[meteorite-list] Scientists Blast Into The Earth's Past inVirginia (Chesapeake Bay Crater)

From: Matt Morgan <mmorgan_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Oct 11 15:52:30 2004
Message-ID: <001401c4afcb$d08c8b30$6400a8c0_at_D14191145L2K>

John:
I've read someplace that a meteors can average ~110,000 Mph, depending
on size.
So David is probably close when we says 76,000 Mph due to the mass
increase.
Matt Morgan

-----Original Message-----
From: meteorite-list-bounces_at_meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces_at_meteoritecentral.com] On Behalf Of
j.divelbiss_at_att.net
Sent: Monday, October 11, 2004 1:41 PM
To: Ron Baalke
Cc: Meteorite Mailing List
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Scientists Blast Into The Earth's Past
inVirginia (Chesapeake Bay Crater)


The story below says the impact was at 76,000 mph or 111,500 feet per
second. That sounds too high to me...by a factor of 3 or 4. Any
comments out there?

John

> No one knows whether an asteroid or a comet gouged the one-mile-deep,
> 56-mile-wide crater beneath the Bay. But judging by the damage it
caused
> , the meteorite slammed into the planet at about 76,000 mph. The
> explosion, equal to 10 trillion tons of TNT, wiped out life for miles
> around, creating the largest impact crater in the United States and
the
> sixth-largest in the world.

-------------- Original message from Ron Baalke : --------------

>
>
> http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=76631&ran=167519
>
> Scientists blast into the Earth's past in Virginia
>
> David Powars, the scientist who worked tirelessly to begin the project
> to study the impact crater, gives an impromptu history lesson about
the
> crater to tourists in Cape Charles on the Eastern Shore.
> David Powars, the scientist who worked tirelessly to begin the project

> to study the impact crater, gives an impromptu history lesson about
the
> crater to tourists in Cape Charles on the Eastern Shore. PHOTOS BY
VICKI
> CRONIS/THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT.
>
> By JOANNE KIMBERLIN
> The Virginian-Pilot
> October 11, 2004
>
> EASTERN SHORE - Crickets thrummed in the dark mist. A harvest moon
> glowed orange in the heavens. The Earth moved.
>
> Thirty-five times.
>
> It shuddered repeatedly because scientists detonated a 20-mile-long
> string of underground explosives along Virginia's Eastern Shore last
> week. The concussions, bouncing back from far below, will help map the

> most detailed profile yet of an ancient wound in the planet's crust:
the
> 35-million-year-old Chesapeake Bay impact crater.
>
> Pushing the button was the easy part; reaching countdown required a
> diplomatic endeavor worthy of the United Nations .
>
> Scores of locals had to open their gates to dozens of scholarly
> visitors
> - a remarkable consensus in a community that doesn't cotton much to
> intrusion .
>
> One by one, residents yielded to the common good , and to the
> long-winded, high-wattage, caffeine-powered zeal of a wiry scientist
> from the Shenandoah Valley, the man who loves the crater the most .
>
> No one knows whether an asteroid or a comet gouged the one-mile-deep,
> 56-mile-wide crater beneath the Bay. But judging by the damage it
caused
> , the meteorite slammed into the planet at about 76,000 mph. The
> explosion, equal to 10 trillion tons of TNT, wiped out life for miles
> around, creating the largest impact crater in the United States and
the
> sixth-largest in the world.
>
> Thousand-foot-tall tidal waves likely topped parts of the Blue Ridge
> Mountains.
>
> Concealed by the Bay and filled in the passing eons by rock and
> sediment, the crater wasn't discovered until the mid-1980s.
>
> David Powars was one of the first scientists convinced of its
> existence
> - a notion many of his colleagues had scoffed at for years. Now
> confirmed by a battery of drill samples and other tests, the crater
will
> be investigated deeper than ever next fall, when a $1.5 million core
> hole punches 7,000 feet into its mysteries.
>
> Scientists now suspect the crater is the culprit behind a host of
> modern-day concerns, from the region's shortage of fresh ground water
to
> its slow sink into the sea. Answers could lie inside layers brought up

> in the drill tube. A sort of seismic ultrasound, created by last
week's
> blasts, will determine the bull's-eye for the drill bit.
>
> To get the best picture, an alphabet soup of some two dozen "ologists"

> -
> experts in rocks, fossils, atmosphere, outer space and more -
descended
> on the Shore a couple of weeks ago.
>
> Since then, the team has laid a line of 70-foot-deep shot holes that
> stretches from the center of the crater, located beneath the town of
> Cape Charles, to its northeastern rim, near Nassawadox. Some 700
> seismographs, tuned to record the results, had to be poked into the
soil
> every 50 yards along the line. All were on private property - often
> co-owned by a web of relatives.
>
> Powars, as the point man of the operation, began knocking on doors in
> March, spinning his spiel, trying to win access to the land he needed.

>
> "I'd get one person's OK and then find out I also had to get it from
> their cousins or their brothers or their in-laws," Powars said. "I bet
I
> wound up talking to 150 people. Some of them were scattered across the

> country. One was in a mental institution. Let's just say that one was
> interesting."
>
> Fortunately for Powars, talking is among the things he does best. When
> he's excited, as he is about the crater, his words gush in a non stop
> stream that's almost legendary.
>
> "We all love David," said Greg Gohn, Powars' boss at the U.S.
> Geological
> Survey. "But you just have to walk away sometimes."
>
> Powars does not take offense.
>
> "I didn't say a word until I was 10," he said . "But I haven't shut up
> since."
>
> His chatter proved effective with landowners.
>
> Many nodded immediately while others required some courting. Powars
> put
> in plenty of hours perched on living room sofas, answering questions.
>
> "You can't blame them," he said. "Here was some kook wanting to blow
> up
> things on their land."
>
> Some refused to open their doors to or answer calls from an outsider.
> To
> breech their stronghold, Powars enlisted the aid of other locals, who
> contacted their neighbors on his behalf.
>
> "By the time it was done, I was adopted," Powars said. "People were
> feeding me meals. Now, I feel like I know the people better in this
> community than I know the ones in my own."
>
> In the end, only one family resisted his enthusiasm, a rejection that
> will leave a mile-long gap in the seismic profile.
>
> "I worked on them until the very end," Powars said, "but they were
> fighting among themselves and just wouldn't come around. It's a set
> back, but we'll have to live with it."
>
> For the most part, meteor mania blossomed as word spread. Almost 100
> people attended a meeting Powars held last month in Cape Charles.
>
> Tom Saunders, a project manager at the town's new Bay Creek
> development,
> was impressed.
>
> "You can't get 100 people to come to a meeting in Cape Charles if
> you're
> giving away money," Saunders said.
>
> Saunders helped pave the way for a shot hole on one of Bay Creek's
> golf
> courses.
>
> "Astronomy is my hobby," he said, "so anything having to do with a
> rock
> from space is interesting to me."
>
> Saunders would like to see sleepy Cape Charles benefit from its status
> as the crater's ground zero. There has been talk of building an
>
> interpretive center to draw tourists. "Something like this defines the
> kind of whack this old ball can take and shrug off," Saunders said.
"If
> one thing can put Cape Charles on the map of global significance, this

> crater is it."
>
> Mayor Frank Lewis isn't convinced an underwater hole is marketable.
>
> "Seems like it'd be hard to start an industry around something no one
> can see," he said.
>
> Other locals are more interested in basic concerns. Granville Hogg
> gave
> Powars' crew the go-ahead to store equipment and drill shot holes on
his
> family's 200-acre property north of Cape Charles. Groundwater is the
> payoff for Hogg.
>
> The crater ruptured underwater aquifers, limiting the region's fresh
> water supply and leaving farmers, residents and developers accusing
each
> other of using too much. Studies hope to make some sense of the
> fractured layers, information that could contribute to better
decisions.
>
> "There's a whole lot of finger pointing," Hogg said, "but nobody has
> any
> scientific data to back up any of it."
>
> As for the scientists themselves, they're delighted to be the first to
> explore the anatomy of a crater so well preserved by the blanket of
the
> Bay. Exhausted by weeks spent tromping through farm fields and
> bug-swarmed swamps, scientists were thrilled to finally close in on
> detonation last week.
>
> Powars, functioning on too little sleep and too much coffee and candy,
> was a verbal shockwave. An unexpected surplus of explosives and
> seismographs had prompted a last-minute decision to add a short
> east-west cross line of extra shot holes.
>
> Granville Hogg gave scientists permission to blast on his property in
> the hopes that it will reveal why the area's groundwater is limited.
>
> Dashing up and down the line in his pick up, Powars veered off to
> soothe
> a jittery landowner here, an overworked team member there.
>
> "This is just so exciting," he jabbered, with no apparent need for a
> breath. "We've waited so long. I can't wait to see what this thing
looks
> like. Everyone thought an impact this big would wipe out the planet.
> Now, we know they were wrong. We're all so tired. No one knows what's
> under there, you know. A crater like this is just so expensive to
drill.
> We know so little about them. Could be some oil down there, but I
think
> it's too young for that. Could be gold, platinum, diamonds. A crater
in
> Canada is pumping out nickel right now, you know."
>
> By that night, even Powars was silenced by the explosions.
> Synchronized
> by satellite-set timers, the blasts went off between 10:30 p.m and
> sunrise to minimize vibrations from traffic that might be picked up by

> the sensitive seismographs. Gravel and sandbags capped the shot holes,

> directing the explosions downward to reveal the topography up to nine
> miles beneath the surface. As they went off, a wave of
mini-earthquakes
> rocked the Shore.
>
> Under foot, they rippled by with a rubbery jolt.
>
> Inside homes, they rocked beds and rattled dishes.
>
> Despite efforts to get the word out beforehand, many residents were
> alarmed.
>
> "Our dispatcher said she must have had 200 phone calls from folks
> wanting to know what was going on," said Capt. David Doughty of the
> county sheriff's department.
>
> "I thought a car ran into my house," said Berkley Rayfield, a
> pharmacist
> in Cape Charles. Others wondered if a plane had crashed, if the
military
> was up to something, if another meteor had hit, if Iraq had invaded.
>
> "Me and my husband were up all night," said Cela Burge, Cape Charles'
> town manager. "It really freaked us out."
>
> A series of shallower, less-powerful explosions, set off during the
> day
> , was expected to wrap up Sunday. From there, the recordings will be
> entered into a computer and analyzed. Powars hopes to have a sketch of

> his crater by December.
>
> His hunch says the data will pinpoint Eyre Hall as the best spot for
> next year's deep-hole project. The colonial-era plantation, located
just
> south of Eastville, belongs to Furlong Baldwin. Shot holes already dot

> the property. The deep hole could bring an international circus of
> science types to a place Baldwin treasures for its peace.
>
> "I've already told David that we'll cross that bridge when we come to
> it," Baldwin said. "If I can just get him to stop talking, I'll
probably
> agree to anything."
>
>
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Received on Mon 11 Oct 2004 03:52:15 PM PDT