A little late getting to this story, but nonetheless I find it interesting that simultaneously our technology allows us to find more evidence of past impacts, it is also allowing us to find future threatening objects. Selected quotes from a Space.com article below:
An apparent crater as big as Ohio has been found in Antarctica. Scientists think it was carved by a space rock that caused the greatest mass extinction on Earth, 250 million years ago.
The crater, buried beneath a half-mile of ice and discovered by some serious airborne and satellite sleuthing, is more than twice as big as the one involved in the demise of the dinosaurs.
The newfound crater is more than twice the size of the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan peninsula, which marks the impact that may have ultimately killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The Chicxulub space rock is thought to have been 6 miles wide, while the Wilkes Land meteor could have been up to 30 miles wide, the researchers said.
"Giant Crater Found: Tied to Worst Mass Extinction Ever"
Robert Roy Britt
Space.com
01 June 2006
Link: Space.com article
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