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19/02/13/0850255 story

Greenland May Have Another Massive Crater Hiding Under its Ice

posted by janrinok on Wednesday February 13 2019, @02:21PM   
from the peek-a-boo dept.

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Greenland may have another massive crater hiding under its ice

Greenland's ice may be hiding more than one crater left by long-ago meteorite impacts.

An analysis of satellite and airborne images of the topography beneath the ice sheet has revealed a large, craterlike structure buried beneath two kilometers of ice. It's just 183 kilometers southeast of Hiawatha, another possible large impact crater described in November (SN: 12/8/18, p. 6). The newfound bowl-shaped object is about 36.5 kilometers across, slightly larger than the 31-kilometer-wide Hiawatha depression, researchers report online February 11 in Geophysical Research Letters.

Like Hiawatha, the new feature consists of a ring-shaped rim surrounding a depression with a peak at its center — consistent with a crater carved out by the impact of a large meteorite, says coauthor Joseph MacGregor, a glaciologist with NASA's Operation IceBridge. Unlike Hiawatha, there's little chance of collecting geologic data from the new structure to confirm or deny an extraterrestrial origin: Instead of sitting at the edge of the ice sheet, the new depression is closer to the center of the ice.

[...] "It's simply not that unusual," says coauthor William Bottke, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. Scientists already know of two such pairs — one in Ukraine and another in Canada — but, statistically, a third pair is plausible too, Bottke says.

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Original Submission

• Comment Below Threshold

  just like the linux foundation(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @04:36PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @04:36PM (#800625)

  fucking reinventing unix m$ style!

• AliensAliens (Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday February 13 2019, @05:47PM (2 children)

  by looorg (578) on Wednesday February 13 2019, @05:47PM (#800667)

  Are we sure it's not the Aliens and there landing zones? Aliens vs Predator happened around there somewhere didn't it ...

  • Re:Aliens(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday February 13 2019, @06:35PM

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday February 13 2019, @06:35PM (#800687) Journal

    Wrong pole, I think.

    Parent

  • Re:Aliens(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 14 2019, @02:16AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 14 2019, @02:16AM (#800835)

    Are we sure it's not the Aliens and there they're landing zones?

    FTFY

    Come on, peeps, learn it already [soylentnews.org]

    Parent

• Not cratersNot craters (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @07:30PM (3 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @07:30PM (#800704)

  These are just bubbles that formed under the ice and pushed down the earth. Crack open a hard boiled egg and there is always a crater-like region.

  • Re:Not cratersRe:Not craters (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @08:01PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @08:01PM (#800713)

    Hopefully you are joking

    Parent

    • Re:Not cratersRe:Not craters (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @09:43PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @09:43PM (#800748)

      Why is that?

      Parent

      • Re:Not craters(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 14 2019, @02:18AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 14 2019, @02:18AM (#800836)

        What is that?

        Parent

• Lucky(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @08:48PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @08:48PM (#800726)

  I can't believe how lucky they are to discovers this before they sold off all that sand to fill up the hole.