Contact: Susie Renshaw
s.renshaw@ic.ac.uk
44-20-7594-6701
Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine
Computer simulations have revealed that a vast region of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, may have behaved like a fluid during the formation of the Chicxulub impact crater.
Gareth Collins, a postgraduate student in the TH Huxley School of the Environment, Earth Sciences and Engineering, Imperial College, will announce the results of his computer modelling at the Geological Society of America annual meeting in Nevada on 14 November. Mr Collins has used innovative computer modelling based on seismic data to analyse the distinctive complex crater formation at Chicxulub (see notes to editor 3).
The Chicxulub crater is thought to have resulted from an impact with an asteroid or comet 65 million years ago. Many scientists believe that
there is a link between the impact and the environmental change and mass extinction, including perhaps that of the dinosaurs, at the end of the Cretaceous period.
Gareth Collins explained, “Our understanding of complex crater formation and lack of a definitive model was limited by the absence of large pristine impact craters on Earth. This situation changed following the discovery of the buried Chicxulub impact structure in Mexico in 1990 which is the largest pristine crater known on Earth.”
Mr Collins used the results from the Chicxulub Seismic Experiment (see notes to editor 2), which provided new insight into the kinematics of complex crater formation, to design novel computer simulations of the Chicxulub crater.
The group at the Imperial College TH Huxley School hope that their study will further the understanding of crater collapse; the final stage in the impact crater formation process that produces the strange internal structures that characterize complex craters. Complex crater collapse has long been an enigmatic issue in planetary science.
Gareth Collins explained, “In order for the
complicated internal structures to be produced
that are observed at Chicxulub and many extra-
terrestrial complex craters, the target material
must behave as though it were a fluid.”
“Of course the collapse process cannot be entirely hydrodynamic, as the end result would inevitably be a flat surface. Evidently, the fluid collapse must be frozen or suspended in some way to produce the observed complex crater morphologies. The mechanism driving this transient weakening, however, still remains a mystery – this phenomenon appears to violate current understanding of rock and debris mechanics.”
The group at the TH Huxley School and their colleagues at the University of Arizona believe that one potential material weakening mechanism called Acoustic Fluidisation could come into action as the impact generated shock wave transforms the target into a sea of jostling
granular material.
Gareth Collins said, “We model the collapse stage of the cratering process which begins after the initial excavation of the cavity. Our simulations show that temporary weakening of the target by Acoustic Fluidisation allows the formation of internal peak and ring structures similar to those observed in terrestrial and extra-terrestrial craters. Our dynamic simulations of peak-ring formation at Chicxulub are remarkably consistent with observations from the seismic data.”
His research group hopes to use this model for the generation of the peak-ring at Chicxulub to further their understandings of the geology of
other cratered planets and satellites, such as Mercury, Venus and the Moon.
Dr Jo Morgan, Mr Collins’ supervisor in the Geophysics Research Group, TH Huxley School, explained, “Improved understanding of large-impact crater formation will enable us to assess the environmental effects of such impacts and to determine whether this impact was the dominant force driving the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period.”
An animation based on Mr Collins’ computer simulations is on his group’s web site at:
http://www.huxley.ic.ac.uk/geophysics/projects/gareth/crater.html
Mr Collins will be giving his presentation at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America on Tuesday 14 November at 9.30am. The presentation is part of the GSAís Planetary Geology Division session which starts at 8.00am in Ballroom D. See the GSAís web site for more information on the meeting: http://www.geosociety.org/meetings/2000/
Notes to editors:
1) Gareth Collins is currently working on a PhD project entitled “Modelling Large Impacts on Earth and Venus”.
2) Professor Mike Warner and Dr Jo Morgan, TH Huxley School, Imperial College, are part of an international research group that investigated the Chicxulub crater. They published a paper in Nature (Vol 390, 472-476 (1997)) – Size and morphology of the Chicxulub impact crater – detailing the
results of their investigations into the size and shape of the Chicxulub crater. From seismic data collected across the offshore portion of the
impact crater, they determined that the diameter of the transient cavity to be about 200km. This parameter is critical for constraining impact-related effects on the Cretaceous environment. The offshore seismic data indicated that the Chicxulub crater has a multi-ring basin
morphology, similar to large impact structures observed on other planets, such as Venus. For further information see the Geophysics Research Group web site at: http://www.huxley.ic.ac.uk/research/Comp&Geophys/Geophys/geophys_main.htm
3) Impact craters found on the surface of all terrestrial bodies in the Solar System can be divided into two morphologically distinct classes:
Simple craters and Complex craters. Simple craters possess a circular ‘bowl’ shape with an uplifted rim. Complex craters exhibit somewhat
unintuitive structures such as central peaks, or an inner ‘peaked’ ring, terraced rim walls and outer concentric faulted zones.
4) Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine is an independent constituent part of the University of London. Founded in 1907, the College teaches a full range of science, engineering, medical and management disciplines at the highest level. The College is the largest applied science and technology university institution in the UK, with one of the largest annual turnovers (£330 million in 1998-99) and research incomes (£173 million in 1998-99). Web site at: http://www.ic.ac.uk
