Huge Meteor Left Crater Hidden Beneath Greenland Ice

[Judi Lynn]

By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor | February 12, 2019 03:02pm ET

Lurking below more than a mile of ice in Greenland is a circular depression that was very likely left by an ancient impact with a space rock.

The meteor impact crater, reported Feb. 11 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, is only the second ever discovered in Greenland. It's just 113 miles (183 kilometers) from the other crater in the country, which scientists reported last year.

Joseph MacGregor, a glaciologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, was on the team that discovered the first crater, dubbed Hiawatha. In late 2016, when most of the work identifying the Hiawatha crater was done though the research was yet to be published, MacGregor was already on the hunt for another crater. He found one faster than he expected. [Images: Greenland's Gorgeous Glaciers]

. . .

A new crater
The new crater is about 22 miles (36 km) across, which makes it the 22nd-largest impact crater ever discovered on Earth and a wee bit smaller than the Hiawatha crater, which measures 19 miles (31 km) across. Hiawatha sits under about a half-mile (930 meters) of ice, while the new crater is buried under 1.2 miles (2 km). Both craters are in northwest Greenland, and scientists have a disproportionate amount of information on this remote, icy region simply because many of their research flights originate at the nearby Thule Air Base. [Photos: Top-Secret, Cold War-Era Military Base in Greenland]

More:
https://www.livescience.com/64754-giant-meteor-crater-under-greenland.html

[Quemado]

1. Link to video on the first crater found

[LakeSuperiorView]

2. Now my major wasn't math, how is about 22 miles a wee bit smaller than 19 miles?

Are they including depth of the craters as well?