Ancient Asteroid Generated the Hottest Temp Ever Recorded on Earth

(Credit: Vadim Sadovski/Shutterstock) When an asteroid smashes into the Earth things get pretty toasty. A 17 mile-wide crater in Canada was home to what scientists say is the hottest temperature ever recorded in Earth's crustal rock, a whopping 4,300 degrees Fahrenheit. They didn't just stick a thermometer in there, of course, the crater is some 36 million years old. Instead, researchers from Curtin University in Australia looked to the rocks. Embedded in the crater walls were crystals of cubic zirconia, a mineral that forms only under temperatures of at least 4,300 F, indicating that the force of the impact caused the surrounding rock to get at least that hot, if not even more scorching. This is the first time scientists have ever looked for the crystals, the researchers say in a paper published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, which offer a means of approximating the conditions of meteor impacts. ...