In a rare find, geologists say they may have identified a 22-mile-wide crater buried almost two miles beneath glacial ice in northwest Greenland. It would be only the second “impact crater” ever discovered and was likely caused by a meteor crashing into the earth before Greenland’s glaciers were formed. The gigantic depression was discovered using two NASA satellites and 25 years of aerogeophysical data collected on Greenland. The researchers note the possible crater is too circular to have been caused by volcanic activity, and that it was likely caused by an ancient space rock crashing into the earth’s surface. The first subglacial crater discovered is under the Hiawatha glacier, which is also in Greenland and only 114 miles away. But the puzzling thing is, it seems these two giant craters may have been created by different meteor storms. The ice covering today’s discovery is older than the ice covering the Hiawatha crater. Researchers analyzed the chances of that happening, and called it “improbable, but not impossible.”
