CHESAPEAKE BAY IMPACT CRATER

Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater is located approximately 125 miles (201 km) from Washington,
D.C. some estimates suggest this crater is 56 miles wide. It is the largest in United States. The
crater
is cut into ~650 m (200 ft.) of early Cretaceous to
late
Eocene sedimentary material sand at least a
kilometre of the underlying grandioritic basement
rocks.
Much of the crater is filled with a chaotic sedimentary
deposit
known as the Exmore breccia. The Exmore breccia contains
angular class of older sedimentary material, granitic to
metamorphic basement rocks in a sandy matric,
shocked quarts grains, and also impact derived
glass. This deposit is interpreted to be impact ejecta
that
partially in filled the crater immediately after impact.
Isotopic
dating of impact glass indicates the crater formed 35
million
years ago when a meteorite or comet, a few kilometres in
diameter, collided with the earth. Until 1983, no one suspected the
existence of a large, impact crater buried beneath the lower part of
Chesapeake bayand its surrounding peninsulas. The first hint was a
20 cm thick layer of ejecta that formed up in a drilling core taken off
Atlantic City, New Jersey, far to the north. The layer contained the
fused glass beads called tektiles and shocked quarts grains that are unmistakable signs of a
bolide impact. Although hidden at the surface, the Chesapeake Bay impact crater is still affecting
the region as briny groundwater associated with the crater is a problem for many deep water

well in eastern Virginia Until 18,000 years ago, the bay region was dry. A giant ice sheet then
covered North America, and when it began melting 10,000 years ago, valleys flooded, including
the depression formed by the crater.
The ancient impact still affects the region
today, in the form of land subsidence, river
diversion, disruption of coastal aquifers and
ground instability.
Last February, an meteor explosion over the
Russian city of Chelyabinsk confirmed that the
Chesapeake Bay impactor wasn't the only
space rock out there aimed at Earth. Though
the Chelyabinsk asteroid was only about 56
feet (17 m) in diameter, it injured more than
1,000 people and caused millions of dollars in
structural damage.

"That asteroid still had a major effect on the ground, and there are potentially millions of them,"
Dan Mazanek, a near-Earth object (NEO) expert at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia,
said in the statement. "Another meteor of similar size to that would be the next likely event."