Northeastern, USA Impact Craters
Maine multi crater field >
The superficial crater and geology. As you can see from the magnetic/gravity anomaly map shown above the crater is not that little surface thing shown left. The last phase of these large kinetic blast is the surface form. As these big space rocks come in at cosmic speed and crash into earth they can even punch a hole in the earth's crust. The material stress explosion is more like a liquid in liquid explosion give the large shock wave which is carried best in the harder lower strata which is it's transmitter.
Shelburne Falls Mass. Crater edge signature.
Prattsville, NY Impact Venting Tubes. This also occurs at Wisconsin Driftless area.
Crater Fingers - radial faults emanating with the shock outward direction. This could be related to a rebounding harmonic after the lower crater establishes a final shock fault ring. Notice the rivers are really crater fingers. Shown left is a well mapped crater, the Well's Creek Structure in TN. As you can see crater fingers are more of a center stretch mark than outer. The current maps of the crater are less than half it's real size. They have mapped the inner ring as shown left in the TN structure.
In this article you can read about the sloped angular unconformity of the Alexandria, Virginia area. As is typical of a geology study it has no concept of impact, or the impact of impact. So even though an event as large as the Chesapeake Bay impact overlays this area and a sloped unconformity would be such a logical fit, alas it all has to be explained in a century behind rationale. https://www.alexandriava.gov/uploadedFiles/recreation/parks/Plate_3_Bedrock_Geology_and_Topography_Expanded_Explanation.pdf
Note: Figure 3=6 is an impactite with constellationing, Figure 3-5 is the sand waves from the Chesapeake Bay Impact, Figure 3-4 shows the magnetic density swirl from the impact. That is an outside crater effect. Impact science seems blind to outside crater effects. The crater is a surface form. The impact event is multi layered. Figure 3-7 is sand with Fe3O4 very common to impact. Closer in to the blast it forms specimens exhibiting "dark matrix." Figure 3-8 shows why particle composition is so important. This is constellationing the shock particle storm. Throughout the article they keep mentioning zircon and are unaware it is a sure indicator of impact. Figure 3-10 shows the author and reviewers are completely unaware of impact spheroids which is a very widely recognized phenomena of impact. Also throughout the article the author and peer review is unaware that soapstone is ash from the obvious nearby impact as no volcanic source is present.
Specimen above collected by Kati Bauman of Webster, NY. It is a quartz indigo iron oxide impactite. It has a constellationing figure which I like. It also has a shock septarian pattern.
Virginia Craters
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Chesapeake Bay Impact Structure- You can read a good article about it at: https://craterexplorer.ca/chesapeake-impact-crater-2/
Specimen collected by Christopher Joseph in SE Pennsylvania creek exposure. This has a tektite phase besides the meteor iron and some fossils. A very nice specimen.
USGS geology anomaly map. The Chesapeake Bay Impact is a tiny inclusion in a much bigger type 2 subduction crater. June 10, 2024.
Let's take a look at the cores from the Chesapeake Bay Impact Structure. If you read the history of meteor impact craters on earth it is a tale of mining. Daniel Barringer though he could extract iron from the crater that has come to be know as Meteor Crater, AZ. USA. And so developed the concepts that meteors hit earth and that they also explode. As you can see in these core samples the meteor iron is metamorphized into blast strata with larger impacts. There is a progression of physics with these large kinetic events.
Column basalt at Shenandoah National Park, Virginia. Photograph by Anna Kim (Flickr; Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license).
Notice the still circular tube, this is the uncompressed form as this is a tube wave up splash from the Chesapeake Bay Impact. It broke the earth's crust (Crusta Confractus).
The wrong crater models prescribe blast that do not push that far. These models are based on chemical, nuclear, ballistic blast. The on the ground truth is that these large kinetic based explosions make a shock push out laterally blast as a layered staged effect. You often find veins of minerals around the blast edges which are many orders of magnitude beyond the surface crater, which is a late stage event. What is shown in this diagram as an ejecta blanket is really what is encountered as a blast lens.
Crusta Confractus - Impacts that broke the earth's crust.
The Silurian earth crust breaking extinction event. >>>>>
Earthquake map and impact cratering. The broken crust is being healed or pushed back together causing earthquakes. This is different from plate tectonics. These circular features are not tectonic fault plates rubbing. The severity is related to how damaging the impact was and how long ago. Also some of the major tectonic plates themselves are the result of the earth forming very large impacts and the mountain ranges that seem to define plate collisions are themselves crater wall ridges. Keep in mind the surface crater forms are not representations of the true impact structure. They are only the surface form of a multi level event. Also no two impacts are ever just alike.
David Liles
Blue muscle shell paired with a bit of blue sea glass! These muscles are all over the submerged granite bolders. Wells Beach, Maine. An area in Southern ME with sandy beaches.
Cobalt and iron from Impact crater that shaped the lower coast of Maine.
Gravity Anomaly Map of Maine and Impact Tectonic Theory. Two types of impacts can show up on a gravity anomaly map. The first is the iron type which shows up as a circular structure with high gravity. The second is a non metal impact which shows up as a low gravity circle. Big fast impacts can break the earth's crust and cause earthquakes, faulting etc. Over time the earth a self healing planet will resolve this stress. Sometime these will also form a circle or arc as some meteors hit at low angles.
Tectite Impact Spheres Prehnite. These were found in upper New Jersey for years in excavations. NJ suffers earthquakes in this same district indicating that this earth impact is not that old since the earth's crust is still resolving this stress.
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The Ramapo Fault is a likely crater edge. The shock wave ending abruptly makes a whiplash effect like a sonic boom at crater edges under the wall rubble.
The Pittsburg Crater - Rivers come together into crater depressions. Where rivers came together is where settlements were founded. Impact is called the great excavator. Does this impact precede the Chesapeake Bay Impact? It appears to. Look how the crater wall is indented as it encounters this structure. The top of this crater wall appears to be old and broken down. So the old crater wall being a higher resistance caused the s curl.
Impact nodule type 2 with spin thin plane insertions. A mixture of the iron and silica in the blast crater ejected outward while receiving hypervelocity thin plasma blast insertions while spinning. The coating blast are not thin plane type just melted material hitting it at fractional second intervals. The geology of Western New York State is impact excavated down to the Ordovician a large crater that is partially covered by Lake Ontario. At magnification you can see the particles in a "rejection pattern" state. This is a contrast to the environment when formed, a high pressure. This specimen was formed by the Rochester Crater of Western New York state that is an earthquake hub where the impact crustal stress is still resolving.
· Dec. 5, 2022
Found in western ny. Any ideas?
Crater wall ridge patterns are water filling the crater wall wrinkles, typically fractal type.
The Rochester Crater is a type 2 subduction coming from the west at a low angle. It pushed up deep strata and buried itself and exploded into this now elevated range. While the Howell, TN Impact Structure is a low angle impact it did not subduct. An angle too low like Howell, TN makes a surface explosion, type 3. Notice how the earthquakes are sill resoving the crust stress around the margins. The metamorphic rock is all shock made material made metamorphic in the impact.
Does the direction of impact tell us anything? Not really, but random low angle impacts this large are likely non captured small proto planets that came in at cosmic speed from outside our solar system about 32 miles per second. These early larger impacts have twice the speed of the later captured in our solar system impact of about 15 miles per second. That makes a larger kinetic force. The small Barringer Crater in AZ is a captured speed small impact one of the last to occur on our planet.
Sequence material on top, splatter arriving after ash. This was a big impact and this location is inside the crater.
Shock compressed impact ash with directionality. This is from large type 2/3 exploding subduction impact "Rochester Impact" approximately 300 miles diameter. Impact ash varies. It can be very thick and appear along roadsides as an "unconformity" but isn't. It is a sequence of impact. The high pressures of impact can make it into instant shale or slate. If it has high charcoal content it will even burn. Nano pulverized mineral content will give it color. The minerals come from the bolide, therefore the entire strata would be a type 3 impactite (all bolide). The surface holes in your exposure are gassing.
Dominick Schrantz Jr.
Glacial striations?..Lake Erie shore cliffs,Western New York St...lines are under 12'-15' of dirt...I been looking at this for years,more uncovered every year...please help ,thank you
Still surface evident type 2 subduction crater. With a subduction crater the Earth's crust is pushed up on the receiving side as a physics of relative energy between the projectile and the receiving body. Dec, 17, 2022.
The Rochester, NY crater, type 2/3 impact exploding and subduction. These powerful low angle impacts can have some ovality to the surface crater form. Lake Ontario reflects this principle. Dec. 17, 2022.
Impact sequence, color change in the ash and ejecta. The bolder is from the lower strata in the crater as the progression excavated deeper. Notice the viscous fluidized flow around the bolder. Ash can be a difficult slurry.
Picture upper left, limestone with high heat mosaic surface, red clay under. Clay is a nano particle pulverized in the impact.
High shock Constellationing. This was lower strata, remade and ejected into the ash. The tiny white particles will align as a property of attraction in a binary environment. Linear alignment is from the high shock orogeny. Some gassing voids evident in top along with circle alignment of particles. The random direction of the linear Constellationing is due to shock chaos as it is formed in an explosion close up. Shock waves will combine and settle in to wave forms with distance.
Oblate impact sphere from the Rochester Crater (Big crater 300 plus miles diameter center in Lake Ontario). The finger lakes are crater wall features all pointing toward the crater center. Appears to be a dolomite or marble as a shock hardened orogeny. If you magnify it the surface shows its impact made particle construction of tiny circles an impact geometric. It also has a couple of splatter fused pieces on the surface. Impact is a progressive event and this surface welded material likely occurred only seconds after it was formed in the air like a hailstone.
April 9, 2023
Matthew Sheldon Reuben Stevenson · ·
I’ve had this rock since I was a kid and I’ve always wondered what it was. Finger lakes area of New York.
Harmonic grid. This boxwork type construction is the shockwaves with the impact silica building a grid of the outward energy. Why is it a perpendicular construction? Shock goes out laterally and vertically thereby making a grid. Sept. 11, 2023. This is from the Chesapeake Bay Impact.
Geology
Theresa Picard · ·
Anyone ever see anything like this before? Found at Slaughter Beach, Delaware USA
As you can see here the Rochester Crater post dates the Chesapeake Bay Crater. This is from an article that thinks this was some collision of plates. April 16, 2024.
Earth and Planetary Science Letters
Volume 402, 15 September 2014, Pages 197-208
Orogenic bending around a rigid Proterozoic magmatic rift beneath the Central Appalachian Mountains
Author links open overlay panelMargaret H. Benoit a, Cynthia Ebinger b, Melanie Crampton a
Like the sandstone from the offshore impact along the southern Appalachian crater wall chain the offshore Chesapeake Bay impact deposited a large quantity of sand with it's crater wall push showing dominant in this map. So which came first? The Rochester or Chesapeake Bay Impact. April 16, 2024.
Article
Full-text available
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Dec 2009
Impact splash liquified quartz and nano iron from the Chesapeake Bay Impact. Notice how it is directional, a splatterform. Oct. 15, 2023.
Nicole Selhorst ·
Found at Betterton Beach, Upper Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, USA.
Orange stains from iron and tanins typical of the Upper Bay. Hard veins surrounding softer, gritty rock. Any thoughts?
Also found in Vermont which caused me to consult my latest Crater Gravity Framework. It has an implied much larger size subduction from the Rochester Impact. Your gemstones are shock made pseudomorphs as they vary in size, composition, and crystal development. More time more cubic. I hope you don't mind if I use your pictures. See attached gravity frame Chegg Products and Services. Oct. 26, 2023.
New England Rock Hounds
Could these little red crystally things be red garnets? Found on our property on the border of Massachusetts and NH any insight would be greatly appreciated!! And because I found these would there be more in the same area? What else could I find where I found this? I live on a mountain
Types of crater shapes - There is no earth crust folding process that would make these deep dips with such large circular forms. If you push up folds on sheets i.e. earth crust, you will get triangle wedge shapes not cones. While small craters like the Barringer crater in AZ will have a shallow bowl, that is just not as common as you may believe. If you examine ballistic craters common to guns and cannons you will see much deeper craters. Now the meteorite/bolide is not a bullet and has non round shapes. When impacting it will exhibit this structure in the cavity it forms. Dec. 4, 2023.
Impact Boxwork type 1 - Imprint of shock wave into existing material or impact splatter as crossing wave forms. This can be made by a big or medium size earth impact (>20 miles diameter). I am attaching a map with the recognizable "topo craters." Dec. 29, 2023.
Sheila Maynard Kirby · ·
Have a brook as one boundry on my Vermont 4.5 acreas and lots of these cool scored rocks. Some of the big exposed bedrock in my yard also has these marks and I wonder if the river channel was different at one time. I would love to be able to read the stories that these rocks could tell.
Impact sphere with high heat surface mosaic Septarian pattern. This is from a big crater. The extent of the Chesapeake Bay Impact is greatly under reported. Virginia is a half crater or less. See attached map. Jan. 7, 2024.
Tina Pierce · ·
Ok...Rick hounds.. needing help identifying what the hell this rock is??? Found in Craig's Creek, New Castle Virginia by my roommate. Not very good pictures but it basically looks like a petrified turtle shell but it's very heavy Rock . This is the whole one he found but I didn't pull it out of corner to photograph. There's another huge one just like it out in the flower bed but it's about 3/4 of a huge turtle shell rock. Please help! Thanks. Just invited my fellow rock lover Robert Wood who found these CRAZY things!
Shatter cones in cross section look like scales. Jan. 11, 2024.
Valerie Caylor
Found in creek bed that runs into Lake Erie NW PA area.
Seen samples that were much larger but that was years ago.
The Lake Erie Crater as shown on the Chegg Products & Services Geology Anomaly Map. A note about all things big and small. A large crater can make small shatter cones, also large. A small crater cannot make large shatter cones. Well's Creek, TN shows the limit size ratio well.
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This rock is melted and dripping. Jan. 16, 2024.
Nathan Hack
​Northwestern Connecticut (Housatonic State Forest, Hough Mountain) - “Amphibolite Gneiss”
Old crater wall as shown on the gravity map. It is a subduction type 2 crater. Jan. 16, 2024.
That is a rare type of impact splatterform. Notice how the heat crack goes through the matrix and splatter. It was very hot. The circles and voids are evaporating. Banding splatter is rare. Feb. 24, 2024.
Brandi Mason
Can anyone tell me what this is? Found in SW Virginia.
Impactite nodule with impalements. First lets note the little white dots shown in the close up. Those are a signature of an impact storm called "Constellationing." An impact will pulverize matter into the "common particle." The common particle is sorted with distance. The impact nodule was plastic at the time of impalement. Cubic shard may or may not be pyrite as impact also melts the area to a glass like consistency which cools and breaks into shards. A higher meta content indicates the shard is metal from the impacting meteor/bolide. The white lines on the shard are also "Constellationing." You can see the big 3 impacts of Maine on the attached map. March 11, 2024.
New England Rock Hounds
Brian Allen · ·
State of Maine rock with a secret! Found in Belgrade Lakes area.
Impact nodule/sphere/cinder - It has some iron content. Why not slag? It has many small impalements including the iron. Not a likely industrial process. I am going to name the impact crater responsible "Big Mass." What do you think? March 13, 2024.
Erin Murphy · ·
Found this in our yard it was in a rock wall any ideas. I live in Massachusetts first picture looks like part of it was taken off
Both the USGS Magnetic and Gravity maps, gravity map shown above show an enormous crater size for the off shore type 2 subduction impact that formed the mountains and shape of the NE coastal states. June 10, 2024.
6 August 2025. This post is for David Buthman. Dave's recent book shown to the right discusses oil positive and negative impact craters. Here is a crater that predates the carbon age. It is an oil negative. From wiki "[Offshore drilling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore_drilling) for [oil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crude_oil) and [gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas) on the [Atlantic coast of the United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/.../East_Coast_of_the_United_States) took place from 1947 to the early 1980s. Oil companies drilled five wells in Atlantic Florida state waters and 51 exploratory wells on federal leases on the [outer continental shelf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_continental_shelf) of the Atlantic coast. None of the wells were completed as producing wells. All the leases have now reverted to the government.
U.S. Atlantic coast federal offshore areas (Minerals Management Service)
Although no oil or gas have been produced from beneath U.S. Atlantic waters, there are active offshore fields to the south in offshore [Cuba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba) and to the north in [offshore Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_production_in_Canada)."
The NJ earthquake and weighted grouping of significant data. The historic epicenter record does not follow any fault line but spreads around a grouping much like a shotgun blast. The magnetic anomaly map corresponds to this grouping. This is more likely the settling of impact rubble from this magnetic signature crater. April 6, 2024.
Impactite splatter form with cross wave bricking, shale impact ash compressed with blast minerals, over layered silica impact nodule a multi stage build, also rare. Not from a small impact the likely candidates are Chesapeake bay, Rochester, and the NE NY State crater. Layered cross bricking - Impact makes shock waves but since it is a kinetic explosion this is not a single point which makes crossing shock waves. Depending on distance it will be a square Cartesian grid pattern. The calcium you picked off was also impact splatter a high heat refinement of the impacted limestone or shells present at the time of impact. May 16, 2024.
Kelly Edgar · ·
I unburied this weird giant rock in my back yard. It was under a rock pile that was covered in brush. I don’t know what it is, just figured I’d share! Even the flaky looking parts are super solid. Split my finger picking at the white part Saratoga County, NY.
Edit: I went out to measure it. It’s 17”x30”. I haven’t reached the bottom yet, but it’s at least 10”.
Impact conglomerate sphere, rare. Pittsburg impact crater. While iron matrix nodules and strata conglomerates are common, spheres are not. This liquid drop was blasted out from the impact explosion and rolled up these local pebbles. Impact iron often presents in several phases as the energy of impact is extreme. The iron came from the impacting bolide/meteor. You can vaguely see the crater on this geology app, see attached. May 22, 2024.
Mikey Wetmore
Any idea what this is? broke open a rock and found it. Was 6ft deep near ohio river in western pennsyvania.
Behold the Chesapeake Bay Crater as shown on the USGS magnetic anomaly map. In the text above I missed it because it is so tiny compared to the many larger impacts shown including the mega type 2 subduction offshore that formed the eastern mountains and shaped the continent. Oh, well, now I am wondering if it is even as big as the Howell, TN Impact Structure, certainly not as interesting. June 10, 2024.
Well it is smaller than the previous circle shown above. And it is actually two craters side by side. Why all the hubbub about such a small crater? And how do you miss a connected crater, and all the craters beside that one ... ? Based on Mars and the Moon there would be an Earth surface crater of a mile diameter or greater about every 15 miles. June 10, 2024.
Impactite from the Rochester Impact Structure which includes the finger lakes and Lake Ontario. Plasma hole surface cavitation and plasma tube carving on other side. Attached is a view of the central crater in Lake Ontario. June 28, 2024.
Daniel McCarthy
​I found this heavily indented item while swimming back to shore after SCUBA diving in Keuka Lake in Upstate New York. The views are Top and Bottom. The height of the item at its highest point is 2-1/2”. Any help you can give me to identify it would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Impact sphere/nodule, rose quartzite with surface iron. From the Rochester Impact or the big offshore impact. Aug. 18, 2024.
New England Rock Hounds
Kat Oliver · ·
Beautiful quartz boulder. NH
Impactite strewn field. The lake has removed the overburden from this old impact. These are impact nodules flung from the high energy kinetic explosion. The drusy sparkles are sand which was a part of the impacted surface. The holes are plasma burns. The spheres are impact sphere impalements. The tiny dots are iron from the meteor/bolide on the attached marked as 1. Plasma hole 2, Impact spheres 3. The impact spheres are in a plasma burn hole. Aug. 23, 2024.
Trista Laero
Hi
I found this interesting rock in the water in Lake Erie (Pennsylvania section). I tried..but couldn’t pick up the “sparkles” that are throughout the rock in a picture. What the heck is this!? One of my more interesting looking ones!
Lake Erie as an impact crater. First let me point out that impact craters are not always round and are called crater structures. Next the theory that Lake Erie was made by glacier erosion is not plausible. Glaciers follow landforms and are shallow removers of material geologically. Take a look at this picture. The glacier striations are quite shallow but in the upper left you can see the vertical strata consistent with impact which makes a vertical up splash imprinting in the strata. Aug. 23, 2024.
Salt mines under Lake Erie. Impact makes voids in the rubble of the crater walls and throughout the crater basin. These voids can fill with salt water from the sea above and as the sea retreats make salt pockets. Aug. 23, 2024.
MA Bay Impact, impact material not well compressed. The forensics. First let's note that in situ this is sitting on top as an independent bolder mass. A somewhat recent geological feature. The composition is bits and pieces conglomerate. The matrix binder is not holding and by the look of it could be calcium bentonite ash. I have encountered this before at the edge of the Howell, TN Impact Structure at the border of TN and AL. Rocks that would crumble. As this was an edge effect, I presume it was not subject to the higher pressures. Take a look at the attached map of the offshore area. Aug. 26, 2024.
New England Rock Hounds
Jamie Doris · ·
I was on Cape Ann (MA) today and came across several formations like this. It’s almost like they’re actively crumbling. What causes this? Sorry if this has been covered before. I try to pay attention to the posts.
Calcium Bentonite Fairy Stones. These are impact sphere type concretions found in the impact made ash, calcium bentonite. The high shock pressure forms these compression spheres out of the ash as spheres are a physics of most stable form under pressure. Of course impact pressures are much higher than anything you would commonly come across going up past 100 GPa.
Picture from youtube video on collecting fairy stones in Sharon Vermont by Larry Michon. Sept. 21, 2024.
Interesting impact geometric a split triangle harmonic. Notice how the hypotenuse is bending conformally. Resonate harmonics are how shock agates are made. You can often see triangles in them. Attached is a map showing the Rochester/Lake Onterio Impact Structure. Fonda NY is in the breakthrough box where the blast kept pushing. Oval impact structures are not as rare as you might think. Nov. 8, 2024.
Jenni Blakeman
Y’all, I know it’s not New England but wanted to share what I found in Fonda, NY, at Herkimer Mountain today!
(screenshot from live stream of my find)
Type 2 subduction with Crusta Confractus. This impact broke the earth's crust and has a two area hot spot even to this day. Nov. 8, 2024.
Impact conglomerate with a layer of impact ash/shale, not common for a specimen. You would usually only encounter this as a stratum. The iron is from the impacting meteor/bolide. The pebbles are from some ancient shore or waterway. Jan. 6, 2025.
Richard Bolan
I know there are tons of rocks everywhere in the mountains of VA, but this one kind of stood out and looked interesting. Is there anything to this rock other than it just being a plain old rock?
USGS magnetic map. You can see where the arrow is pointing many positive and negative craters. That is some were iron meteors and some not. Jan. 7, 2025.
Nearest town is Elkhorn City. Jan. 7, 2024.
Quartzite impact nodule with iron splatter Fe3O4. Cape Cod Bay. Jan. 24, 2025. Melissa Ferreira specimen.
As you can see the other side shows its active plasma form. It was 4,000 degrees F in a melt state. Jan. 24, 2025. Melissa Ferreira specimen Cape Cod Bay, MA.
Worldwide these partial land sea shore craters make great harbors. Jan. 24, 2025.
Impact tube type nodules with thin plane insertion, from the Big Mass Impact Structure (see above). Feb. 4, 2025.
Mark Paris
Hello I just joined your group , I know very little about stone artifacts, these were given to me by my farther, found near the banks of the Merrimack River in Mass any information would be appreciated thank you
Not a fossil. Impact spheres and catcher from the Rochester Big Impact which made Lake Ontario. Type 2 impactite as it contains iron from the meteor/bolide. It is largely the limestone of the deep crater making it a lower excavation impactite. It was constructed as ejecta while in a plasma state. Notice how the right-side sphere has welded itself smooth; it was very hot. March 8, 2025.
fossil information & identification
I am wondering if anyone may be able to kindly tell me more about this interesting lake Ontario find please ?
Dark matrix conglomerate/breccia from the Cape Cod Impact Crater. The dark matrix contains Fe3O4 black iron oxide which will get much darker when wet. March 8, 2025.
Melissa Ferreira
​I find these often on Plymouth Beach (MA) - is this tar that rocks have stuck to?
The Cape Cod Crater
The Rochester Crater. Glacier excavation theory. If you have ever done any kind of grading you know that to make gouges you need a plow. Glaciers are not plows. They are big blobs as relates to the topography and would make the opposite of gouges, smoothing. This is true for Lake Ontario and the Finger Lakes. June 8, 2025.
The Finger Lakes region of New York State. Image created by Jonathan R. Hendricks for PRI's Earth@Home project (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license). Base map from NASA Earth Observatory (public domain).
Impact nodule charged fractal effect. So, let me start with sedimentary theory. It contends that your rock had cracks that were filled with the vein structures. The raised portion is explained by surface removal. Impact theory contends that an earth impact made a high charge condition due to all that swirling pulverized matter causing an electrical charge which grounded on your debris specimen. The milky quartz is a simi conductor and the rock was once limestone, now a shock dolomite. While I maintain the world's largest encyclopedia of impact effects the presentation of your specimen is illustrative of several impact principles. Impact can explain the small amount of trace iron on your specimen as coming from the meteor/bolide. Sedimentary theory would claim it to be a precipitate. Crossing veins and complexity favors charged impact theory as a rock with that many cracks would not hold together. Breaks in the vein structure are explained by charged impact theory as cooling cracking while still in a molten state. Sedimentary theory would contend that the cracks in the veins are from still more tectonic breakage. Attached in the gravity anomaly map of New England. There is a big old crater forming the western edge of Vermont. The bedrock structure is a larger crater from the east, making Vermont a combined crater wall structure. 27 July 2025.
New England Rock Hounds
Hello ~ any ideas on this? It’s from southern Vermont; the larger white “veins” are raised (protrude) from the rest of the rock.
The gravity map shows an old large impact arc from the west. 27 July 2025.
The bedrock structure shows an even larger crater from the east which Vermont is part of the western crater wall. 27 July 2025.
The left side is identical to Vermont bedrock geology. This same bedrock geology extends down to Virginia. 27 July 2025.
Impact breccia with copper. 3 August 2025.
New England Rock Hounds
I'm new to both tumbling and cutting rock. I found these 6 rocks on the south shore of MA. Can anyone tell me what they are? Thank you in advance. I appreciate it.
Big Mass Crater. 3 Aug 2025.
White Mountains Crater Wall. 3 August 2025.
And here we have the White Mt understructure. 3 August 2025.
Big New Hampshire Crater. 3 August 2025.
Impactite, Impact ash as shale, calcium leader high energy effect, "tiger eye" type harmonic noise effect. Is from the Providence Impact Crater see attached map. 5 August 2025.
New England Rock Hounds
Rising contributor
Found at the beach in Newport, RI. The silvery mineral in the crack looks fibrous - wondering what it is. Found it all over the place.
Crater naming conventions. Typically, a crater is named for the most recognizable city/town in its center. In this case, Providence RI. 5 August 2025.
Basin crater, crater basin - Whenever you see the word basin think crater. 5 August 2025.
Still evident topographic craters i.e. basins. In this case a crater in a crater. While topography shows the surface the actual extent of the impact may be significantly larger. Were these two craters low angle impacts? Sort of if you consider that the average angle of impact is 45 degrees. Looks like from the SE for the bigger Providence Crater and from the NE for the smaller Boston Basin Crater. 5 August 2025.
Impact cinder with iron plasma cavitation from the Boston Basin Impact Crater, see attached map. You can tell the iron cavitation from the dry picture it left iron stain on the spherical voids/vesicles. The Boston Basin Crater is located inside the Providence RI Crater. 5 August 2025.
Sarah Lane
found at a beach in Boston
Impactite, plasma honeycomb cavitation. This is a high energy effect associated with larger craters. While similar to meteorite thumbprints it is much deeper and does not have a particular flow pattern as impact explosion energy is more generalized. The CT river runs along the crater edge as it is a natural crease in the topography called impact tectonics. The crater is shown on the attached geology map. 6 August 2025.
New England Rock Hounds
RelaxingTangerine6652
I found this rock on the bank of the CT River. Any ideas what it could be?
perfect circles. This is like blowing bubbles motion does not make perfect circles and since this was made in an impact kinetic explosion, I only found two. 6 August 2025.
Not uniform heat distribution. Cooling not uniform. This causes lamination. The surface circles are a type of mosaic cooling. 6 August 2025.
RelaxingTangerine6652
I found this rock on the bank of the CT River. Any ideas what it could be?
Plasma burns hole ablations. Oxidation and less temperature makes these darker cavitations. While most of the impact iron is red this is black another oxidation type. 6 August 2025.
RelaxingTangerine6652
I found this rock on the bank of the CT River. Any ideas what it could be?
High energy charge heat has vaporized those holes. That in not plasma cavitation made holes. You can see how they are spaced in reference to the charged leads. Sand turned to quartzite with trace iron from the meteor/bolide. 6 August 2025.
Beginning Rockhounders
This was found in the Hoosick River in Eagle Bridge NY; can anyone tell us about it? The top flattish part is a different color than the rest of it, and seems to be its own "layer"...Thank you!
Charged Septarian Impactite from Rochester/Lake Ontario Impact. 27 August 2025.
Rockhounding
Any one else out there finger lakes area collect turtle stones/ concreations /septarian nodules ..I started collecting at pry 19 years of age have roughly 200ish love seeing them ...would lile to see others found in western fingerlakes area conesus- keuka...thanks
Now this is a good example one nodule is fractal cracks and the other is geometric side by side. As these are impact made nodules they were tossed a great distance and came from different areas of the impact explosion. 14 Sept. 2025.
Laura Hayes
These litter the beach on the south shore of Lake Erie in western NY. My favorite.
The Lake Erie Crater. So why are craters expected to be round? The objects that hit are not and could have broken apart widely at impact. 14 Sept. 2025.
Now take a look at the Sudbury Canada Crater below.
Impact scoria with plasma burn holes. The White Mountain Crater is centered offshore with the White Mountains being the crater wall. It is little wonder this impact mega clast was found near the ocean. So, let's do a little background. Impactites are not meteorites; this is a common misunderstanding. Impactites are a secondary product of earth impacts by meteors/bolides. Next, let's consider igneous rocks. An igneous rock can be made by impact. An impact like this would be around 100 megatons of explosive energy. You can see similar small vesicle rocks in the Trinity Crater from the first atomic bomb. If this were volcanic where is the volcano? Impact crater theory: The surface crater only represents a portion of the actual geological impact. In the attached geology map you can see the fuller rearrangement which has flipped up the pre-Cambrian strata. This is called impact tectonics. You can get a book on this by David Buthman on Amazon. 15 Oct. 2025.
Lori Brown- Leary ·
Any information about this rock would be greatly appreciated. Found in Hampton Falls, NH
Hampton Falls, NH.
Garnet Impact Made Gemstones. While some of these are impact spheres most are impact nodules. While sand abrasion will round off corners the more perfect a sphere the less likely it was rounded by abrasion. Notice few had time to form the typical garnet crystal habit. 5 Nov. 2025.
I noticed patches of little shiny red rocks mixed in with the sand at my local lake beach (East Hampton, CT) so I took a cup home. After some meticulous sorting with tweezers here’s the result.
I think these are garnets? Obviously there’s a few interlopers in there as well.
Are some of the larger ones degraded garnets or just bits of something else red?
Apologies for the crappy photo. They’re very small. The group on the right are all about the size of a poppy seed for context.
The White Mt. Crater can be seen both topically and in the bedrock structure. It hit from the SE pushing up a subduction type crater (Type 2). While it is thought that ocean strata is some kind of floating raft plate it is only as old as the impact that made it last. Impact borders are as deep as the radius of the crater therefore some crustal stress resolving will go on which is the basis of the shadow theory of plate tectonics. 5 Nov. 2025.
Honeycomb plasma cavitation holes. The iron is from the impacting meteor/bolide. The White Mountain Crater which is visible topically and in the geologic strata. 11 Nov. 2025.
New England Rock Hounds
Found this today on the south side of cape cod in shallow water. Looks like coral but I have never seen any here. Only other thing I can think of is Tuff but we are a sandbar not a volcano. There was lots more of it not just a 1 off. Anyone have any ideas.