Researchers scouring Google Earth for impact craters have discovered a new one in Egypt, National Geographic reports. Dubbed the Kamil Crater, it is small but very special, because it really is new, in geological terms — just a few thousand years old. So new, in fact, that the elements have not yet been able to erode the ejecta rays. On site, the researchers have been able to collect thousands of space rocks.
These findings were published just yesterday in the journal Science. The full text article requires a subscription, but the supporting online material does not. This material includes satellite images of the crater that contain coordinate information. So without further ado, here’s the crater on Google Maps:
It’s a real beauty, and it really is in the middle of nowhere. The imagery we see currently in Google Earth/Maps was collected on May 21, 2006.
[Update 0546 UTC: Some more crater links:
This page explains that the crater was first noticed in February 2009, and confirmed on-site in February 2010. Here’s the official page for the crater, labeled Gebel Kamil, at the Meteorological Society. Some guy on Ebay is purporting to sell pieces of the ejecta found at the crater site. It sounds dubious (what’s with the piaster notes?), but the page has a good aerial image of the crater:
(Click to enlarge)]