable to hold the increased level. Additionally, tectonic factors could have
opened any number of drainage paths turning subteranian drainage into raging rivers.

This proposal is more about food for thought and call for details such as relative elevations and locations
of interest.

I have little reason to trust conventional dates given for some events in history, especially those that
are necessary for duping the american public into looking away from the evidence of recent catastrophic
events.

Were there to have been a wave initiated by an impactor's force upon the SW shore of Hopi Lake, i rather
doubt that shore front property in the North East could escape the event. If the timing were separated from
Anasazi departure, there are still some scenarios to consider with reference to how people would be affected,
by anything consequential to a destabalized region, re-arrangement of surface water and many other aspects.

Evaluation of this region cannot overlook the lakes who's presence is obvious, wide spread and looking more
recent than is claimed. The characteristics of the surrounding rock at the crater is a significant detail of the
pre-event lake. I say, Look at NE arizona though water logged eyes and see the possibilities. A few people in
Holbrook and at the petrified forest, who heard my proposal, saw how the dots might connect with details
known to them.

I hope others will set important pieces into their place on the table.

As much as i agree with some info at the site you mention, especially Hydroplate possibilities, I am concered
about using science to mend doubt where faith must preside. d...z

So Lloyd, Have you come across any mention of the two lakes, Grand and Hopi, being the
remnants of a much larger body of water?

I ask because some of the details mentioned regarding the unusual stratification, angles and elevations
around the intersection of the three canyons, makes me wonder about crustal rebound as a factor that
introduced elevation change when the larger body drained to the level of the two bodies.

At the link you mention, http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/GrandCanyon5.html
there are many details offered and many open-ended question for them.

Somewhere among all the clues is a key to unlock the whole mystery.

Thanks for adding your thoughts. d...z

Also, Consider the details offered at the following thread:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=5470

[dahlenaz]

Lloyd, I think you are right about formation when water level was minimal.
I've been trying out your suggestion of a crater formed when water is
only saturation deep and have seen some real nice examples. Your idea sure
is less dependent of the vaporization or displacement of the water which, if not
completely sent elsewhere, would wash back to alter the craters appearance.

I will add some pictures soon. d...z