Glass production differences for equal-diameter impact craters

Abstract

A thermodynamic model of meteorite impact is used to investigate the possibility that the creation of two impact craters of the same apparent diameter may have been accompanied by dissimilar shock heating regimes. For small craters, the idea may be concisely represented by the question of which event produces more glass, a large slow meteorite or a small fast one, if the resulting craters are of the same diameter. So that the results may be most apparent, the only parameters varied in this study are meteorite size and impact velocity. Identical basaltic material is assumed for meteorite and target. For impact velocities between 10 and 70 km/sec, an available model determines the radius of a spherical meteorite which would produce a crater diameter of 20 cm.