The Rim of Meteor Crater

Arizona > United States


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Impact Point with Earth

Verde River

On the way up to Sedona we came upon Meteor Crater just off Interstate 40 about 40 miles before Flagstaff. It was early morning and the park wasn't open yet. Having seen the cool National Geographic film Asteroids: Deadly Impact I went poking about for pieces of the meteor, which are supposed to be glass-like and black. After a few minutes I found this piece pictured here, about the size of a nickel and looking very much like obsidian.

An glass meteor fragment found at Meteor Crater, Arizona

Glass meteor fragment resembling obsidian

Fascinating to think of this bit of rock as once part of a planet or body out in space, travelling for millions of years until it hurls like a bullet into our atmosphere and gouges out a hole nearly a mile wide in a spectacular explosion and vaporising into a spray of hot black glass that covers the ground for miles around. Then this fragment of asteroid sits on the ground for up to 50,000 years until someone comes along in the midst of the vast desert of the southwest, picks it up from the ground and understands how it got there.

Who knows how far across the Universe this piece of rock has come.