For human settlement within the Nördlinger Ries region, seeDonau-Ries.
You can helpexpand this article with text translated fromthe corresponding article in German. (December 2021)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the German article.
Machine translation, likeDeepL orGoogle Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
Youmust providecopyright attribution in theedit summary accompanying your translation by providing aninterlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary isContent in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Nördlinger Ries]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template{{Translated|de|Nördlinger Ries}} to thetalk page.
TheNördlinger Ries (German pronunciation:[ˈnœʁtlɪŋɐˈʁiːs]) is animpact crater[1] and large circular depression in westernBavaria and easternBaden-Württemberg. It is located north of theDanube in the district ofDonau-Ries. The city ofNördlingen is located within the depression, about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) south-west of its centre.
The depression is ameteoriteimpact crater formed 14.808 ± 0.038 million years ago in theMiocene.[4][5] The crater is most commonly referred to simply as theRies crater orthe Ries. The original crater rim had an estimated diameter of 24 km (15 mi). The present floor of the depression is about 100 to 150 m (330 to 490 ft) below the eroded remains of the rim.
It was originally assumed that the Ries was ofvolcanic,glacial ortectonic origin. Oliver Sachs introduced, in this context, the term "pioneer era" (up to 1870) and marked the beginning of early modern research on the Ries (from 1870), meaning the period when the first detailed theories about the formation of the Nördlinger Ries became known.[6][7][8] In 1960Eugene Shoemaker andEdward C. T. Chao showed that the depression was caused by meteorite impact.[9] The key evidence was the presence ofcoesite, which, inunmetamorphosed rocks, can only be formed by theshock pressures associated with meteorite impact. The coesite was found insuevite fromOtting quarry,[10][9] but even before, Shoemaker was encouraged by St. George's Church inNördlingen, which is built of locally derived suevite.[10] The suevite was formed from mesozoic sediments shocked by thebolide impact.[11][12][13]
The Ries impact crater was arampart crater, thus far a unique finding on Earth.[14] Rampart craters have almost exclusively been found onMars. Rampart craters exhibit a fluidized ejecta flow after the impact of the meteorite, most simply compared to a bullet fired into the mud, with the ejecta resembling amudflow.
Another impact crater, the much smaller (3.8 km (2.4 mi) diameter)Steinheim crater,[15] is located about 42 km (26 mi) west-southwest from the center of Ries. It had previously been thought that the two craters formed simultaneously by the impact of abinary asteroid 14.8 million years ago, but a study published in 2020 suggests that Steinheim could actually be about 500,000 years younger thanNördlinger Ries.[16]
Recent computer modeling of the impact event indicates that the impactors probably had diameters of about 1.5 km (4,900 ft) (Ries) and 150 m (490 ft) (Steinheim), had a pre-impact separation of some tens of kilometers, and impacted the target area at an angle around 30 to 50 degrees from the surface in a west-southwest to east-northeast direction.[citation needed] The impact velocity is thought to have been about 20 km/s (72,000 km/h; 45,000 mph).[citation needed] The resulting explosion had the power of 40 millionHiroshima bombs, an energy of roughly 2.4×1021joules.[citation needed]
The Ries crater impact event is believed to be the source ofmoldavitetektites found in southernBohemia andMoravia (Czech Republic).[17] The tektite melt originated from a sand-rich surface layer that was ejected to distances up to 450 km (280 mi) downrange of the crater. The shape of the strewnfield suggests that the direction of impact was from thewest-southwest.[18]
Stone buildings in Nördlingen contain millions of tinydiamonds, all less than 0.2 mm (0.008 in) across. The impact that caused the Nördlinger Ries crater created an estimated 72,000tonnes (72,000,000 kg) of them when it impacted a localgraphite deposit. Stone from this area was quarried and used to build the local buildings.[19]
On one edge of the Nördlinger Ries are theOfnet Caves, where, at the beginning of the 20th century, archaeologists discovered thirty-three human skulls dating to theMesolithic period.[20]
The landing site forApollo 14 is a heavily craterized terrain, and one of the science goals of the mission was to sample ejecta from the impact that formedMare Imbrium.Nördlinger Ries is an easily accessible, large impact crater, making it a convenient analog for lunar craters. Because of this, it was used as a location to train Apollo 14 astronauts, so that they would be able to investigate lunar impact structures and related rocks.[21] AstronautsAlan Shepard andEdgar Mitchell, as well as Apollo 14 backup astronautsEugene Cernan andJoe Engle, trained here from August 10 to August 14, 1970.[22]
^O. Sachs:Einige wiederentdeckte geologische Kartenwerke zum Nördlinger Ries und ihre Beziehung zu den frühesten Entstehungstheorien in der Pionierzeit der Riesforschung vor 1870. In: Jahresberichte und Mitteilungen des Oberrheinischen Geologischen Vereins. 102, 2020, pages 234–266,doi:10.1127/jmogv/102/0012.
^O. Sachs:Geologische Landeskarten des Königreichs von Württemberg und die Zeit der „Württembergischen Commission der geologischen Detailaufnahme“ am Beispiel der beiden Impaktkrater Steinheimer Becken und Nördlinger Ries. In: Jahresberichte und Mitteilungen des Oberrheinischen Geologischen Vereins. 103, 2021, S. 113–152,doi:10.1127/jmogv/103/0002.
^O. Sachs:Von der Pionierzeit zur frühen Moderne der geologischen Riesforschung: Die vergessenen Karten des Nördlinger Rieses bis 1870. In: Rieser Kulturtage. 23, 2023, S. 29–96.
