[meteorite-list] Tswaing Meteorite Crater

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed Mar 23 18:15:02 2005
Message-ID: <200503232314.j2NNEdE19817_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1060408.cms

Game for this?
The Economic Times (India)
March 24, 2005

[snip]

Tswaing Meteorite Crater, some 40 kilometres north of Pretoria, is one
of the best preserved meteorite craters in the world.

The Tswaing Crater (Tswaing meaning "Place of Salt" in the Tswana
language) gets 12 000 visitors a year to marvel at this wonder that hit
the earth 220 000 years ago with an impact of about 100 atomic bombs of
the type dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

It created a crater of just over one kilometre in diameter and sent up
60 metres of earth to form the present-day crater rim. The crater is one
of around 170 impact craters in the world and one of four known impact
craters in South Africa. It has one of only four meteorite crater
museums in the world. The others are in the US, Germany and France.

The site is covered in dense bushveld, and walking along the trail
on the rim, one looks down into this marvellous phenomenon, with its
small 100-metre diameter lake in the centre of the crater. The lake,
which is filled by a spring in its bowl and rainwater, once
contained high concentrations of salt & soda ash.

[snip]
Received on Wed 23 Mar 2005 06:14:38 PM PST