Popigai crater

The Popigai Crater (Russian Попигай ) in northern Siberia is a big crater with a diameter of about 100 kilometers. A meteorite impact crater has created about 35 million years ago in the geological era of the late Eocene. Together with the Manicouagan crater, it is the fifth largest meteorite crater on earth.

The asteroid that created the crater, was identified as either chondrite with a diameter of eight kilometers, or as a stone asteroid with a diameter of five kilometers.

The shockwaves of the impact have partially transformed the graphite of the ground within a radius of approximately 13.6 kilometers in diamond. Although there are no exact measurements to is believed that through this impact more diamonds were formed as by other geological processes in the Earth. The use of diamond deposits is due to the low concentrations in the rock but uneconomical.

The Popigai Crater is the most open-minded example of a large crater. While there are three major craters on the earth; but these are either obscured by younger deposits ( Chicxulub crater ), strongly deformed ( Sudbury basin ) or very severely eroded ( Vredefort crater ).

The crater was named after the river Popigai, which flows through it from southeast to north.