Geologist Kerry Sieh Claims to Have Found Earth’s Last Major Impact Crater in Southern Laos
Geologist Kerry Sieh has announced his belief that he has discovered the location of Earth’s last major impact crater in southern Laos. Sieh’s interest in the missing crater began when he encountered tektites, a kind of natural glass formed during meteorite impacts, in a jewelry shop in Vietnam.
After conducting extensive research, Sieh identified a pattern of thickening deposits across a 310-mile-wide region on and around the Bolaven Plateau, which suggests a possible impact site. These deposits consist of pebble and boulder gravels, as well as tektites, indicating a land-stripping impact blast and a plume sent skyward by the meteorite strike.
While not all scientists are convinced by Sieh’s proposal, there is significant interest in conducting further research to confirm the location of the impact. Tektites provide valuable clues about the missing crater and the impact event, including evidence of widespread fire, mega-floods, and regional extinctions.
Previous studies have put forth the possibility of a crater between 20 and 75 miles wide, with potential iridium concentrations pointing to a 9- to 12-mile-wide crater. Sieh’s proposal relies on layers of lava on the Bolaven Plateau burying the crater, bouldery outcrops associated with the impact blast, and gravity surveys revealing an anomaly in subsurface density.
However, critics of Sieh’s ideas question the connection between the Bolaven lavas and the tektites, offering alternative explanations. River geologist Paul Carling has voiced support for Sieh’s case and has cited a crucial sequence of tektites and ejecta deposits in northeastern Thailand, as well as the presence of shocked quartz in the deposits.
Carling’s team plans to publish their comprehensive field analysis next year, which may provide further clues to the impact’s location. Ultimately, the definitive confirmation of the impact site would require drilling deep underground to search for features such as shatter cones, shocked minerals, and melt rocks.
If a successful drill were to take place, it has the potential to lead to the discovery of fragments of the meteor itself. This would be a groundbreaking development in the field of geology and could shed significant light on Earth’s history of meteorite impacts.
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