Rain of Iron

Scientists have known for over 50 years that the great, round pit near Canyon Diablo, Ariz, is a meteorite crater. In Scientific Monthly, Dr. H. H. Nininger offers proof that it was made not by one but by two great meteorites hitting close together.

Scattered for miles around the crater are fragments of meteoric material. The soil itself, in spots, is full of microscopic droplets of nickel-iron (many thousands of them in each cubic foot). The fragments differ in chemical composition; some have melted, vaporized or been altered by heat. By studying such clues for more than ten years, Nininger has reconstructed what the "cosmo-terrestrial encounter" was like.

The invader from space probably had a large central body of nickel-iron with a smaller body of slightly different composition revolving around it like the moon around the earth. Traveling with these two were many small meteorites that hit the earth separately far from the main crater.

The whirling swarm with its double heart of iron approached the impact point from the north-northwest at 20 to 31 miles a second, and at a vertical angle of about 30DEG. The meteorite "moon" was moving on its orbit about 800 ft. away from the line of flight of the meteorite earth, and considerably behind it. Each collected on its forward side a layer of highly compressed air equivalent in mass to many feet of rock. The air shell of the big meteorite hit the earth first, acting like high explosive and blasting a preliminary crater.

A fraction of a second later the main mass of iron hit the rock. It was traveling so fast that the heat of impact vaporized most of it. As the fiery jet of metallic vapor spurted out of the crater, the second meteorite struck and burrowed under the rim of rock tilted upward by the first. Most of it, too, turned into iron vapor and spurted into the air.

Nininger does not believe that important masses of iron are buried under the crater. Chunks found near the rim, he thinks, were loosely attached parts that somehow escaped the heat. The rest of the two main meteorites flashed into vapor and fell to earth as a deluge of white-hot iron rain.

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