Free Republic

Two billion years ago a meteorite 10km in diameter hit the earth about 100km southwest of Johannesburg, creating an enormous impact crater. This area, near Vredefort in the Free State, is now known as the Vredefort Dome... The meteorite, larger than Table Mountain, caused a thousand-megaton blast of energy. The impact would have vaporised about 70 cubic kilometres of rock - and may have increased the earth's oxygen levels to a degree that made the development of multicellular life possible... The original crater, now eroded away, was probably 250 to 300 kilometres in diameter. It was larger than the Sudbury...

Calls streamed in to local police stations during the night after an unidentified flying object darted over the night skies in northern Norway. A top astronomer, though, thinks it was another meteorite. Astronomer Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard thinks the object flying though the northern skies Monday night was a meteorite. Several police districts logged reports from members of the public who observed "something" flying at high speed. "What they're talking about here is some sort of flying object, and we can't explain what it was," Oddgeir Slettli, operations leader for the Midtre Hålogaland Police District, told dagbladet.no. Observations were reported...