The smallest craters on Mars are just a few m in size, e.g. Fram 8 m, but there are smaller ones.
Has anyone a clue what the size of the projectile would be to create one of the smaller craters on Mars, e.g. of 5 m diameter? On Earth, as a rule of thumb 1/20 of the crater diameter might be used, this would be just 25 cm for a 5 m crater. Am I totally off? Then why did Heat shield rock not explode upon impact? It actually looks quite nice and undamaged.
Might this be an indication for a thicker atmosphere at the time of fall? Maybe the ratio between small impact craters and meteorites can be used to deduce the relative amounts of time Mars had a thin atmosphere as today, or a thicker one...
Beda --
************************* Dr. Beda Anton Hofmann Curator, Earth Science Department Bern Natural History Museum Bernastrasse 15 CH-3005 Bern, Switzerland Phone +41 31 350 72 40 FAX +41 31 350 74 99 e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nmbe.ch/ ************************* ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
