The destructive space rock was somewhere between 12.4 and 15.5 miles wide.
, researchers recalculated the size of the Vredefort asteroid and found that the destructive space rock likely measured somewhere between 12.4 and 15.5 miles across, and could have been traveling between 45,000 and 56,000 mph when it struck our planet.
"Understanding the largest impact structure that we have on Earth is critical" because it allows researchers to build more accurate geological models, study lead author Natalie Allen, a doctoral candidate in the Johns Hopkins University Department of Physics and Astronomy in Baltimore,.
To understand how erosion affects ancient impact craters such as Vredefort, imagine continually slicing the rim off a bowl, Roger Gibson, a structural geologist at University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa who was not involved in the study, toldin 2018."If you slice horizontally through the bowl progressively, you would see that the bowl's diameter will decrease with each slice you take off.
In addition to the natural erosion of the Vredefort impact structure, newer rock formations have emerged atop parts of the crater, the researchers wrote. As a result, most of the crater's original structure has been completely covered by younger rocks and only small sections of the crater's elevated rim are visible today, making it even harder to tell how big the crater used to be.
As a result, the researchers are confident that their new estimate for the size of the Vredefort asteroid is more accurate than previous estimates.When the dinosaur-killing asteroid, which likely measured around 7.5 miles wide, hit Earth around 66 million years ago, the destruction caused by the impact was immense.
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