14 DAY TRIAL // In a recent report, a team of scientists with the University of Gothenburg announce the discovery of two previously undocumented meteorite impact craters.
The craters were found in the county of Jämtland in Sweden, some 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) south from Östersund in Brunsflo, the researchers detail.
Interestingly, evidence shows they formed at the same time
These recently discovered meteorite impact craters in Sweden's Jämtland county sit at a distance of merely 16 kilometers (9 miles) from one another.
The biggest measures an astounding 7.5 kilometers (roughly 4.6 miles) across. The other is much smaller. Thus, it has a diameter of just 700 meters (around 2,300 feet).
The University of Gothenburg research team say the two craters appear to have formed at the same time in Earth's history, some 458 million years back.
This means they are probably the result of a twin strike. As for the meteorites that created them, they were likely the remains of two asteroids that collided some millennia before.
“Around 470 million years ago, two large asteroids collided in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and many fragments were thrown off in new orbits.”
“Many of these crashed on Earth, such as these two in Jämtland,” University of Gothenburg geophysics professor Erik Sturkell explained in an interview, as cited by Science Daily.
The area looked very different when the meteorites struck
458 million years ago, when the two meteorites fell from the sky and formed these twin impact craters in the county of Jämtland in Sweden, the region looked nothing like it does these days.
Au contraire, geological evidence indicates that, in those days, the region was underwater. The craters themselves formed at a depth of around 500 meters (approximately 1,600 feet).
When the meteorites struck, the water got pushed away. Then, when it returned just seconds after the impacts, it dragged meteorite remains together with bits and pieces of the sea bed into the craters.
