The Chesapeake's Extraterrestrial Incubator
It gives with one hand, and takes away with another, it seems.
As the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska incident passed quietly (thankfully) on June 30, a meteoric event of a similar destructiveness 36 million years ago seemingly continues to do damage to the Chesapeake Bay.
The meteorite that formed it helped shape the bay, continues to affect water supplies in surrounding Virginia communities and is used by teachers in Maryland and elsewhere to spark interest in geology.
«It's very exciting stuff,» said Rachel Burks, a geology professor who lectures on the crater to students at Towson University.
The $1.5 million drilling project confirmed that the meteorite's impact created a «sterilizing pulse» that wiped out most of the microbial life at depths below 2,600 feet, said Mary Voytek, a USGS biologist.
Nutrients created by animals and plants wiped out by the blast were washed down into a cavity formed by the impact. Shock waves from the impact created pore-filled rock and sediments, Voytek said. The result: nooks and crannies at depths below 4,600 feet that harbor more mysterious microscopic organisms than anyone expected.
«What happened is, you've created a nice little incubator for life,» she said.
What else besides briny water will swim out of the Chesapeake now. That's even scarier than the prospect of another meteor that might fall in some remote swathe of Siberia.
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