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Showing posts from August 7, 2025

Earth’s Oldest Impact Crater Turns Out to Be Much Younger, Scientists Reveal in New Study

A location in Western Australia that used to be named as the oldest meteorite impact crater on Earth is now actually a lot younger than that, scientists announced today in Science Advances. The structure — previously dated to 3.5 billion years ago and located within Western Australia's North Pole Dome region of the Pilbara — was believed to be older than any of Earth's known impact craters. Today, new research published in the journal Geochemistry found that what we now call the Miralga impact structure is, in fact, much younger, at 2.7 billion years old, and considerably smaller in diameter. This recasts earlier ideas on the early Earth's geological activity and questions previous theories regarding impact-driven crust formation or perhaps even early life. Miralga Crater Loses Oldest Impact Title but Gains New Scientific Relevance As per The Conversation article republished by Space.com, the teams that explored the crater could only point to one thing that was likely — it ...