Probably the oldest crater in the world: 60-mile wide scar found on expedition funded by Carlsberg

Probably the oldest crater in the world: 60-mile wide scar found on expedition funded by Carlsberg

As brewery trips go, this one certainly had a massive impact…

A team of scientists on an expedition funded by Carlsberg have found the world’s oldest crater, caused by a huge asteroid or comet that collided with the Earth three billion years ago.

They came across the 60-mile wide scar in Greenland. But just like trying to find a cheap pint in Scandinavia, it wasn’t easy.

Much of the crater has changed dramatically because of weather erosion and land shifting.

The group of international scientists who found it included Dr Iain McDonald of Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences.

He said: “The process was rather like a Sherlock Holmes story.

 

“We eliminated the impossible in terms of any conventional terrestrial processes, and were left with a giant impact as the only ­explanation for the facts.

“This discovery means we can study the effects of cratering on the Earth nearly a billion years furt her back than was possible before.”

The previous oldest crater found was in South Africa at just over two billion years old â€" a billion years before the Greenland hole.

Throughout this period the solar system was under intense bombardment from asteroids.

The moon still bears the scars because there have been no forces to erode them like on Earth.

Discovery of the crater at Maniitsoq has attracted the interest of a Canadian mining firm because asteroids deposit valuable metals such as nickel and platinum.

Of course, as it was discovered with the help of Carlsberg, it should be named appropriately. How about a Crater Lager?