Here, you can view the craters from different angles and, in some cases, even see what it looks like at the crater floor, from photographs submitted by those who have been fortunate enough to visit in person (Lonar Crater is one such example). However, you can easily explore these craters from the comfort of your own home on Google Earth.
While Earth is home to some incredible craters with equally incredible history, not every crater site is easily accessible in real life. Scientists study these structures to understand the history of our dynamic solar system and use this information to predict future impact scenarios. Impact craters are our window into Earth's geological past. Scientists believe the impact forged a crater between 111 and 186 miles (180 and 300 kilometers) wide, but as the crater has endured over 2 billion years of erosion, its exact size is difficult to determine. In South Africa, the Vredefort Crater, also known as the Vredefort Dome is the world's largest known impact crater, according to NASA Earth Observatory.
Some of the largest impacts ever to occur on Earth are barely visible to us today (at least not in the traditional 'hole in the ground' sense.) Due to Earth's dynamic climate, processes such as weathering and erosion work to erase any trace of these cosmic visitors from our landscape.
