* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Shiva crater

Blobrana · L

German palaeontologists have produced new evidence to show that dinosaurs became extinct due to a meteor that is believed to have hit India rather than the one held responsible till now.
The experts insist that a mysterious meteor or comet must have done the deadly deed - long after the notorious Yucatan meteor that has hitherto been blamed.

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Blobrana · L

The Shiva crater is a hypothesised impact crater located in the Indian Ocean west of India. It has been suggested that it formed around 65 million years ago, the same time as a number of other impacts that are recorded in the K-T boundary.
The Deccan Traps are located in the theorised centre of the crater, lending support to the idea that the traps were created by the impact event.
This crater was named by the palaeontologist Sankar Chatterjee for Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction and renewal.
The crater is believed to be 600 km long and 400 km wide, and is estimated to have been made by an asteroid 40 km in diameter.

Its morphology shows concentric rings, a collapsed outer rim, an underwater central spire as high as Mount Everest, dated as 65 million years old. The central uplift, called Bombay High, has veins of pseudotachylite (formed largely by frictional melting along faults where rocks moved at or after an impact event) and a core of Neoproterozoic granite (938±13 Ma) that rebounded upward for more than 5 km.
The age of the crater is inferred from its a 500,000 mile2 brecciated lava Deccan Traps, which encase alkaline igneous rock spires, rich in Iridium. Paleocene sediments, isotopic dating ejecta melt, the magnetic anomaly of the Carlsberg Ridge, seismic reflection, and structural and drill core data all indicate the possible impact origin of the Shiva structure.

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