[사회]Mystery Basin in Hapcheon, Gyeongnam… It turns out that a meteorite crashed 50,000 years ago

[앵커]

In Hapcheon, Gyeongsangnam-do, there is a place called Patriotic Basin with a diameter of 7 km and the cause of its formation is unknown.

However, it turned out that this basin was formed 50,000 years ago when a large meteorite 200m in diameter collided.

It is the second time in Asia that traces of a giant meteorite impact have been found, after China.

Reporter Kim Jin-du reports.

[기자]

A wide basin tinged with yellow spreads beneath the low mountain.

It is Jeokjung-Gugye Basin in Hapcheon, Gyeongnam.

From the satellite, it looks like a concave bowl.

It was a form that couldn’t come out naturally, so the cause of the basin creation has been a mystery.

However, there is evidence that this basin was created by a meteorite impact 50,000 years ago.

Drilling a hole in the ground and examining the subterranean rock formations revealed a unique deformation of the rock structure created only by the strong pressure and heat caused by meteorite impacts.

[임재수 / 지질자원연구원 지질연구센터 : 이 충격파에 의해서 현미경에서 관찰할 수 있는 석영의 평면 변형 구조가 나타나고, 육안으로 관찰할 수 있는 암편(암석 조각)에는 ‘셰터 콘’이라는 원뿔형 변형구조가 나타나게 됩니다.]

The current basin is 7 km in diameter, but considering that weathering or erosion took place, the size at the time of the meteorite impact is estimated to be 4 km.

A meteorite with a diameter of 200m collides with the ground, generating 87,500 times the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, creating a huge basin.

This is the first time that a’meteorite impact sphere’ has been identified on the Korean Peninsula, and is the second time in East Asia after China’s’Shuen meteorite impact sphere’.

Currently, there are only 200 meteorite impact spheres officially recognized worldwide.

This is YTN Kim Jin-du.

[저작권자(c) YTN & YTN plus 무단전재 및 재배포 금지]