Science: Great Fall

Some hundreds or thousands of years before Christopher Columbus, a huge cluster of metallic meteorites—or a small comet—400 or 500 ft. in diameter and weighing millions of tons, entered the Earth’s atmosphere over northeastern Canada, plunged southward in a flaming, thundering arc over the Dakotas and Colorado, no doubt scaring thousands of savages almost out of their wits. Coming to Earth in northern Arizona, the monstrous cluster plunged into the desert, converted underground water into steam, hurled huge gobs of earth and stone skyward to fall back into the crater. The main body of the meteorite plunged on underground, shattered the rock strata into rubble, came to rest at last 1,200 or 1,500 ft. below the surface.

Such was the cataclysmic picture painted last week in Manhattan by Hans Torkel Fredrik Lundberg, a Swedish-born mining engineer and geologist of Toronto. At a meeting of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, Mr. Lundberg described the latest efforts to find, by newfangled electrical and magnetic prospecting, the remains of Arizona’s great meteorite.

Just west of T. W. A.’s transcontinental stop at Winslow, Meteor Crater is about 4.000 ft. in diameter, 570 ft. deep from the lip of the rim to the bottom. The force of the impact raised the crater’s lip 120 ft. above the surrounding plain. The amount of weathering and other evidence in the bowl indicate that it was formed not less than 700 years ago and not more than 5,000 years. The Indians of the region have a legend that one of their gods descended to Earth at the spot in a pillar of fire. To this day they will not use or carry away the metallic meteorites which have been found in abundance in and near the crater. These fragments, ranging from a few ounces to 1,400 lb., constitute the majority of the metallic meteorites recovered anywhere in the world. They show about 92% iron, 6% nickel, 2% of other matter, and this is taken by scientists as a fair sample of the main body.

Shortly after the turn of the century, the Meteor Crater area was staked out as a mining claim by an engineer named Daniel Moreau Barringer. He and his sons, who inherited the claim when he died, have done some drilling themselves and have leased the claim at times to various other groups, but all attempts to exploit the crater’s treasure have failed. Mr. Barringer first drilled in the centre, believing that because the crater was round the body must have fallen vertically. When he performed the highly ingenious experiment of firing bullets and shotgun charges into clay, however, he saw that a round crater was formed even when the projectiles entered at a considerable angle. Close study of the Meteor Crater strata made it seem that the meteorite had come in at a low angle, perhaps no more than 30°, from the northeast, and that it should therefore lie beneath or beyond the southwest rim.

In Manhattan last week Hans Torkel Fredrik Lundberg told how he had made a complete magnetic survey of the whole Meteor Crater area. Mr. Lundberg is president of his own company in Toronto, but he is working at present for someone else, who prefers to remain anonymous. Using sensitive variometers (containing magnetic needles responding to large masses of metal), he went over the ground, made a “magnetic profile.” This showed two humps several hundred feet southwest of the rim, the larger covering an area 2,000 by 1,500 ft. He believes that the meteoritic clumps corresponding to these humps can be reached by sinking a shaft straight down through rock undisturbed by the meteorite’s passage, then drifting sidewise through the troublesome watery strata which were broken by the impact. Even if the meteoritic bodies weigh no more than a million tons, at present prices they should be worth $20,000,000.