When a small meteor hits Earth's ground, nothing much happens. The effect that it can produce on the earth's crust erodes rapidly and, after a short time, there is no trace left.
However, about 50,000 years ago, a large meteorite hit the planet's ground hard and produced the Barringer meteor crater in Arizona, which shows this photograph.
Barringer is more than a kilometer in diameter. In 1920, it was the first crater on the earth's surface to be recognized as an impact crater. Today more than 100 earth craters per impact have been identified. A recent computational model indicates how a part of the Devil's Canyon deformed and melted during the crash that created the Barringer crater.
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