Sudbury Complex
WHEN BIG THINGS STRIKE THE EARTH ...
THE ENIGMATIC SUDBURY STAR WOUND
photos by Roman Jirasek
Astrobleme ... an ancient weathered impact structure meaning "star wound." The immense
Sudbury ringed structure is precisely that. More precisely, it is the aftermath remnants of a wound
resulting from a direct blow delivered courtesy of one of the largest meteorites ever to have
touched down on this pelted planet.
When two worlds collided ... Approximately 1.87 billion years ago, give or take a few millennia,
a cataclysmic event of almost unfathomable proportions took place a few kilometers north of
present day Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.
This event, involving a gigantic nine kilometer diameter space-invader traveling at 30 kilometers
per second, slamming into the earth with an impact force equivalent to detonation of several billion
tons of TNT, caused a ring of mainly blast debris and fallout material to form around the upper
portions of its original crater and one of the world's richest and most diverse metal, breccia and
mineral deposits to be buried below the structure as its eternal legacy. Thus the tale of "the basin"
begins.
In order to gain a greater understanding of the scope and sheer magnitude of the catastrophic
Sudbury occurrence and put it into perspective with a current event of similar scale, the following
facts should be taken into consideration.
The kinetic energy transfer & release explosion, the cosmic bomb effect, so to speak, caused by
the Sudbury superimpactor plowing full-speed into solid rock would literally make the nuclear
device that leveled Hiroshima seem like a firecracker in comparison. The concussion wave
traveling rapidly outward in all directions following the blast in modern times would completely
wipe out and erase all people, places and things, by conservative estimates, within a 500 mile
radius of ground zero.
The intense heat generated by the impact would cause at least several thousand cubic miles of
primordial, volcanic gas, sulfur, CO & CO2 rich, oxygen poor "air" surrounding the cosmic
contact zone to spontaneously ignite. The jolt resulting from an equivalent impact taking place just
north of present-day Sudbury would easily and noticeably be felt across all of Canada, Alaska and
the rest of the continental U.S.A. Seismographs on the opposite side of the earth would record the
event, and finally a long, dark, cold winter would begin to set in.
A scary scenario to say the least, however, it is accurate, realistic and unfortunately a very
potentially possible one in store for this planet at some point in time, between the near and distant
future. Such a scenario has happened before and all indications are that, sooner or later, it will
happen again. The silver lining to this likely lethal dark cloud is that research and contingency
planning is currently underway and progress is being made in efforts to avert such scenarios by
diverting or destroying any large object or objects posing the threat of direct collision with the
earth.
Aerial Radar Image - Sudbury crater is the large depression middle left. Wanapitei crater is the dark lake middle right.
Much more with links..
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