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 Gosses Bluff
Australia, an astonishing natural wonders in
Australia, is a massive, rock-rimmed crater
gouged out by the impact of a comet one hundred
and thirty million years ago. The comet, a ball
of frozen carbon dioxide, ice and dust measuring
six hundred meters across became a flaming
furnace as it hurtled to Earth.
Although entering only about
eight hundred meters into the ground, it blew up
almost four hundred square kilometers of nearby land.
This astonishing site was created by a meteorite
impact close to eight million years ago whereby
its size was reduced to the erosion. The Gosse Bluff
crater in Tnorala Conservation Reserve, this impact
crater is called Tnorala by the Aborigines, the
Western Photo: Goose Bluff Arrente people, and has
been regarded as a sacred place.
The Gosses Bluff
crater or Gosse's Bluff, discovered by Edmund
Gosse in 1873, is the core of a crater that
has worn away over one hundred and thirty millions
years. From the original twenty kilometers in diameter,
this Gosse Bluff attraction in Australia measures
only four kilometers presently. Erosion has worn
away tons of debris that once covered it. The bluff,
the crater's double-walled rim of hard sandstone
crags, now rises to one hundred and eighty
meters above the plain. This sandstone was
pushed up by the explosion as layers of similar
rock have been discovered over two kilometers
beneath the surface.
One of the most
extraordinary photos seen is pictured by space
satellite whereby it looks like a massive
thumbprint on the otherwise flat and featureless
Missionary Plain one hundred and sixty
kilometers west of Alice Springs. The main crowd
puller here is that the sandstone ring stands
out as one of the most impressive impact scars
in a landscape littered with meteor craters.
Located nearby Gosses Bluff are the Henbury
Craters, made by twelve fragments of a meteorite
that split as it hurtled in from space less than
five thousand years ago. Gosses Bluff crater is
one of the most stunning impact crater in
Australia and one of the attractions located
near Alice Springs.
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