The Impact Crater Beneath Chicago; The Des Plaines Crater
Beneath a section of Chicago, there is a hidden several mile wide impact crater. This might initially seem like a crazy claim but it is true, existing underneath the city of Des Plaines. The only reason it isn't highly visible today is due to sediments emplaced during extensive glaciers during the last 2 million years. It is for this reason that I will discuss when this crater formed, what evidence we have, and what immediate effects its formation had.
Thumbnail Photo Credit: Google Earth. This image was overlaid with text, and then overlaid with GeologyHub made graphics (the image border, the orange dotted buried impact crater outline, and the GeologyHub logo).
Estimates on asteroid diameter, velocity, tnt energy equivalent, frequency of a similar magnitude asteroid/comet impact event, and effects from the impact (including earthquake magnitude generated and wind speeds generated) in this video were sourced using the calculator at impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEar..., which was used with permission.
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Google Earth imagery used in this video: ©Google & Data Providers
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Sources/Citations:
[1] U.S. Geological Survey
[2] Dennis R. Kolata, F. Brett Denny, Joseph A. Devera, Ardith K. Hansel, Russell J. Jacobson, Zakaria Lasemi, Christopher S. McGarry, W. John Nelson, Rodney D. Norby, Colin G. Treworgy, C. Pius Weibel, "Bedrock Geology Map of Illinois", Illinois State Geological Survey, resources.isgs.illinois.edu/m...
[3] Ostrowski, D. and Bryson, K. (2020), Laboratory examination of the physical properties of ordinary chondrites. Meteorit Planet Sci, 55: 2007-2020. doi.org/10.1111/maps.13562
[4] G. Collins & others, "A numerical assessment of simple airblast models of impact...", Meteoritics & Planetary Science, doi.org/10.1111/maps.12873 (2017), CC BY 4.0
[5] Gowan, E.J., Zhang, X., Khosravi, S. et al. A new global ice sheet reconstruction for the past 80 000 years. Nat Commun 12, 1199 (2021). doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21..., CC BY 4.0.
0:00 Chicago's Impact Crater
0:22 A Buried Crater
1:01 Crater Evidence
3:04 Impact Effects
Пікірлер: 203
"No, I'm not referring to downtown Chicago." 😂😂😂
@Darkrealm7
Ай бұрын
I giggled a fair bit at that too lol He was totally saying that to tell us the location wasn't in the downtown area but this interpretation is infinitely more funny
@erinmac4750
Ай бұрын
That got me, too. GH be dropping the one-liners. 💚😹
@tristanmelling410
Ай бұрын
Right in the feels
@Gabrocol
28 күн бұрын
Then completely butchers "Des Plaines" pronunciation
Very interesting. There is another older, but smaller impact crater in Illinois, about 100 miles SW of the Des Plaines in Peoria County. It's called the Glasford Crater.
@dertythegrower
Ай бұрын
Cool. I found recently there is a huge amount, and ai will soon help find more with lidar also. There is many perfect circles lakes called the Carolina Bays, also.
@gtredwolf
Ай бұрын
@@dertythegrower While that is a theory, it's generally agreed upon that the Carolina Bays that stretch from Virginia to Alabama are not caused by impact craters. GeologyHub did a video on the Carolina Bays back about 6 months ago, it's a really good watch where he explains the leading theory on how they were formed.
@b.a.erlebacher1139
Ай бұрын
The Carolina Bays are notable for being elongated ovals, not at all circular, as they would be if they were impact craters, which they are not.
@matthewseedorf8465
Ай бұрын
Just south of Chicago, down US 41, is another impact crater as well in Kentland, Indiana.
@gd2234_
Ай бұрын
@@b.a.erlebacher1139 do be aware geology hub has covered elongated impact craters before. If I remember correctly, they were caused shallow angled impacts.
There's a larger crater SE of Chicago and due south of Gary in Kentland, Indiana. It's called the Kentland Crater even though the crater no longer exists. What's present is the rebound dome of rock strata that was shoved down by the impact then shot upward to leave the formerly horizontal strata standing staight up. The dome's diameter is 3-4 miles wide and around 800 feet in height. Geologists believe it had lost another 900 feet in height xue to erosion and glaciers. It was discovered by two farmers that found solid rock beneath 16 inches of soil. They opened up a rock quarry to discover verticle layers of sandstone, limestone and coal. Geologists finally figured out what caused that in 1972. The quarry is still in operation and has a website showing the exposed layers. They also set outside the fence small rocks that show shearing for tourists to take home.
@darylb5564
Ай бұрын
I want to see a video about this… thanks for the info!
@billwilson-es5yn
Ай бұрын
@@darylb5564 I don't know if anyone made a video about it. One of the Chicago TV stations might have a news report about it in their archives. I was a senior in HS up in Hammond when announced in '72 so drove down US 41 to check it out (ditch class for one day so there would be fewer people present).
@boxsterman77
Ай бұрын
I’ve driven past that hundreds of times without realizing a thing
@billwilson-es5yn
Ай бұрын
@@boxsterman77 They never did bother to advertise it to attract tourists.
Michigan also has a buried impact crater called Calvin Crater right on the border of Indiana. Perhaps you could cover this crater in a future video, if you haven’t already done so! Its exact location is southeast of Cassopolis Michigan, northeast of Edwardsburg Michigan, and north of Elkhart Indiana.
@pauljensen5699
Ай бұрын
How close to the Steam Museum at Heston, Indiana? Thank you for time. (Just curious, I have no affiliation with the Museum.)😊
@citylimits8927
Ай бұрын
@@pauljensen5699 I’m not sure exactly. I would have to look it up.
Thanks for highlighting some stories that are not well known.
Great video! Grew up in Des Plaines - 60's - 70's - 80's. Thumbs up!
Thank you for highlighting this crater! I requested it a few years ago and I’m so excited you’re covering it!
You stated Chicago was a sea back then. I would hazard to guess no trees would have fallen at the impact site then?
Nice presentation! Looks like you’ve added some new stock footage to your arsenal. Great looking stuff
Thanks for all of your hard work man!
The rain in Spain falls mainly in Des Plaines. Named after the river Des Plaines, not because its flat land because of the silver maple trees that grow along it name in French. Prior name of the city was Rand, as in Rand road.
I lived there just a couple of blocks west of the river in the Forest Preserve. Who knew we lived in a crater.
You should do a video on the driftless area in Wisconsin.
@RobbinFlowers
Ай бұрын
Why don't you?
I had known about the existence of the crater but never knew the details. Thanks a lot for all your work in making this video!
"A bright streak of light would have become visible in the sky, causing many reptiles of the time to look up and say, 'OH SHIT!'"
I learned something new today. Thank you for that.
Never knew we had an impact crater. I did know that we have a mid-continental divide, separating the Great Lakes Basin from the Mississippi Basin, a low ridge that forms the Des Plaines River valley. It was pierced by the Illinois & Michigan Canal, and later the Sanitary & Ship Canal, at Chicago Portage. And the Des Plaines River itself is a result of a massive flood, when Glacial Lake Chicago broke through the bank and the torrent carved out the current valley.
@GAMakin
Ай бұрын
Glacial Lake Chicago breakout... glad/sad I missed it. The term "Dynamic" comes to mind. Ditto: The Gibraltar Breakout. Flood wall that reached the Bosphorus.
"... rare... approximately every 140,000 years." Ah... So not really all that rare on a geologic time scale. What with 9.0 earthquakes and subsequent giant tsunamis, solar storms, super volcanoes, sudden ice ages or runaway greenhouse effects and occasional asteroid impacts, it is not surprising that we don't detect evidence of advanced civilizations elsewhere in our galaxy. In fact, it seems we've been incredibly lucky to have the time to develop as far as we have (technologically, if not civilly) without being wiped out entirely or at least knocked back to the stone age. 😕😱💀😳
@cannyscott
Ай бұрын
True
@scrappydoo7887
Ай бұрын
You can change any timescale to make it seem regular. To quote Tyler durden:"on a long enough timescale the survival rate of everything drops to zero"
Chicagoan here! We pronounce it “Dez Plains” with zero French influence at all. Whether it’s Des Plaines the suburb, the Des Plaines river, or Desplaines St
Woohoooo!!!! You did it!!!!!!! Lol I remember Asking you a while back about it. You're awesome man!!! Thank you!!!
Boss! Boss! Des Plaines! Des Plaines! sorry, had to
@maurasmith-mitsky762
Ай бұрын
😂😂😂😂😂
@humicroav215
Ай бұрын
The narrator pronounced it incorrectly at first (and correctly later). The locals pronounce the "s" in "Des."
It's pronounced DESS Plaines, the S is not silent like in Des Moines.
@chesterfieldthe3rd929
Ай бұрын
Yes
@BlackCeII
Ай бұрын
Actually, that's an incorrect pronunciation as it is a French word. Just because a bunch of Midwest bumpkins have been saying it wrong all the time doesn't mean that they are right.
@rockman531
Ай бұрын
Thank You! You are correct! I grew up in Des Plaines - lived there for 32 years.
@markmaki4460
Ай бұрын
@@BlackCeII Well, i happen to have a Latin name, and i pronounce it like i darn well feel like pronouncing it - and since it is my name, i define what is the correct way to pronounce it. So...
@CricketsBay
Ай бұрын
Yes. I noticed he said it wrong at the beginning, then correctly later. Dez Plainz, folks. Dez Plainz.
I was literally at ground zero this morning! I'm always in this area, can you direct me to some additional information?? I would love to locate some features.
There was a meteor pulled out of Thornton quarry. South of Chicago
Thanks as always!
Would you consider covering the Zanclean Flood of the Mediterranean, or the Black Sea deluge hypothesis?
@WaterShowsProd
Ай бұрын
There was a geological study using core samples in The Black Sea, and mapping the area where it meets The Bosphorus, which has revealed strong evidence that The Black Sea filled slowly over a long period of time rather than in a deluge the way The Mediterranean did. Rather than water pushing through from The Mediterranean and forming The Black Sea, The Black Sea was a massive lake that slowly rose until it met with The Mediterranean and eventually became salty through the waters mixing over time.
Wow. I never knew that there is an impact crater under Chicago. Thank you for uploading!
@Lightman0359
23 күн бұрын
Not Chicago, an outlying suburb. Not even in the same county. It's like saying something in Pahrump NV is in Las Vegas. Since so much of Illinois has beef with Chicago [mainly political, since it is a speck of blue in a sea of red], things and people not in Cook County cannot be attributed to or blamed on Chicago, regardless if the story is positive or negative. Other Large Cities that make up a large chunk of their state have similar things, like NYC and Upstate NY. I am a Chicago transplant to Vegas, lotta us here, especially in the entertainment production industry [stagehands].
The radiant heat from it's entry through the atmosphere would have scorched every living thing in line-of-sight for many tens of miles each side of it's path. A lot of the impact ejecta would have also funnelled back along it's path due to the lower pressure caused by it's passage.
So my best friend lives in an old impact crater! Cool
I wouldn't object to more subjects of this kind. Puts the Human "Moment" in Time into perspective and reinforces my respect for the Nature Wonder we inhabit.
Thank you!
Honestly any crater that causes that peak in the middle is terrifying. It basically makes our crust into a liquid. Like a drop in the ocean. What an incredible amount of force. Thankfully we've been able to map most of the potential impactors that could be that destructive, and we don't think any are coming any time soon. I honestly think that's one of the coolest things done in my lifetime. We went from Pluto being a planet to the Kuiper Belt being discovered and an incredible survey being taken of near-Earth asteroids and us figuring out that we aren't, in fact, an endangered species. Well, unless we screw ourselves.
I wasn't expecting a buried impact crater above Chicago.
Crazy! Who knew?
You'd think it was pronounced "day", like it would be in French. But no. It rhymes with "yes." And the 's' is pronounced in Plaines. Don't ask me, I didn't make the rules.
@eaglepursuit
Ай бұрын
Our state is full of people who can't speak French, Spanish, Italian, or Egyptian correctly, as we have badly pronounced versions of Versailles, Des Plaines, Montecello, San Jose, and Cairo
@TheSjuris
Ай бұрын
@@eaglepursuit vast majority of the state have a problem with English let alone a foreign language.
@markiangooley
Ай бұрын
I was born in Decatur, Illinois and dess plainss is it.
@jlangevin65
Ай бұрын
I guess Iowa does French better.
New York's pizza is good, but that Chicago deep dish style is great.
@boxsterman77
Ай бұрын
Inspired by the crater.
@Gabrocol
28 күн бұрын
Nah chicago thin crust
@linkly9272
26 күн бұрын
@@GabrocolYeah, the thin crust is also great and is what I normally eat, but you just can’t beat the cheesy cholesterol nuke that is a Chicago deep-dish pizza.
Fascinating! Have you ever done a video on the Manson Impact Crater in Iowa? That was a pretty big one, from what I understand.
So interesting!!
Can you make a video on how the mass, velocity and angle of the asteroid impact can be reconstructed from the size and shape of the crater? It has always been a mystery to me how you can distinguish a light fast asteroid from a heavier slower one. I would think that all the energy is always converted into a huge explosion and nothing can be reconstructed except the total impact energy.
It was probably way deeper glaciers grinding the ground down to bedrock and beyond
I love it! My first apartment was in Des Plaines, inexplicably pronounced locally as "dez plaines". No idea why, they didn't have a problem with any other French place names... EDIT: Wow! that thing is centered on my old workplace, about 1km from my apartment!
I maintain an AM radio transmitter, pretty much dead center of that area. Pretty wild to imagine seeing something like that coming down.
🎼"I said HEYYYY, baby don't you want to gooo....down to a big ol' Hole, north offffff Chi-caaa-goooooooo"🎶🎶🎶
maybe there is a chain of craters hundreds of miles apart if a comet broke up as it approached
Thanks!
@pagidipallireddy2001M
Ай бұрын
Something
Ray Kroc built his first McDonalds dead center of the crater.
@boxsterman77
Ай бұрын
I thought it was in San Bernardino California?
@janofb
Ай бұрын
@@boxsterman77 That was McDonalds brother's McDonalds. When Ray bought them out, he built his first franchise restaurant in Des Plaines.
Various glacial leftovers near where I grew up (Decatur, Illinois). Moraines to the north, now studded with windmills. A bit to the south is the town called Blue Mound, named for a nearby kame about 24 meters high that is partly missing because it used to be mined for gravel.
Hello my friend I was wondering if you can do an update on the volcano in Italy
"...Impacts of this size occur approximately once ever 140,000 years...." How's that space program going?
South of Chicago in the city of Thornton ,Il lies a limestone quarry. In 1994 they found that a meteorite hit there about 407 Mya and was thought to be about 800 to 1000 lbs. This was when the area was a Silurian age coral reef in a temperate sea much like the Carribean sea is today. They thought the meteorite was about 4 to 4.6 billion years old.
Huh. I had no idea there was even a crater there.
OMG I literally drive through Des Plaines every single day!!!😮
For reasons unknown to anyone, but confirmed by anyone that grew up around here, both S's are pronounced in Des Plaines.
@GAMakin
Ай бұрын
Yep. West of Paris (France), or on Fantasy Island, say "Deh Plain" and people will look up at the Sky. Those with longer memories (who watched too much TV) might look around for a guy named Tattoo.
Thanks.
Any chance we could get another impact around the same area?!?
I lived in Chi town back in the 80's while I worked at Fermi lab with a bunch of other science geeks and heard not a peep about this ancient astrobleme.
Have you ever covered the Brent Crater in eastern Ontario?
nice
The sheer irony that Des Plaines is in fact not located on des plaines, but on des crateres.
@GAMakin
Ай бұрын
But I thought that the Rain in SPAIN fell mainly on des plains
If I direct you to a movie on KZread, with this specific scene that has an interesting rocky terrain, can I ask you a geological question you might have the answer to?
When did they make this discovery? I grew up in Des Plaines and never knew this - funny that something that large can be hiding right under your feet!
White Island just erupted this morning
So, where are we NOW on that, on average, asteroid/comet impact every 140,000 years?
could it have been a piece of the Chicxulub asteroid?
Weird, I've never heard of this
There is hope!
Jeszcze jeden, Opatrzność naprawdę ma nas dosyć.
There is another crater south of Chicago in Indiana in Kentland, Indiana.
Man if it wasn’t for geological and ecological activity the earth would look more cratered then mars
'Dez' Plaines, but awesome!!
Wow!
every 140k years.... when dad the last impact crater of this size hit earth?! 😳
Chicago is ready for another one.
If it’s been filled over millions of years then it’s not a crater anymore. Moving in.
oh this is dope. Is it not pronounces "deh-splaynz" tho?? I always hear ppl say it that way here in the city
Do you know for sure that the glacial till that filled in the crater was dated back to 2 million years? The ice sheets grew and receded several times in just a few hundred thousand years. Perhaps the glacial till is much younger than 2 million years meaning it could have been much more recent.
Makes sense. The culture there is cratering.
I wonder if it came in the Calvin Center meteorite in Michigan. "Calvin 28"
Boom 💥
It would be interesting know types of rock were created when that asteroid pounded into the seabed? If it was coal there might be diamonds
Could this have occurred when the Chicxulub impact happened?
What Volcano City
First artificial sustained criticality beneath UoC football field. The stack.
Wonder how much gold got pushed into that crater by the glaciers
You pronounce Des, with the "s". Not like Des Moines. I'm very glad that this event happened long ago, because I live around 15 miles from Des Plains. You better be over 1,000 miles away.
Every 140,000 years? Yikes!!!😮 We are due.
Idk how many time's ive commented this but do the flynns lick impact crater one day
A reference to the depression, in perpetuity.
that's where the bean came from
The The Plains Crater...
DA PLAINES! as a native of the area I loled
Have you looked at Hudson bay ? Nastopka Arc . It is a prominent, near-perfect circular arc, covering more than 160° of a 450-km-diameter circle. Is that a old impact
@b.a.erlebacher1139
Ай бұрын
No, it's not an impact crater, even though it really looks like it on a map. I have this from a geologist at the Ontario Geological Survey. If you look up Nastapoka Arc on Wikipedia, there's reference to a paper by Dietz et al, describing an extensive search that was made for evidence of an impact there, with negative results.
@dertythegrower
Ай бұрын
could that be part of the Carolina Bays findings in the northeast states down to florida?
@eaglepursuit
Ай бұрын
unknown, and a topic of much discussion
@Itsjustme-Justme
Ай бұрын
There are no impact proxies in or near the Nastapoka Arc and no obvious gravity anomalies, which pretty much rules out an impact origin. On the other hand, there is no alternative explanation on how it formed. Nobody knows why it exists.
@b.a.erlebacher1139
Ай бұрын
@@Itsjustme-Justme IIRC, the current theory is that it formed about 2 billion years ago as the North American craton accreted a bunch of micro-continents, forming much of the Canadian Shield.
locally both "s" is pronounced for Des Plaines
Heads up Des Plains, you pronounce the S in Des. Not De Plains but is Des-Plains.
once every 140,000 years. hmmm. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
where´s the most recent known impact crater?
@deadboy3646
Ай бұрын
Deez
Beach access through private property? NO. Emphatically NO.
Pronounce dez-planes.
The s in des is pronounced
Audio quality needs work.