Hickman Crater

The Hickman Crater is an impact crater, which is located 35 kilometers north of Newman and about 1000 kilometers north of Perth in the Ophthalmia Range in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. He was discovered while looking at Google Earth.

Discovery

Geologist Arthur Hickman, who works in the institution of the Geological Survey of Western Australia, discovered the crater in July 2007 when viewing Google Earth. He reported his discovery to the geologist Andrew Gliksen and asked for a second opinion. This took a Feldinspedition in August and confirmed that it is a meteorite, and gave him the name of the discoverer. In May 2008, Hickman undertook further investigations, which continued to strengthen the impact theory.

Description

The crater has a diameter of 260 meters and rises 30 meters above the surrounding terrain him. The inner crater rim falls off steeply, the outer is flatter. At the southern rim edge, a river was dammed by the impact. Rock was thrown up to 300 meters outside the ring. The ruins consist of rhyolite, chert and Bändererz, of which some ruins are more than 2 meters long. The crater slammed into layers of Woongarra rhyolite and in the Booleega Iron Formation, including lying layers of alluvium.

The surface of the stone blocks show typical traces of the meteorite impact, such as radiation structures, armor and hydrothermal goethite - quartz veins.

It is believed that it was a meteorite iron with a diameter of approximately 10 meters, which struck at a speed of 5 kilometers per second. The impact had an energy 200000-300000 tons of TNT exploding.

The event took place in the Pleistocene.