What does the impact crater look like?
The Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater looks like an upside-down sombrero, with an upturned outer rim, a trough, then a high peak in the center. It is a complex crater, as opposed to a simple bowl shaped crater. Its shape was affected by landing in the water. The space debris penetrated through several hundred feet of ocean water and a couple thousand feet ofwet sediments to create a crater 56 miles in diameter. The crater appears to be greatly influenced by an enormous blast-splash (about 30 miles high) that collapsed back down, vaporizing billions of tons of seawater, which possibly caused subsequent steam explosions. Trains of gigantic tsunamis finished off the event. The wet sediments (mostly clays and sands) appear to have been easier to disturb than the crystalline rock and most likely contributed to the width of the flat-floored rim of the inverted “sombreo.” A 1,000- to 4,000-foot high steep slope marks the outer rim of the crater. An approximately 22 milewide outer fracture zone of
