Google's tagline of organizing the world's information is all I could think of when I learned that Geologist Arthur Hickman accidentally found a meteorite crater while scanning Google Earth in a search for iron ore.The crater is between 10,000 and 100,000 years old and measures about 270 meters across. Amazingly, the energy released when this meteorite hit Australia was the equivalent of between 200,000 and 300,000 tons of TNT!
What this discovery shows us is that the intersection between the computerized or virtual world and the real world is becoming much larger, allowing us to learn more than ever before from ones and zeros. As this trend continues and data mining tools become more commonplace, we can expect more discoveries such as this and obviously researchers and scientists will become much more productive.
[Science Alert]
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