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March 18, 2008
Australian Geologist Accidentally Discovers Meteor Crater in Google Earth
Geologist Arthur Hickman now has a meteor crater named after himself. He discovered Hickman Crater while looking for likely places to find iron ore in mountains in the western part of Australia. He sent a screenshot and the coordinates over to a colleague at Australian National University who later confirmed it is a well-perserved meteor crater between 10,000 and 100,000 years old. via ScienceAlert. You can see the crater in Google Earth here 
, or look at it with Google Maps.
This is not the first crater discovered with Google Earth. Two years ago a huge crater was discovered in the Saharan Desert with Google Earth.
If you want to start searching for craters in Google Earth, you might want to load this super-collection showing placemarks of known and suspected meteor craters on Earth . There are several folders which show various datasets of craters and some show the size of the craters as well. Also, be aware that not all things that look like meteor craters are. Besides the obvious volcano craters, there are other geological objects which appear as meteor craters but are not. Read this article from NASA.
Posted by FrankTaylor at March 18, 2008 09:20 AM
Comments
Posted by: Milan at March 19, 2008 12:23 AM
Man, that area looks like hell on earth. Zoom out a little.
Posted by: zzz at March 19, 2008 04:29 AM
I still have a curiosity toward the lower bowl of Lake Michigan to be an actual crater -- potentially a crater that could have occured that directly links the mini ice age that preceeded the disappearence of the Clovis inhabitants of North America.
But unfortunately, there's very little, if any, data resources to investigate the depths of the Great Lakes to determine whether Lake Michigan could have that potential. There's too much dispute that the impact discussed occured in Canada -- but the actual placement is disputed, because they speculate that it happened closer to the ice-damn formation or had occured on the ice-shelf itself.
Posted by: Daniel at March 19, 2008 09:56 AM
I've been trying to find someone on the GE staff to field this question, and now's the perfect time...
Why is the Meteor Crater near Winslow AZ not shown in higher resolution? This is arguably the best-known, most easily recognized crater on Earth, and it's sitting just about exactly one mile west of a much higher resolution area. Almost as tantalyzing on GE as Stonehenge was three or four years ago.
35 deg 01 min 37.43 sec N
111 deg 01 min 21.61 sec W.
Posted by: Pat Bailey at April 3, 2008 11:21 PM
I agree, it is annoying when lots of places are still not in high definition, it makes exploring out of the way places much more difficult,
i have come across one item that has me totaly baffled as to what it is,
its at the edge of a mining area near the Bolivia/Chile border cordinates are 21'26'59,32S - 63,13'43, 63W and looks like the back bone of a bird with beak, except its over 1'000 meters long,
i'm sure there is a simple explanation as to what it is, ???
Posted by: john speak at April 6, 2008 08:52 AM
If that is a crater, which I seriously question, then I suspect there is a second crater located exactly 1,714 feet (center to center) SSW of this crater.
Posted by: kittyhawk at April 9, 2008 11:43 AM
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I wonder what other geographic novelties have been discovered on Google Earth.