00:00 It was long believed that the Vredefort crater in South Africa was the epicenter of the largest
00:08 asteroid impact to ever occur on Earth.
00:11 The falling space rock that caused it is thought to have been around 9 miles wide, causing
00:15 a 186 mile wide crater.
00:18 However, now experts say that another mega impact zone may have just been discovered
00:23 in Australia, overshadowing that one by a magnitude.
00:26 The impact structure went undiscovered until now because it's deep underground, buried
00:30 under New South Wales.
00:32 They call it a structure rather than a crater because when an asteroid hits, it creates
00:35 a central uplifted section, which The Conversation reports is similar to what happens when you
00:40 drop something into water.
00:41 As Newton's third law comes into play, the newly discovered structure, they say, is some
00:46 323 miles wide, nearly twice the size of the one in South Africa.
00:51 And they say it could have occurred much more recently, around 444 million years ago.
00:56 Experts say they are basing that estimation on an extinction event that happened around
00:59 then, a mass dying off of species that was twice the scale of the one that killed the
01:03 dinosaurs.
01:04 But they add it could have also been created much earlier, kicking off the Cambrian explosion,
01:09 and was in some way responsible for bringing life to Earth.
01:12 -
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