Map of Earth’s Asteroid and Meteor Impact Craters | HeritageDaily

Impact craters are caused when the planet is struck by solid objects travelling at high velocity, producing shock waves and the compression of material to form a circular crater.

In impacts with large objects, material can be displaced and ejected to form a crater when significant volumes of excavated material from both the object and the body impacted is melted and vaporised.

Across the history of our planet, around 190 terrestrial impact craters have been identified that still survive the Earth’s geological processes, with the most recent event occurring in 1947 at the Sikhote-Alin…