Målingen
Key facts
- Country
- Sweden
- Diameter
- 1 km
- Age
- about 458 million years
- Location
- 62.92° N, 14.55° E
Little to see: a small, filled crater in forested farmland about 16 km south-west of the larger Lockne crater in Jämtland, central Sweden.
Målingen is a small impact crater about 1 km across in Jämtland, central Sweden, about 16 km from the much larger Lockne crater. It formed at the same time as Lockne and is thought to be its twin.
What it hit. About 458 million years ago, in the Ordovician, an asteroid fell into a sea several hundred metres deep and struck crystalline basement rock beneath thin sea-floor sediments. The sea then rushed into the crater, filling it with broken rock and sediment.
Proof of impact. Drilling into the crater in the 2000s recovered cores of breccia and resurge deposits, sediments washed in by the returning sea, together with quartz grains showing shock features. The layers in the crater are the same as those in Lockne and lie in the same order, which shows that both craters formed at the same moment.
A double asteroid. Many asteroids have small moons orbiting them. Scientists think that Lockne and Målingen were made by such a binary asteroid, with the larger body making Lockne and its moon making Målingen. Few such pairs are known on Earth with confidence.
Why it matters. Målingen helps show that binary asteroids strike the Earth, as they do the Moon and other planets. The impactor is unknown.
Did you know?
Målingen formed at the same moment as the larger Lockne crater, 16 km away.
The two craters are thought to have been made by an asteroid and its moon.
Drilling found the same sequence of layers in both craters.