Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 04/17/2009 - 09:39
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Geologic Climate Research in Siberia

So me and my other group member would like to know where the meteor end up, were it is now, and if the meteor had any kind of affect to the ice water or anything else?

Thank you Adrian H.

Fri, 04/17/2009 - 11:11

Tim Martin

Adrian,
You have an excellent question. At this point no one knows about the meteor since no pieces have been found...yet. I was hoping that I would get in on that part... but I was not so lucky. This is no surprise though becasus as with many big impact craters we have not found pieces of the meteorite.
The best explaination so far is that the meteor vaporized (blew-up) on impact. As far as ice. Depending on the time of year, there may not have been ice for the meteor to hit. 3 million years ago, the arctic was warm in the summers. So even if it hit during the winter, any ice would have quickly melted and evaporated.
The biggest effect of the impact was to create an explosion that formed the 12 mile hole in the ground! The impact would have also altered many of the surrounding area for hundreds of miles and the debris ejected into the atmosphere could have slightly changed global temperatures. (But not a dramatically as the impact that killed the dinosaurs!)