From March 10, 1997 - AU Report:

Geologists to examine area crater

The Department of Geology will host the 46th annual meeting of the Southeastern Section, Geological Society of America March 27-28 at the AU Conference Center.

Attended by nationally and internationally known geologists, the event offers a series of 10 symposia and 18 theme sessions and workshops. Among the planned activities preceding the annual meeting are field trips, including one on Wednesday, March 26, to an 80-million-year-old asteroid crater in Wetumpka.

Led by AU geology faculty David King Jr. and Lorraine Wolf, the expedition will examine the eroded remains of an impact crater that measures four miles across and 100 feet into the earth's surface.

"The asteroid that struck what is now Wetumpka was traveling at a speed of 12 miles per second," King said. "It collided with a force equivalent to between 100 to 1,000 megatons of TNT.

"That's more force than the largest atomic weapons test ever conducted," he said. "It was by far the worst disaster to strike Alabama within the last 80 million years." Calculated from the size of the impact crater, King estimates the asteroid to have been 1,100 feet across. "It would have been hard to fit it in Jordan-Hare Stadium," he quipped.

King said the odds of an asteroid of this size striking the earth today are 1 in 10,000. However, with today's population densities, such a catastrophe would result in thousands of deaths and millions of dollars in destruction.