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The mysterious Hiawatha crater in Greenland is 58 million years old

Scientists spotted the crater in 2015 during a scan by NASA’s Operation IceBridge, which used airborne radar to measure the ice sheet’s thickness. Those and other data revealed that the crater, dubbed Hiawatha, is a round depression that spans 31 kilometers and is buried beneath a kilometer of ice (SN: 11/14/18).

by TheStrangeTales
June 11, 2022
in Ancient, Featured, Science
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The powerful impact that created a mysterious crater at the northwestern edge of Greenland’s ice sheet happened about 58 million years ago, researchers report March 9 in Science Advances.

That timing, confirmed by two separate dating methods, means that the asteroid or comet or meteorite that carved the depression struck long before the Younger Dryas cold snap about 13,000 years ago. Some researchers have suggested the cold spell was caused by such an impact.

Scientists spotted the crater in 2015 during a scan by NASA’s Operation IceBridge, which used airborne radar to measure the ice sheet’s thickness. Those and other data revealed that the crater, dubbed Hiawatha, is a round depression that spans 31 kilometers and is buried beneath a kilometer of ice (SN: 11/14/18).

The next step was to determine how old the Hiawatha crater might be. Though the depression itself is unreachable, meltwater at the ice’s base had ported out pebbles and other sediments bearing telltale signs of alteration by an impact, including sand from partially melted rocks and pebbles containing intensely deformed, or “shocked,” zircon crystals.

Pebbles near the Hiawatha impact crater in northwestern Greenland contain grains of zircon (one at left) that contain many tiny crystals, some altered by the impact (right). These zircon crystals act as tiny time capsules, helping researchers estimate when the impact occurred.
Pebbles near the Hiawatha impact crater in northwestern Greenland contain grains of zircon (one at left) that contain many tiny crystals, some altered by the impact (right). These zircon crystals act as tiny time capsules, helping researchers estimate when the impact occurred.All: G. Kenny

Geochemist Gavin Kenny of the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm and colleagues dated these alterations using two methods based on the radioactive decay of isotopes, or different forms of elements. For the zircons, the team measured the decay of uranium to lead, and in the sand, the researchers compared the abundances of radioactive argon isotopes with stable ones. Both methods suggest that the impact occurred about 57.99 million years ago.

That makes the crater far too old to be the smoking gun long sought by proponents of the controversial Younger Dryas impact hypothesis (SN: 6/26/18). The timing also isn’t quite right to link it to a warm period called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, which began around 56 million years ago (SN: 9/28/16). For now, the researchers say, what impact this space punch may have had on Earth’s global climate remains a mystery.

Questions or comments on this article? E-mail us at [email protected]

Citations

G.G. Kenny et al. A Late Paleocene age for Greenland’s Hiawatha impact structure. Science Advances. Published online March 9, 2022. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abm2434.

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Operation IceBridge

Operation IceBridge is an ongoing NASA mission to monitor changes in polar ice. It is an airborne follow-on mission to the ICESat satellite, continuing until after the ICESat-2 mission launch in September 2018.

Instruments

Visualization of NASA’s mission Operation IceBridge dataset BEDMAP2, obtained with laser and ice-penetrating radar, collecting surface height, bedrock topography and ice thickness.

IceBridge aircraft carry a suite of specialized science instruments. Among these is the Airborne Topographic Mapper, a laser that measures the surface elevation of the ice. Also on board is a gravimeter, an instrument capable of measuring the shape of cavities in the ice. There are numerous other pieces of equipment on board, including the Land, Vegetation and Ice Sensor, the Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder, a Snow Radar, a Ku-Band Radar Altimeter, a magnetometer and the Digital Mapping System.[5]

Radars

Operation IceBridge uses up to four different radar instruments operated by the Center for the Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) at the University of Kansas. Indiana University provides data management services for CReSIS activities in Operation IceBridge.[8]

Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder (MCoRDS) – The Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder (MCoRDS) is used to measure ice thickness and map beneath the ice. This instrument uses multiple channels and a large range of radar frequencies to image internal ice layering and bedrock beneath ice sheets. Information on sub-ice terrain is useful for modeling ice sheets.[9]

Snow Radar – The CReSIS Snow Radar instrument is used to measure the thickness of snow layers on top of land and sea ice. Measuring snow thickness is crucial for estimating sea ice thickness.[10]

Ku-band Radar Altimeter – IceBridge also carries a Ku band radar altimeter, which can penetrate snow layers to measure sea and land ice surface elevation.[11]

Accumulation Radar – The accumulation radar instrument is used to gather high-resolution data on the top part of ice. Looking at the uppermost part of ice allows researchers to map past snow accumulation rates.[12] /Wikipedia/

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Source: sciencenews.org
Tags: Gavin KennyNASAOperation IceBridgeSwedish MuseumYounger Dryas impact hypothesis
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