I went there IRL!!! It was cool
A close call
Submitted 2 weeks ago by almost1337@lemmy.zip to [deleted]
https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/5bb22139-c586-4346-97e9-f44ee48af432.avif
Comments
lemmygarden@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I went there, but they wanted to charge like 40 bucks a person to see the crater, so we left.
MBech@feddit.dk 2 weeks ago
I find it incredibly weird that was as people, respect it when someone says “That crater created by tons of falling space stuff many millions of years ago, is mine! No one can look at it, unless you pay me!”. I mean, wtf? How does that make sense? What asswipe sold that crater at some point in history?
M137@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Is the whole damn thing surrounded by a fence?
lemmygarden@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
That’s a long drive to turn around. The museum and visitors center was more interesting than the Crater.
It was very gusty winds when I visited, so only a brief time outside observing the Crater. There was a large hunk of meteorite inside, an educational lecture, and a museum. It was one of the highlights of my trip but it’s not for everyone.
I recall someone else turning around and saying it was too expensive when I was purchasing my tickets.
The drive was so gusty that the wind was pushing the car while I was driving it. What a day to remember!
kossa@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
That’s a bit steep.
Like, I never went there, and just saw the crater for free.
scytale@piefed.zip 2 weeks ago
Is it not possible to pull over just short of the visitor center and see it from there? I guess you won’t really be able to see down into it?
jaybone@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Did you manage to avoid the meteor impact?
lemmygarden@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
I did! But apparently many others fell into the Crater and got stuck.
Widdershins@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It was real cool. I am figuratively agreeing but also literally agreeing. I spent a winter break in that area and the whole desert was covered in snow.
mrmisses@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Did you see the spaceman?
wopalopa@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
you could say that their luck has been… cratered
MajinBlayze@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Imagine working at the visitor center when no one’s coming, then one day you have a massive meteor impact and suddenly have something worth visiting in the vicinity of your visitor center
Paradachshund@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
So does the rock itself disintegrate on impact or is it under the crater?
Agent641@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Fun fact a rich guy once bought the mining rights to a meteorite impact crater believing that it would be an easy source of pure iron to mine since most meteorites are primarily iron, but after digging for hundreds of feet and finding no iron the project ran out of money and went bust, because meteorites disintegrate into first a liquid iron, which then oxidised very rapidly and becomes dust and small chunks which settle in an ejecta pattern around the impact zone, so.etimes many miles wide, and this thing layer is fairly quickly eroded away, so there’s no usable iron nor a meaningful amount of oxide remaining.
Smaller meteorites often land intact, as their surface area allows for meaningful atmospheric friction to slow them down, and these are chunks of iron, but larger than about the size of a large van, the meteorite is usually obliterated.
Entry angle can allow for exceptions, IE I’d a meteorite just grazes the atmosphere but still slows down enough to suborbital speeds,it can land as big chunks, but eve.ln these get scattered over hundreds of kilometres. Any impact steeper than about 20 degrees and larger than a large van is usually carrying so much momentum at ground level that it hits at several, and possibly tend if kilometres per second, which liquifies and scatters it widely.
SpecialSetOfSieves@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
most meteorites are primarily iron
I have to note that this is not correct. Chondrites make up the vast majority of meteorites, and even the most iron-rich chondrites contain much less than 50% iron by weight.
I haven’t been to Barringer Crater and I don’t know all the sweet, gory details of the big bolide that made it, but LPI seems to have a nice summary. The estimated 30 tons of meteoritic iron retrieved from the site certainly isn’t very much, and I have heard a variant of Agent641’s story before, so I’ll refrain on commenting there.
I’m a little sad thinking about all that oxidized iron, though. On Luna that stuff gets reduced instead, so that the regolith is peppered with little spheres of iron. Of course, here, we don’t get the little balls of iron, or much in the way of intact craters at all… damn it, we could use a few more.
Sighs Earth. For all the predators and the continent-busting rifts here, this place just isn’t very hardcore sometimes.
bdonvr@thelemmy.club 2 weeks ago
I wonder what would happen if a large one came in directly perpendicular to the ground at high speed (for a meteor). Like the atmosphere is really pretty thin and that trajectory would have the least exposure to it.
ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I’m not a craterologist but my understanding is an impact like this is going to chemically change the asteroid and the ground. So partly disentigrates and kinda becomes part of the ground (idk if that counts as under)
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
the impact velocity is so high that the kinetic energy is large enough that it instantly vaporizes the whole asteroid on impact.
sunbytes@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Correlation vs causation
jaybone@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Thanks for the big circle. Otherwise no one would get the joke.
troglodytis@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
What joke?
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
if the center was there, the impact wouldve still obliterated the buildings.
mrmisses@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah but now that poor visitor center is ruined. People went there to see the vast open desert, not some hole made by space garbage! I hope the government can bail them out
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Quick, somebody start a gofundme to get that rock launched back into space where it belongs!
mrmisses@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Please send any sand you can spare to the visitor center. Together we can fill that hole
MasterNerd@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Obviously the meteor was finely tuned to avoid hitting the visitor center
PixeIOrange@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
TheBluetoofs@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Praise Jeebus, they were saved from obliteration by MERE INCHES!
faizanyay@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
LemmyPlaceDN@europe.pub 2 weeks ago
The visitors center was built for the crater good
hakunawazo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Image
jaybone@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
The second most being the pixels.