thunderbolts.

info than 4,000 feet wide, was created 50,000 years ago when
Picture of the Day a giant rock plowed into the desert. The Meteor Crater
January 31, 2007 Interactive Learning Center, which includes twenty-four
exhibits, bills the crater as the “first proven, best-preserved
meteorite crater on Earth”. The movie “Collisions and Im-
pacts" shows twice each hour in an 80-seat wide-screen

Meteor Crater
in Arizona  
Is “Meteor Crater” really the
showcase for the impact
hypothesis that astronomers
and geologists have claimed?
Evidence for an electrical event
is too clear to be ignored.

R eaders interested in today’s sci-

entific folklore on meteor im-
pacts have probably already seen
pictures of Meteor Crater in Arizona.
So we’ve chosen to put up instead
an image that captures the power of
theoretical assumptions in the sci-
ences. (A good picture of Meteor
Crater can be seen on page 2.)
The crater is located 20 miles west
of Winslow Arizona. Geologists now Two signs on the approach to the world's most famous “meteor impact site” leave little doubt as to what cre-
confidently say the depression, more ated the feature. Photos: Wallace Thornhill

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THUNDERBOLTS PICTURE OF THE DAY Meteor Crater in Arizona 2

movie theater. A 1,406 pound meteorite fragment, the larg- 20 miles

est ever found in the area, is on display. 40 kilometers
AR I ZO NA
Of course, for many years scientists claimed that the
earth’s surface has no impact craters. But in 1902 a mining ARIZ
ONA

engineer, Daniel Moreau Barringer, noting that small balls Area sh

the en
own in
larged
map
of meteoritic iron were imbedded in the ejected rocks of
the crater rim, concluded that a meteorite impact caused
F lagstaf f
the crater. Assuming that the meteorite was extremely
large, Barringer formed the Standard Iron Company and Barringer
Crater
began securing mining patents. Winslow
The mining venture spanned 27 years and cost Barrin- Holbrook
ger’s group more than $600,000
($10 million in today's money). It
produced nothing.
Barringer’s exploration of the
site, however, became the foun-
dation for a new theoretical un-
derstanding of crater formation
by impact. Decades before Eu-
gene Shoemaker’s highly regard-
ed work, Barringer convinced the
scientific community that his im-
pact theory of Meteor Crater was
correct. For this reason the de-
pression is also called Barringer
Crater.
Barringer made two presen-
tations on his hypothesis to the Meteor Crater is 4000 feet—1220 meters—wide. Geologist, George P. Merrill, observed that the rock beds below
Academy of Natural Sciences in the crater were undisturbed, compelling evidence against the massive hole being made from an asteroid impact.

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Philadelphia, the first in 1906, the second in 1909. In addi- of event that would leave the rock beds below the crater
tion to the absence of any naturally occurring volcanic rock “undisturbed”.
in the vicinity, he noted an abundance of finely pulveri zed Merrill’s findings are the very kind of things that an elec-
silica. He also observed large quantities of meteoritic iron, tric discharge hypothesis would anticipate. An electrical
in the form of globular "shale balls", scattered around the explanation of the crater envisions an approaching bolide
rim and surrounding plain. The surrounding soil included a entering the strongest region of Earth’s electric field and,
random mixture of meteoritic material and ejected rocks. under prodigious internal electrical stresses, beginning to
For today’s electrical theorists, some of the historic discharge explosively and to fragment. Before reaching
investigation is ironic. In 1908 Barringer’s impact expla- the surface it is likely to have already blown apart, for the
nation found a vigorous supporter in geologist George P. same reason that comets have exploded millions of miles
Merrill, who closely examined a form of quartz glass in from the Sun and the Tunguska bolide exploded high in
the vicinity of the crater. He concluded that this type of the earth’s atmosphere. Another small-scale example of
quarts could only be produced by intense heat, “similar to this effect is the unexpectedly energetic explosion created
the heat generated by a lightning strike on sand”. by the Deep Impact projectile when it met up with Comet
Merrill also pointed to the undisturbed rock beds below Tempel 1. Every astronomer who observed the event was
the crater that proved “the force which created the crater astonished.
did not come from below”. In the electrical interpretation, fragments of a bolide
The undisturbed rock beds below the crater contradict reaching the surface intact will generally be scattered some
the standard opinion on the event that created the large distance from the electrical crater or craters caused by the
pit. The report by the Meteor Crater Interactive Learning discharge.
Center states: “The meteorite which made it was com- The electrical theorists insist that the usual artists’
posed almost entirely of nickel-iron, suggesting that it may “splatter” picture of an asteroid or meteor impact is un-
have originated in the interior of a small planet. It was 150 imaginative and wrong. Not one artistic impression of
feet across, weighed roughly 300,000 tons, and was trav- this sort has ever included a lightning bolt. That’s because
eling at a speed of 28,600 miles per hour (12 kilometers the artists’ image is based upon a model scientists use to
per second) according to the most recent research. The estimate the effects of a mechanical impact. That model
explosion created by its impact was equal to 2.5 megatons cannot be correct if we live in an electric universe.
of TNT, or about 150 times the force of the atomic bomb One reason for believing that the crater was excavated
that destroyed Hiroshima”. Certainly that is not the kind by an electric discharge is the apparent stratification of the

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THUNDERBOLTS PICTURE OF THE DAY Meteor Crater in Arizona 4

debris distributed by the event. A rotating, crater-produc-

ing electric arc will work down from the surface through
layers of soil, spraying the material across a wide region.
This could mean that the debris field would be laid down
roughly in layers that reversed the strata of the surrounding
terrain. So it is interesting that the Meteor Crater website
confirms Barringer’s finding that “different types of rocks
in the rim and on the surrounding plain appeared to have
been deposited in the opposite order from their order in
the underlying rock beds”.
There are two other reasons for considering the elec-
trical interpretation. The immediate surroundings exhibit
more than one rille, or sinuous channel, something left en-
tirely unexplained by the impact hypothesis, but a demon-
strable effect of electric discharge. And most enigmatic is
the presence of fulgurites within the crater. A fulgurite is
fused and glassified sand resulting from a lightning strike.
The presence of fulgurites in the crater is almost never
mentioned in the standard literature on Meteor Crater.
It is also worth noting that researchers investigating the
“impact” appear to be moving increasingly toward the idea
of substantial fragmentation of the body before striking the
ground. Jay Melosh of the University of Arizona, the lead
researcher in a recent study (reported in the March 10, 2005
issue of Nature), suggests that about half of the 300,000-
ton object was lost prior to impact. But again, electrical
considerations played no part in the analysis. Geologist George P. Merrill closely examined a form of quartz glass in the vicin-
ity of the crater and concluded that this type of quartz could only be produced
by intense heat, “similar to the heat generated by a lightning strike on sand.”
QuickBird satellite image

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