Submitted by AutoModerator t3_y24qed in askscience
Rex_Mundi t1_is1feyr wrote
I was looking at the ancient city of Shangdu on Google Earth. I zoomed out and it kind of looks like it is on the edge of a huge ancient crater.
Is it?
BluScr33n t1_is553eo wrote
My answer is a maybe.
There are a series of papers by Wu Siben from the 80s and 90s, like this one, that kind of assume it is a meteorite impact crater. The papers are pretty much all written by Mr. Wu and there seems to be little discussion of the question if it is an impact crater, it seems like he simply assumes it is one and then goes from there.
In contrast, there is this paper from 2017 by Xu et al. that clearly concludes that it is not an impact crater. Instead they found that the region is of volcanic origin. With the big ring structure perhaps being the remnant of an old volcanic caldera.
Personally, the 2017 paper seems much more solid than the old research by Wu. In particular the methods are much better.
Wooden_Ad_3096 t1_is4xohj wrote
Hard to tell for me, but I don’t think so.
It’s not circular and there isn’t raised land completely surrounding it.
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