Within the desert of Saudi Arabia, there is a surprising number of geologic features,
including large volcanic fields that cover a vast stretch of land in black basaltic rock,
volcanic explosion craters termed maars, but most importantly vast oil and natural gas
fields.
Yet, due to the work of one of my subscribers, Saudi Arabia might now have something else;
a large impact crater.
This subscriber of mine has not only found a convincing impact crater candidate, but
they have also performed field and lab work on rock samples collected there.
With this I present an almost undeniable proof that the 16.2 kilometer wide impact crater
which is located approximately 210 kilometers southeast of the city of Medina being shown
right now is an impact structure with a circular rim; as a sample of a quartz grain in a piece
of breccia revealed what appears to be shocked quartz, hence the planar deformation features
or lines in this piece.
And this is not a one off feature either, as numerous other quartz grains contain the
same thing.
For comparison, here is a regular piece of quartz under a microscope.
Shocked quartz is incredibly rare in nature and only two things are able to create it,
nuclear weapons tests, which have never occurred in Saudi Arabia, or extraterrestrial rock
impacts aka asteroids or comets.
Intense pressure is needed to form shocked quartz, which deforms some of the silicon
dioxide into two polymorphs.
Polymorphs are different minerals which have the same chemical formula but a different
crystal structure such as calcite and aragonite.
These polymorphs of quartz are coesite and stishovite.
The shocked quartz is not the only evidence, however.
As, within and around the impact crater candidate, there appears to be large quantities of a
special impact breccia known as suevite.
One tell tale sign of suevite is blocks of material that are finely grained like glass
that have a black or dark gray color interwoven with other rock fragments.
These samples from the crater have this and are thus likely suevite.
Such fragments would not be found within calderas or maar explosion craters such as the 1.14
million year old Al Wahbah maar to the east.
This find is pretty impressive, and becomes all the more impressive when you learn that
the individual who found this crater that also contacted me is only 15 years old, being
known as Abdulrahman Toonsi.
Because of this, he wishes to name his new discovery, were it to be confirmed as a true
impact crater, as Toonsi Crater.
Although we do not yet know how old this crater exactly is, we do already know its approximate
age.
As, this portion of Saudi Arabia contains sections of two active volcanic fields; Harrat
Rahat to the west and Harrat Kishb to the east.
Although the section of the vast Harrat Rahat volcanic field closest to the crater is not
active as its eruptions moved northward over time, you might note that part of a 6 million
year old lava flow from the field is carved away by the crater.
Thus, Toonsi Crater must be younger than 6 million years in age.
Although, given the level of erosion present, I would suggest that it is somewhere in the
4 to 6 million year old range.
At some point in the last 6 million years a large asteroid measuring 1,520 meters or
4,987 feet wide began its acceleration towards the inner solar system.
This rock likely originated in the Oort cloud far beyond the orbit of Pluto.
Although the oort cloud almost universally contains icey objects, several percentage
of objects trapped in it are likely asteroids.
This hypothesis is being suggested as the impacting object seemingly struck earth from
a north direction heading southward, suggesting it came from an area above the solar system's
ecliptic.
After a 25,000 year journey to the inner solar system, the asteroid accelerated towards Earth
at a speed of 17 kilometer per second or 38,000 miles per hour.
Seconds after entering the atmosphere, it impacted at an angle of 20 degrees, forming
an oblong crater that was elongated in a north to south orientation.
This released an energy equivalent to the detonation of 222,000 megatons of TNT simultaneously
detonating, causing a bright orange glow to fill the sky.
This released an intense amount of thermal radiation, causing all plant and animal life
in a 320 kilometer radius to ignite.
As a magnitude 8.2 earthquake was generated, a powerful more than 10,000 mile per hour
shockwave raced outwards in all directions.
This shockwave dissipated with increasing distance, but if any trees were present within
a 600 kilometer radius they would have sustained some damage.
As a result, an estimated 684 meter or 2,240 foot deep impact crater was formed.
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