A Meteor the Width of Half a Football Field

Here is a photo of a fragment from a meteor.  I hoping you can click on the image and enlarge it. The fragment came off the meteor that created a crater called Meteor Crater in Arizona. It was a 150 foot wide meteor—that’s right, the width of the meteor was half the length of a football field. (fragment weight: 550 lbs). I am putting a link in so that you can read more about it. http://www.meteorcrater.com/

It was fascinating to see it in person. The photos the museum provides on their site are better than the photos I took of the crater. According to their website, “Meteor Crater is the breath-taking result of a collision between a piece of an asteroid traveling at 26,000 miles per hour and planet Earth approximately 50,000 years ago. Today, Meteor Crater is nearly one mile across, 2.4 miles in circumference and more than 550 feet deep”.  That would be 103 of me if each of us could stand atop the previous person’s head–from the base of the crater to the surface of the earth. By comparison, The Washington Monument is 550 feet tall. The crater is as deep as the Washington Monument. The Crater has a

circumference of 2.4 miles, which is 12,672 feet. That is the height of about 9 World Trade Centers; or 23 Washington Monuments (or 2,391 of me)put on their side (not standing up)–and then wrapped around the circumference. Finally, the diameter is about 4,036 feet. That is 7 and a third Washington Monuments or just about 3 World Trade Centers, or 761 of me. Yeah—quite a bit bigger than little old me. :-). One more thing: if we assume that the crater is cylindrical (faulty assumption, but work with me here, the volume of the crater is: 7,032,903,548 cubic feet). Pretty impressive toss of the meteor, don’t you think? Now-that being said,

How many potatoes or onions do you think it would take to fill that crater?

 Sometimes it is enthralling, heartening, reassuring, astonishing, riveting, and thrilling to see something so extraordinary. … other times it is equally thrilling and enthralling to see a little sandpiper on the beach, a hummingbird at a feeder, or any other small everyday creature or thing.   

God is good. All the time. In the big and in the small. In the vast and in the ordinary. He comes to us all. I hope that I am attentive enough today to see God’s grace, presence, and joy in everything. After all, I don’t want to have to have a meteor hit me on the head in order to be alert to His presence and will. 🙂

Here is a photo of the meteor crater from their website.