The largest meteorite on earth. The largest meteorites ever to fall to earth. The largest meteorites that fell on Earth

Surprises from space

At 9:20 a.m. on February 15, 2013, residents of the Urals and Kazakhstan witnessed an incredible space show: a bright fireball flashed over their heads and exploded over Chelyabinsk 13 seconds after entering the atmosphere. In the evening of the same day, the “big brother” of the Chelyabinsk meteorite, asteroid 2012 DA14 the size of a 15-story building, flew very close to the Earth. It flew at a distance of 26 thousand kilometers from our planet, so the second show did not happen.

The visit of the space guest did not result in casualties, but about one and a half thousand residents of the city and region suffered from broken windows and panic. Economic damage, according to regional officials, amounted to over a billion rubles.

Shot from DVR/youtube

The Chelyabinsk meteorite was the first whose fall was comprehensively studied and documented. The falling car was filmed on thousands of cameras of Chelyabinsk residents’ car recorders, and a whole team of geologists led by Viktor Grokhovsky, who caught “Chelyabinsk” from the bottom of Lake Chebarkul in October 2013, hunted for its remains.

The fall of Chelyabinsk, the largest object to collide with the Earth since the Tunguska meteorite, shook the public, politicians and the scientific community. Network users began to watch disaster films about asteroids and comets, and politicians were surprised to discover that the Earth is not in empty space, but surrounded by thousands of huge objects that threaten to destroy a large part of the planet.

The site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite. Traces of a forest fire and forest fall

A direct result of the fall Chelyabinsk meteorite was a tripling of NASA's budget for monitoring and combating near-Earth objects. Russian officials have announced their readiness to create a system that would shoot down visitors from space using thermonuclear warheads, and promised to develop an early warning program under the auspices of the Ministry of Emergency Situations by 2020.

On both sides of the ocean, people had the same questions: why was the Chelyabinsk not discovered before it fell? how is it possible and is it possible in principle to fight such space threat? What do the falling celestial stones threaten us with and how much does it cost to protect ourselves from them?

Space Population Census

The answer to the question why the meteorite was not discovered in time is quite simple: small celestial bodies with a diameter of about 20 meters, like Chelyabinsk, specialists in asteroid danger They are not considered capable of causing serious harm to the Earth and therefore are not closely monitored.

Although scientists still keep an eye on such celestial stones with the help of robotic telescopes as part of the Catalina Sky Survey, Pan-STARRS and many other public and private initiatives. But the main “responsible” for the search for potential killers of humanity is the orbital infrared telescope WISE, which finds even asteroids invisible from Earth that almost do not reflect light.

WISE telescope, photo: NASA

Based on the results of the work of the telescope, NASA in 2010 and 2011 published a catalog of near-Earth objects - about 18.5 thousand in total, and also used the danger criteria developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Turin scale), according to which all asteroids in the NEOWISE catalog were colored according to the probability of their collision with the Earth from white (no danger) to red (collision imminent).

Good news: as of today, all objects in this catalog are white. This means that so far scientists have not been able to find a single near-Earth asteroid whose probability of falling to Earth in the next 200 years exceeds 1%, or three on the Turin scale. Periodically, objects with non-zero danger scores appeared in the catalog, but as their orbits were refined, they quickly dropped first to one, and then to zero.

Two asteroids - Apophis and Bennu - were assigned very high hazard index values ​​when they were discovered. The 350-meter Apophis, opened in 2004 (by the way, it was not named after ancient egyptian god Apepa, and in honor of the villain from the TV series Stargate: SG-1) first received a record two at that time, and then a four on the Turin scale. The collision with Earth was supposed to occur in 2036.

A photograph of the Itokawa asteroid taken during the Japanese Hayabusa mission in 2005. Presumably, the asteroid is identical in composition and size to Apophis. Photo: ISAS/JAXA

Two years later, when astronomers refined the asteroid’s orbit, it was lowered first to one and then to zero. The probability that Apophis will meet Earth is estimated at 0.00089%, or one chance in 112 thousand. Today, the most dangerous near-Earth object is considered to be the 500-meter Apollo asteroid 2009 FD, which may fall to Earth in 2185 with a probability of 0.29%.

Orbit of Apophis

As for objects the size of Chelyabinsk, scientists cannot estimate how often they can fall to Earth and how large real threat. In 2011, at the first presentation of the NEOWISE catalog, NASA reported that today we know only about five thousand asteroids about one hundred meters in size, while their total number is estimated at several tens of thousands. The number of smaller objects within the main asteroid belt can reach a million.

Made from something

It is impossible to accurately assess the damage due to the fact that we know very little about the composition of asteroids, and this is critical information, without which it is impossible to assess the consequences of the fall of a hypothetical “Apophis” to Earth.

The idea of ​​studying asteroids “in situ” has been in the minds of astronomers for quite some time. The pioneer in this matter was the Japanese Hayabusa probe, which went to the Itokawa asteroid in 2008 in order to collect soil samples. Due to numerous breakdowns and fantastic bad luck, the Hayabusa managed to collect only one and a half thousand dust particles, which it nevertheless delivered to Earth in 2010.

Hayabusa-2. Image: JAXA

In the winter of 2014, the successor to the unsuccessful probe, Hayabusa-2, set off for asteroid 1999 JU3, which will arrive at the target in 2018. In parallel, NASA is developing its own mission, OSIRIS-REx, which will fly to Bennu in 2016 with the same mission as Hayabusa.

The lack of specific data on the composition of asteroids does not prevent engineers from dreaming of defense systems against celestial guests. One of the many projects is the DE-STAR system, which should properly heat a dangerous asteroid and knock it off its path. According to the calculations of the authors of the idea, a platform 100 meters in size will be enough to push Apophis out of its orbit, and a ten-kilometer laser will be enough to completely evaporate it.

In addition, there are projects like the NEOShield or ISIS probes, a potential “companion” of OSIRIS-REx, which involve diverting asteroids from their intended course with a “right hook” - a collision with a heavy metal blank. As an option, engineers propose attaching a heavy satellite to the stone, which will change the orbit of the celestial body. Russian scientists from the Institute of Space Research are planning to shoot down asteroids with the help of other asteroids.

Artist's rendering of OSIRIS-REx. Image: University of Arizona/Goddard/NASA

Until Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx achieve their goals, scientists can only speculate about the exact mineral and chemical composition asteroids. The composition of celestial bodies can be determined from their spectra, but due to collisions with other bodies, the surface of asteroids can radically change color, so the spectrum will deceive astronomers. Without knowing the composition, one can only approximately estimate the consequences of the fall of space rocks, based on what disasters the Earth has already experienced in the past.

Well forgotten old

The most famous and studied trace of such falls is the Chicxulub crater on the Yucatan Peninsula in southern Mexico. The fall of a 10-kilometer cosmic “boulder” 65.5 million years ago left a crater with a diameter of 180 kilometers and led to catastrophic consequences: it is believed that it was because of the fall of the meteorite that dinosaurs and a fair part of the Mesozoic fauna became extinct.

And this is not the worst option: the diameter of the Vredefort crater in South Africa, apparently left by a meteorite, is 300 kilometers. The “pebble” fell to Earth about two billion years ago, when microbes dominated the planet. Just recently, scientists discovered in Australia an as yet unnamed crater with a diameter of 400 kilometers, which arose about 300-420 million years ago.

Another thing is that not many traces of encounters with small asteroids - up to several hundred meters - are known, so the consequences of the fall of such stones on cities and densely populated countries cannot be determined.

One of the few examples of such events is the so-called “Clovis Comet” - an object supposedly the size of the Tunguska meteorite (scientists do not agree whether it was an asteroid or a comet), which fell into the New World approximately 13 thousand years ago. Its fall caused large-scale fires, a sharp cooling due to clouds of ash and aerosol particles, the extinction of the remains of megafauna and the disappearance of the Clovis culture, the first tribes of the American Indians.

Only in 2013 did geologists manage to localize the crash site of this object: it crashed in the province of Quebec in Canada, but the crater itself has not yet been found. So it may very well be that the Clovis Comet was relatively small.

What to do?

This question is regularly asked to the head of NASA and Russian space officials. As the current head of the American Space Agency put it, so far humanity has only one option - “pray”, since the problem has been ignored for decades and effective means for destruction and 100% detection of asteroids is not yet available.

Moreover, until the results of the Hayabusa and Osiris studies are received, as well as complete catalogs of near-Earth asteroids, governments are unlikely to allocate money for anything other than prayer. Politicians remember celestial surprises only when the next Chelyabinsk falls, and their ardor quickly cools when they see calculations of the amounts that need to be invested in protecting the Earth. So today humanity can only hope for commercial projects for the “development” of asteroids - perhaps the data they collect on small celestial bodies and comets will convince officials to seriously think about the future of the planet.

Alexander Telishev

Cosmic bodies are constantly falling onto our planet. Some of them are the size of a grain of sand, others can weigh several hundred kilograms and even tons. Canadian scientists from the Ottawa Astrophysical Institute claim that a meteor shower falls on Earth every year total mass more than 21 tons, and individual meteorites weigh from a few grams to 1 ton.

In this article we will recall the 10 largest meteorites that fell to Earth.

Sutter Mill meteorite, April 22, 2012

This meteorite, named Sutter Mill, appeared near the Earth on April 22, 2012, moving at a breakneck speed of 29 km/sec. It flew over the states of Nevada and California, scattering its hot fragments, and exploded over Washington. The power of the explosion was about 4 kilotons of TNT. For comparison, yesterday's power was 300 kilotons of TNT.

Scientists have found that the Sutter Mill meteorite appeared in the early days of its existence, and the progenitor cosmic body was formed over 4566.57 million years ago.

Almost a year ago, on February 11, 2012, about a hundred meteorite stones fell over an area of ​​100 km in one of the regions of China. The largest meteorite found weighed 12.6 kg. The meteorites are believed to have come from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Meteorite from Peru, September 15, 2007

This meteorite fell in Peru near Lake Titicaca, near the border with Bolivia. Eyewitnesses claimed that at first there was a strong noise, similar to the sound of a falling plane, but then they saw a falling body engulfed in fire.

A bright trail from a white-hot cosmic body entering the Earth's atmosphere is called a meteor.

At the site of the fall, the explosion formed a crater with a diameter of 30 and a depth of 6 meters, from which a fountain of boiling water began to flow. The meteorite probably contained toxic substances, as 1,500 people living nearby began to experience severe headaches.

By the way, most often stone meteorites (92.8%), consisting mainly of silicates, fall to Earth. , was made of iron, according to first estimates.

Kunya-Urgench meteorite from Turkmenistan, June 20, 1998

The meteorite fell near the Turkmen city of Kunya-Urgench, hence its name. Before the fall, residents saw a bright light. The largest part of the meteorite, weighing 820 kg, fell into a cotton field, creating a crater about 5 meters.

This one, over 4 billion years old, has received a certificate from the International Meteor Society and is considered the largest among stone meteorites of all that fell in the CIS and the third in the world.

Fragment of a Turkmen meteorite:

Meteorite Sterlitamak, May 17, 1990

Iron meteorite Sterlitamak weighing 315 kg fell on a state farm field 20 km away west of the city Sterlitamak on the night of May 17-18, 1990. When a meteorite fell, a crater with a diameter of 10 meters was formed.

First, small metal fragments were found, and only a year later, at a depth of 12 meters, the largest fragment weighing 315 kg was found. Now the meteorite (0.5 x 0.4 x 0.25 meters) is in the Museum of Archeology and Ethnography of the Ufa Scientific Center Russian Academy Sci.

Fragments of a meteorite. On the left is the same fragment weighing 315 kg:

Largest meteor shower, China, March 8, 1976

In March 1976, the world's largest meteorite rock shower occurred in the Chinese province of Jilin, lasting 37 minutes. Cosmic bodies fell to the ground at a speed of 12 km/sec.

Fantasy on the theme of meteorites:

Then they found about a hundred meteorites, including the largest - the 1.7-ton Jilin (Girin) meteorite.

These are the stones that fell from the sky onto China for 37 minutes:

Meteorite Sikhote-Alin, Far East, February 12, 1947

A meteorite fell on Far East in the Ussuri taiga in the Sikhote-Alin mountains on February 12, 1947. It fragmented in the atmosphere and fell in the form of iron rain over an area of ​​10 sq. km.

After the fall, more than 30 craters with a diameter of 7 to 28 m and a depth of up to 6 meters were formed. About 27 tons of meteorite material were collected.

Fragments of “piece of iron” that fell from the sky during a meteor shower:

Goba meteorite, Namibia, 1920

Meet Goba - largest meteorite found! Strictly speaking, it fell about 80,000 years ago. This iron giant weighs about 66 tons and has a volume of 9 cubic meters. fell in prehistoric times and was found in Namibia in 1920 near Grootfontein.

The Goba meteorite is mainly composed of iron and is considered the heaviest of all celestial bodies of this kind that has ever appeared on Earth. It is preserved at a crash site in southwest Africa, Namibia, near Goba West Farm. This is also the largest piece of naturally occurring iron on Earth. Since 1920, the meteorite has shrunk slightly: erosion, scientific research and vandalism did their job: the meteorite “lost weight” to 60 tons.

The mystery of the Tunguska meteorite, 1908

On June 30, 1908, at about 07 a.m., a large fireball flew over the territory of the Yenisei basin from southeast to northwest. The flight ended with an explosion at an altitude of 7-10 km above an uninhabited taiga region. The blast wave circled twice globe and was recorded by observatories around the world.

The power of the explosion is estimated at 40-50 megatons, which corresponds to the energy of the most powerful hydrogen bomb. The flight speed of the space giant was tens of kilometers per second. Weight - from 100 thousand to 1 million tons!

Podkamennaya Tunguska River area:

As a result of the explosion, trees were knocked down over an area of ​​more than 2,000 square meters. km, window glass in houses was broken several hundred kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion. The blast wave destroyed animals and injured people within a radius of about 40 km. For several days, intense sky glow and luminous clouds were observed from the Atlantic to central Siberia:

But what was it? If it was a meteorite, then a huge crater half a kilometer deep should have appeared at the site of its fall. But none of the expeditions succeeded in finding him...

The Tunguska meteorite is, on the one hand, one of the most well-studied phenomena, on the other hand, one of the most mysterious phenomena of the past century. The celestial body exploded in the air and no remains of it, except for the consequences of the explosion, were found on the ground.

Meteor shower of 1833

On the night of November 13, 1833, a meteor shower occurred over the eastern United States. It continued continuously for 10 hours! During this time, about 240,000 meteorites of various sizes fell to the Earth's surface. The source of the 1833 meteor shower was the most powerful meteor shower known. This shower is now called the Leonids after the constellation Leo, against which it is visible every year in mid-November. On a much more modest scale, of course.

Meteorites have fallen to the ground many times: one fell quite recently - we are talking, of course, about the famous Chelyabinsk meteorite. There are others, no less famous and much larger, the consequences of whose fall were sometimes devastating.

1. Tunguska meteorite

On June 17, 1908, at seven o'clock local time, an air explosion with a power of about 50 megatons occurred in the area of ​​the Podkamennaya Tunguska River - this power corresponds to the explosion of a hydrogen bomb. The explosion and the subsequent blast wave were recorded by observatories all over the world, huge trees on an area of ​​2000 km² from the supposed epicenter were uprooted, and not a single intact glass was left in the houses of residents. After this, for several more days the sky and clouds in this area glowed, including at night.

Local residents said that shortly before the explosion they saw a huge fireball flying across the sky. Unfortunately, given the year of the incident, not a single photograph of the ball was taken.

None of the numerous research expeditions discovered any celestial body that could serve as a basis for the ball. Moreover, the first expedition arrived in the Tunguska region 19 years after the event described - in 1927.

The event is attributed to the fall of a large meteorite to Earth, which later became known as the Tunguska meteorite, but scientists were unable to detect fragments of the celestial body or at least the matter remaining from its fall. However, in this place an accumulation of microscopic silicate and magnetite balls was recorded, which could not have arisen in this area for natural reasons, so they are attributed to cosmic origin.

It is still unknown exactly what caused the explosion: there is no official hypothesis, but the meteorite nature of the phenomenon still seems most likely.

2. Meteorite Tsarev

In December 1922, residents of the Astrakhan province were able to observe a stone falling from the sky: eyewitnesses said that the fireball was enormous in size and made a deafening noise in flight. Afterwards there was an explosion, and from the sky (again, according to eyewitnesses) a rain of stones began to fall - the next day, farmers living in that area found fragments of stones of a strange shape and appearance in their fields.

The rumor about the incident quickly spread throughout Russia: expeditions arrived in the Astrakhan province, but for some reason they did not find any traces of the meteorite fall. They were found only 50 years later, when plowing the fields of the Leninsky state farm - a total of 82 chondritic meteorites were found, and the fragments were scattered over an area of ​​25 km2. The largest fragment weighs 284 kg (now it can be seen in the Moscow Fersman Museum), the smallest is only 50 grams, and the composition of the samples clearly indicates their extraterrestrial origin.

The total weight of the found debris is estimated at 1225 kg, while the fall of such a large celestial body did not cause significant damage.

3. Goba

The largest intact meteorite in the world is the Goba meteorite: it is located in Namibia and is a block weighing about 60 tons and a volume of 9 m³, consisting of 84% iron and 16% nickel with a small admixture of cobalt. The surface of the meteorite is iron without any impurities: there is no other single piece of natural iron of such size on Earth.

Only dinosaurs could have observed Goba's fall to Earth: it fell on our planet in prehistoric times and was buried underground for a long time, until in 1920 it was discovered by a local farmer while plowing a field. Now the site has been given the status of a national monument, and anyone can see it for a small fee.

It is believed that when it fell, the meteorite weighed 90 tons, but over the millennia of its stay on the planet, erosion, vandalism and scientific research caused its mass to decrease to 60 tons. Unfortunately, the unique object continues to “lose weight” - many tourists consider it their duty to steal a piece as a souvenir .

4. Sikhote-Alin meteorite

On February 12, 1947, a huge block fell in the Ussuri taiga - the event could be observed by residents of the village of Beitsukhe in the Primorsky Territory: as always happens in the case of a meteorite fall, witnesses spoke of a huge fireball, the appearance and explosion of which was followed by a rain of iron fragments, fell over an area of ​​35 km². The meteorite did not cause significant damage, but it made a number of craters in the ground, one of which was six meters deep.

It is assumed that the mass of the meteorite at the time it entered the Earth's atmosphere ranged from 60 to 100 tons: the largest fragment found weighs 23 tons and is considered one of the ten largest meteorites in the world. There are also several other large blocks formed as a result of the explosion - now the fragments are stored in the Meteorite Collection of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Khabarovsk Regional Museum named after N. I. Grodekov.

5. Allende

Allende fell to Earth on February 8, 1969 in the Mexican state of Chihuahua - it is considered the largest carbonaceous meteorite on the planet, and at the time of its fall its mass was about five tons.

Today, Allende is the most studied meteorite in the world: its fragments are stored in many museums around the world, and it is notable primarily for the fact that it is the oldest discovered body Solar System, the age of which was accurately established - it is about 4.567 billion years old.

In addition, a previously unknown mineral was found in its composition for the first time, called pangite: scientists suggest that such a mineral is part of many space objects, in particular asteroids.

March 15th, 2017

Our planet is often attacked by various space objects. Most of them burn up in the atmosphere, never reaching the Earth's surface. Those that evaporate we call shooting stars or meteors (comet remnants). However, some larger lucky ones, meteorites, sometimes still manage to reach the surface of the Earth, on which they can lie unchanged for thousands of years.

Asteroids are even larger space objects. One theory suggests that one such rock left the Earth without dinosaurs some 63 million years ago, and we narrowly avoided a collision with another like it, 2012 DA14, in 2013.

Below we will talk about the six largest meteorites ever known to earthlings.

The largest meteorites

Iron-nickel Willamette

American Museum of Natural History, 1911

This is the largest meteorite ever found in the United States. Its weight is 15.5 tons and its size is 7.8 square meters. The dents in the meteorite were not caused by the fact that it was partially burned while reaching the Earth. The thing is that it rusted for hundreds of millions of years, lying in the humid forests of Western Oregon.

The meteorite ended up in the American Museum of Natural History in New York in 1906. Before getting to the museum, an interesting story happened to the meteorite.

Initially, the meteorite was discovered by the Indians, who moved it to the Willamette Valley of Oregon. This assumption arose due to the fact that the impact crater was not found. It is believed to be located in Canada.

The Indians worshiped the stone, calling it a guest from the moon, and they used rainwater collected in the recesses of the stone to treat diseases.

In 1902, the meteorite was discovered by miner Ellis Hughes. The man immediately realized that in front of him was not just a stone, so for three months he slowly moved the find to his site.

However, it was exposed, and the pebble was recognized as the property of a steel company in Oregon, on whose territory the meteorite was originally located.

In 1905, the meteorite was bought by a private individual for $26,000 and a year later donated to a museum in New York, where it still resides.

After the stone ended up in the museum, the Indians of Oregon demanded the return of the meteorite, since it had been the object of their religious cult for many centuries and took part in an annual ritual ceremony.

However, it turned out to be impossible to remove the meteorite from the museum without destroying the walls, so an agreement was concluded with the Indians under which a ceremony could be held on the territory of the museum once a year.

Largest meteorites

Mbozi meteorite

This meteorite was discovered in the 1930s in Tanzania. The meteorite is almost 1 meter in height, 3 meters in length, and its weight is almost twice that of Willamette and is 25 tons.

For many centuries, local tribes considered Mbozi a sacred stone and did not tell anyone about it due to various taboos. They called it "kimondo", which translates from Swahili as "meteor".

It is interesting that there is no crater at the site where the meteorite was discovered. This suggests that after the collision with the Earth, the meteorite rolled on the surface for some time.

The meteorite is 90 percent iron, like most of its known counterparts, which also explains its dark color. Traces of melting and heating to very high temperatures are very noticeable on the stone. high temperatures, which is a consequence of passing through the upper layers of the atmosphere.

People dug a ditch around the meteorite, since initially Mbozi was partially submerged in the ground. They left a layer of soil underneath, which later became a natural pedestal.

The largest meteorites

Cape York Meteorite

This is the third largest meteorite that fell to Earth about 10,000 years ago. The meteorite was named after the place where its most significant fragments were discovered in Greenland.

The largest fragment of the meteorite is called "Anigito" and weighs 31 tons. The history of his name is interesting. When the stone was delivered to the American Museum of Natural History by ship in 1897, the four-year-old daughter of explorer Robert Peary broke a bottle of wine on it and uttered a meaningless word in her language: “a-ni-gi-to.”

They decided to name the pebble, which the Eskimos, who were the first to find the meteorite, previously called “Tent”. "Anigito" took root better.

The second largest fragment of the meteorite is called Agpalik (the aborigines called it “Man”). It was discovered in 1963, weighs 20 tons and is now in the Geological Museum at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

Various meteorite fragments were found between 1911 and 1984. In addition to “Man” and “Anigito”, they also found “Woman” (3 tons), “Dog” (400 kg), etc.

It is worth noting that for a long time, the Inuit tribes used fragments and fragments of the Cape York meteorite to create their harpoons and tools.

Meteorites that fell to Earth

Meteorite Bakubirito

This is the largest meteorite found in Mexico. It weighs about 20 tons, is 4.5 meters long, 2 meters wide, and 1.75 meters high. It was discovered by geologist Gilbert Ellis Bailey near the city of Sinaloa de Leyva.

The pebble was found in 1863, and now it can be seen in scientific center city ​​of Sinaloa.

El Chaco meteorite

This meteorite ranks second among the largest to ever collide with the Earth. It weighs almost twice as much as the previous one this list, - 37 tons!

It fell in Argentina and is part of a group of meteorites called Campo del Cielo. As a result of its fall, a crater was formed with an area of ​​60 square meters.

El Chaco was discovered in 1969 using a metal detector, because it was located underground at a depth of 5 meters.

Meteorite hunter Robert Haag tried to steal it in 1990, but local police responded in time.

Last year, 2016, another fragment was discovered and brought to the surface, which is believed to be part of the same group of meteorites as El Chaco.

Goba meteorite

This meteorite is the largest ever found. It fell in southwest Africa, in Namibia, and never moved. It is twice as heavy as its closest rival, El Paco: this monster weighs 60 tons.

The pebble got its name from the Hoba West Farm, on whose territory it was found in 1920. It was found by pure chance by the owner of the farm when he was plowing one of his fields, because neither the crater nor other traces of the fall remained.

Goba is interesting because, compared to other meteorites, its surface is smooth and flat. It is 84 percent iron and 16 percent nickel.

It is worth adding that the meteorite was never weighed. It is believed that when it fell to Earth, its weight was about 90 tons. According to estimates at the time of discovery in 1920, the baby weighed about 66 tons, however, scientific research, vandalism and erosion still took their toll, so today Goba has lost weight to 60 tons.

Goba is currently considered the largest piece of iron of natural origin. It covers an area of ​​6.5 square meters. It is believed to have fallen to Earth about 80,000 years ago and has not moved since due to its enormous size.

Oddly enough, there was never a need to dig it up. According to one theory, due to its relatively flat shape, the meteorite slid along the surface rather than going deeper into the ground.

Our beloved blue planet is constantly being hit by space debris, but due to the fact that most space objects burn up or fall apart in the atmosphere, this most often does not pose any serious problems. Even if an object reaches the surface of the planet, it is most often small, and the damage it causes is insignificant.

However, of course, there are very rare cases when something very large flies through the atmosphere, and in this case very significant damage is caused. Fortunately, such falls are extremely rare, but it’s worth knowing about them, if only to remember that there are forces in the Universe that can disrupt people’s everyday lives in a couple of minutes. Where and when did these monsters fall to Earth? Let's look at the geological records and find out:

10. Barringer Crater, Arizona, USA

Arizona apparently couldn't get enough of the Grand Canyon, so about 50,000 years ago it added another tourist attraction when a 50-meter meteorite landed in the northern desert, leaving behind a crater 1,200 meters in diameter and deep. at 180 meters. Scientists believe that the meteorite that created the crater flew at a speed of about 55 thousand kilometers per hour, and caused an explosion about 150 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Some scientists initially doubted that the crater was formed by a meteorite, since there is no meteorite itself, but according to modern scientists, the stone simply melted during the explosion, spreading molten nickel and iron throughout the surrounding area.
Although its diameter is not that large, its lack of erosion makes it an impressive sight. Moreover, it is one of the few meteorite craters that look true to its origin, making it a top-notch tourist destination - just as the Universe intended.

9. Lake Bosumtwi Crater, Ghana


When someone discovers a natural lake whose outline is almost perfectly round, it is quite suspicious. This is exactly what Lake Bosumtwi is, with a diameter of about 10 kilometers and located 30 kilometers southeast of Kumasi, Ghana. The crater was formed by a collision with a meteorite with a diameter of about 500 meters, which fell to Earth about 1.3 million years ago. Attempts to study the crater in detail are quite difficult, since the lake is difficult to reach, it is surrounded by dense forest, and the local Ashanti people consider it a holy place (they believe that touching the water with iron or using metal boats is prohibited, making access to nickel at the bottom of the lake is problematic). And yet, it is one of the best preserved craters on the planet. at the moment, and a good example of the destructive power of megarocks from space.

8. Mistastin Lake, Labrador, Canada


The Mistatin Impact Crater, located in the Labrador province of Canada, is an impressive 17 by 11 kilometer depression in the earth that formed approximately 38 million years ago. The crater was likely originally much larger, but has shrunk over time due to the erosion it has suffered from the many glaciers that have passed through Canada over the past millions of years. This crater is unique in that, unlike most impact craters, it is elliptical in shape rather than circular, indicating that the meteorite fell at an acute angle rather than flat, as is the case with most meteorite impacts. Even more unusual is the fact that in the middle of the lake there is a small island that may be the central rise complex structure crater.

7. Gosses Bluff, Northern Territory, Australia


This 142-million-year-old crater with a diameter of 22 kilometers, located in the center of Australia, is an impressive sight from both the air and the ground. The crater was formed by the impact of an asteroid with a diameter of 22 kilometers, which crashed into the Earth's surface at a speed of 65,000 kilometers per hour and created a crater almost 5 kilometers deep. The energy of the collision was approximately 10 to the twentieth power of Joules, so life on the continent faced great problems after this collision. The highly deformed crater is one of the most significant impact craters in the world and never lets us forget the power of one large rock.

6. Clearwater Lakes, Quebec, Canada

Finding one impact crater is cool, but finding two impact craters next to each other is doubly cool. That's what happened when an asteroid broke into two pieces as it entered Earth's atmosphere 290 million years ago, creating two impact craters on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay. Since then, erosion and glaciers have greatly eroded the original craters, but what remains is still an impressive sight. The diameter of one lake is 36 kilometers, and the second is about 26 kilometers. Considering that the craters were formed 290 million years ago and were subject to severe erosion, one can only imagine how large they were originally.

5. Tunguska meteorite, Siberia, Russia


This is a controversial point, since no parts of the hypothetical meteorite remain, and what exactly fell in Siberia 105 years ago is not entirely clear. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that something large and moving at high speed exploded near the Tunguska River in June 1908, leaving behind fallen trees over an area of ​​2000 square kilometers. The explosion was so strong that it was recorded by instruments even in the UK.

Because no pieces of meteorite were found, some believe that the object may not have been a meteorite at all, but a small part of a comet (which, if true, would explain the lack of meteorite debris). Conspiracy fans believe that an alien explosion actually exploded here. spacecraft. Although this theory is completely unfounded and pure speculation, we must admit that it sounds interesting.

4. Manicouagan Crater, Canada


Manicouagan Reservoir, also known as the "Eye of Quebec", is located in a crater formed 212 million years ago when an asteroid with a diameter of 5 kilometers fell to Earth. The crater with an area of ​​100 kilometers, which remained after the fall, was destroyed by glaciers and other erosive processes, but at the moment it remains an impressive sight. What is unique about this crater is that nature did not fill it with water, forming an almost perfectly round lake - the crater basically remained dry land, surrounded by a ring of water. A great place to build a castle here.

3. Sudbury Basin, Ontario, Canada


Apparently Canada and impact craters are very fond of each other. Singer Alanis Morrisette's birthplace is a favorite place for meteorite impacts - the largest meteorite crater in Canada is located near Sudbury, Ontario. This crater is already 1.85 billion years old, and its dimensions are 65 kilometers long, 25 wide and 14 deep - it is home to 162 thousand people, and is also home to many mining enterprises, which discovered a century ago that the crater is very rich in nickel. for fallen asteroid. The crater is so rich in this element that about 10% of the world's nickel production comes from here.

2. Chicxulub Crater, Mexico


The impact of this meteorite may have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, but it is certainly the most powerful asteroid collision in the entire history of the Earth. The impact occurred approximately 65 million years ago when an asteroid the size of a small city crashed into Earth with an energy of 100 teratons of TNT. For those who like precise data, this is approximately 1 billion kilotons. Compare this energy with atomic bomb, dropped on Hiroshima, with a power of 20 kilotons, and the impact of this collision will become clearer.

The impact not only created a crater with a diameter of 168 kilometers, but also caused megatsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions across the Earth, greatly changing environment and sentenced the dinosaurs (and apparently many other creatures) to death. This vast crater, located on the Yucatan Peninsula near the village of Chicxulub (from which the crater gets its name), can only be seen from space, which is why scientists discovered it relatively recently.

1. Vredefort Dome, South Africa

Although the Chicxulub crater is better known, compared to the 300-kilometer-wide Vredefort Crater in South Africa, it is an ordinary pothole. Vredefort is currently the largest impact crater on Earth. Fortunately, a meteorite/asteroid that fell 2 billion years ago (its diameter was about 10 kilometers) did not cause significant harm to life on Earth, since at that time there was no multicellular organisms. The collision undoubtedly greatly changed the Earth's climate, but no one noticed it.

At the moment, the original crater is heavily eroded, but from space its remains look impressive and are a great visual example of how scary the Universe can be.