Geologists go on vacation and discover a meteorite crater in a French vineyard

Photo: Karsten Wurth/Unsplash

He geologist and cosmochemist Professor Frank Brenker, from the Goethe University in Frankfurt, was on vacation near the Domaine du Météore winery” from France, which has a vineyard lying in a round depression which turned out to be a crater made by a meteorite.

He vineyard is located in a round depression about 220 meters in diameter and 30 meters deep, and the owners use the scientific hypothesis that it is a meteorite impact crater -apparently disproved long ago- as an advertising claim for their wine.

Frank Brenker explains: “Craters can be formed in many ways and, in fact, meteor craters are very rare. However, other interpretations of how this depression could have formed seemed unconvincing from a geological point of view. That’s why, he and his wife collected rock samples for analysiss in the laboratories of the Goethe University in Frankfurt, and indeed found the first signs of an impact crater.

The following year, Brenker took his colleague Andreas Junge, Professor of Applied Geophysics at Goethe University Frankfurt, and a group of students to the south of France to examine the crater in detail. They found that Earth’s magnetic field is slightly weaker in the crater than in the surrounding area.. This is typical of impact craters, because the impact shatters or even melts the rock, which can thus contribute less to Earth’s magnetic field.

With the help of powerful magnets attached to a plate, the researchers also found tiny iron oxide spherules up to a millimeter in diameter. This type of spherules had already been found in other impact craters.either. Later laboratory analysis showed that those here also contained nickel-plated iron and contained a core of minerals typical of the crater environment. In addition, the researchers discovered numerous shock microdiamonds produced by the high pressure exerted during the meteorite impact.

Confirmation that it is a crater made by a meteorite

Frank Brenker explains how he came to the conclusion that the famous crater in the vineyard is actually the result of a meteorite impact: “Such microspheres are formed either by abrasion of the meteorite in the atmosphere or only at the moment of impact, when a large part of the iron meteorite melts and then reacts with oxygen in the air. At the moment of impact, the fragmented material at the point of impact could also become encapsulated. This, together with the lower magnetic field and the other geological and mineralogical findings, hardly allows us to draw another conclusion: Indeed, a meteorite hit here“. This makes the crater very exciting for geology laymen as well, says Brenker, because “any visitor here can experience the immense energies released after such an impact.”

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