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May 27, 2020 1 min, 35 secs

A lot of new research on the crater has been published recently thanks to a major expedition that included drilling a rock core down through the crater’s peak ring.

(Impacts this violent leave a raised ring in the center rather than a single peak.) A new paper led by Imperial College London’s Gareth Collins makes the latest contribution using model simulations to see what impact angle best matches the observed characteristics of the crater.

All this allows three critical points to be plotted on the map: the geometric center from the crater rim, the center of the peak ring, and the high point of the mantle.

The peak ring would form a dead-center bullseye in the crater, and the mantle high spot would be right beneath it—the product of a gelatin-like vertical rebound after the tremendous force of the impact.

Since they aren’t lined up, the question is what combination of impact angle and direction puts the peak ring center just southwest of the crater center, with the mantle rebound high point just northeast of the crater center.

Impacts at 60 and 45 degrees result in the mantle high point and the peak ring center being offset on opposing sides of the crater center—just like we see in the real crater.

But at 30 degrees, the mantle high point actually joins the peak ring center over on the other side, so they are both offset in the same direction.

Outside the crater, sedimentary rocks lie on top of deeper granites, but this relationship is flipped in the peak ring.

Put together, these results point to an impact angle closer to 60 degrees, ruling out some earlier ideas about a low-angle strike.

They show that the mantle high point marks the uprange direction and that the peak ring center marks the downrange side.

In the case of the Chicxulub crater, that means the impact came from the northeast.

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