10 Earth impact craters you must see

– Location: Arizona, U.S

– Diameter: 0.8 miles (1,300 meters)

– Depth: 570 feet (174 meters)

– Age: 50,000 years 

Barringer Crater, also known as Meteor Crater, formed relatively recently (geologically speaking) just 50,000 years ago when a large iron meteor measuring 98-feet (30-meter) to 164-feet (50-meter) in diameter, crashed into the Colorado Plateau in northern Arizona, according to the Lunar and Planetary Institute. 

The 300,000-ton meteor was traveling at speeds of up to 26,000 miles per hour (12 km per second), according to the Barringer Crater Company, and exploded with the force of two and a half million tons of TNT, the impact excavated a whopping 175 million tons of rock according to the Lunar and Planetary Institute. 

The crater's origins were first identified by mining engineer Daniel Moreau Barringer who was convinced the crater was a result of a meteor striking Earth, a view that was not shared by many scientists at the time. Despite the opposition, Barringer spent several years investigating the crater and providing the first proof of its origin, which was eventually vindicated and accepted by the scientific community.

The crater is privately owned by the Barringer Crater Company — a family-owned enterprise dedicated to the preservation of the crater. The company was founded by Daniel Moreau Barringer, the first to identify the crater's cosmic origin.