Forty minutes east of Flagstaff, Arizona, just south of 140, the desert plain gives no hint of what lies ahead Then the sudden break in topography comes into focus: a weathered plateau, where 50,000 years ago a nickel-iron meteorite half the size of a football field slammed into the ground at 26,000 mph. The meteorite blasted a crater as deep as the Washington Monument is tall-5 5 0 feet-and three-quarters of a mile across, with the force of more than 20 megatons of TNT. Hurricane-force winds ripped across the plain for 20 miles in all directions.
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