Curious how scientists study Meteorites? How we learn the content, age and origin of space rocks?

Did you ever wonder where Earth’s water came from?

New Research on Diamonds formed by the Diablo Canyon Meteorites found around Barringer Meteorite Crater

The Meteoroids 2022 Conference will be held virtually on June 13–17, 2022.

Ever wonder how many or where they all are? This database allows you to easily see the locations and size as well as pop up data on all the verified known impact sites on earth!

One of the largest and oldest known impact site on earth is located in what is now South Africa, and due to the extreme deformation conditions, dramatic evidence of the “rebound dome” is still clearly visible by satellite.

The 4th largest known impact crater on earth is found in Siberia, called the Popigai Crater- where the diamonds which formed 36 million years ago upon impact have been mined for industrial use.

Tenoumer Crater in the Mauritanian Saharan Desert is younger, slightly larger, and is compared to Barringer Meteorite Crater

There is growing evidence supporting a theory of the early human development from hunter-gatherer to agrarian societies my have/could have been triggered by the dramatic environmental changes to the planet caused by a meteorite impact.

The research at Chicxulub Crater continues and a recent publication of the discovery of iridium bearing “asteroid dust” has confirmed the corresponding dates of the impact and the end of the dinosaurs!

The Pleistocene era, also known as Ice Age, was the epoch of the Barringer Meteor Crater impact, approximately 50,000 years ago. It was quite a different landscape than what is seen now: a high desert plain. In fact it struck land which was covered with juniper-pinyon forest and megafauna such as mammoths and giant sloths! This image depicts quite a few of the animals which would have been present at the time of this impact.

Fascinating research and discoveries ongoing at Chixilub crater! Barringer Crater’s science advisor, Dr David Kring, leads and has continued research of the cores taken at Chixilub.

This new study shows that the vast hydrothermal system under this crater hosts a microbial nursery, and provides evidence supporting the Impact origin of life hypothesis.

Joanna Morgan is a Professor of Geophysics at Imperial College London

Joanna received the Barringer award for her work on the Chicxulub impact crater. She first heard about Chicxulub in the mid 1990s when scientists were arguing about its size and morphology, and whether it was the site of the K-T impact.

This shaded relief (public domain) image of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula shows a subtle, but unmistakable, indication of the Chicxulub impact crater. Most scientists now agree that this impact was the cause of the Cretatious-Tertiary Extinction, the event 65 million years ago that marked the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs as well as the majority of life then on Earth.

Catherine Ross’ project: Testing the Reliability of Zircon (U-Th)/He Impact Crater Thermochronometry its to determine several factors which affect Zircon for the sake of determining of dates of impacts more reliably.

Stamatios Xydous’ project: Chemical and spectroscopic characterization of shock metamorphism features in a suite of shocked ordinary chondrite meteorites with implications on the dynamic of impacts among asteroids aims to explore how the meteorites were affected after formation.

Raiza Quintero’s research project- The Ilkurlka magnetic ring anomaly: a new Australian impact structure? - is also much like our founder, D.M. Barringer’s pursuit, to determine and confirm the buried Ilkurlka structure in Australia is an impact structure!

Each year, the Barringer Family Fund awards a small number of competitive grants, in collaboration with the Lunar and Planetary Institute, to support MA, PhD, and postdoctoral students as they carry out field research at known and suspected impact sites around the world.