Victor A. Gostin (born 1940) is an Australian geologist, who discovered in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia, a deposit of volcanic material that was ejected from the 300-kilometre distant Acraman crater when the impact was created by a meteorite some 580 million years ago. [1] [2] He is an associate professor at the University of Adelaide, Department of Earth Sciences, School of Physical Sciences. [3]
His discovery was linked to a previous discovery by George Williams, also of the University of Adelaide, that the Acraman crater in Lake Acraman was due to the impact of a superbolide (exceptionally large meteor). After Gostin learned about this, he, Williams, Peter Haines and other colleagues of the University of Adelaide studied the materials in both places and found that they were similar in lithology and fracturing, showing that the ejecta in the Flinders Ranges came from the Lake Acraman site. [4] This collaborative study was announced by them on 9 July 1985 during the Adelaide Geosyncline Informal Research Symposium in the Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Adelaide. Gostin remarked that his discovery "was the first known occurrence of far-flung ejected blocks of impact origin that have been preserved on earth." [5]
Main-belt asteroid 3640 Gostin, [6] which was named in honor of Gostin, was discovered by Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker at the Palomar Observatory. The citation reads as follows: [1]
Named in honour of Victor A. Gostin, geologist on the faculty of the University of Adelaide, South Australia. A specialist in sedimentology and stratigraphy, Gostin discovered in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia a deposit of shocked debris ejected from the Lake Acraman impact structure about 300 km to the west. His careful studies of this ancient deposit have provided the first detailed picture of the distant ejecta from a known large terrestrial impact crater.
In 2011, Gostin was also awarded the Bruce Webb Medal of the Geological Society of Australia for "his major contributions to Earth Sciences education and various aspects of geology, including environmental geology, marine geology, planetology and sedimentology over the last forty years."
Gostin is an active member of the Theosophical Society in Australia and edits the e-newsletter Theosophy and Science.
An impact crater is an approximately circular depression in the surface of a planet, moon, or other solid body in the Solar System or elsewhere, formed by the hypervelocity impact of a smaller body. In contrast to volcanic craters, which result from explosion or internal collapse, impact craters typically have raised rims and floors that are lower in elevation than the surrounding terrain. Impact craters range from small, simple, bowl-shaped depressions to large, complex, multi-ringed impact basins. Meteor Crater is a well-known example of a small impact crater on Earth.
Tektites are gravel-sized bodies composed of black, green, brown, or gray natural glass formed from terrestrial debris ejected during meteorite impacts. The term was coined by Austrian geologist Franz Eduard Suess (1867–1941), son of Eduard Suess. They generally range in size from millimeters to centimeters. Millimeter-scale tektites are known as microtektites.
Acraman crater is a deeply eroded impact crater in the Gawler Ranges of South Australia. Its location is marked by Lake Acraman, a circular ephemeral playa lake about 20 kilometres (12 mi) in diameter. The discovery of the crater and independent discovery of its ejecta were first reported in the journal Science in 1986. The evidence for impact includes the presence of shatter cones and shocked quartz in shattered bedrock on islands within Lake Acraman.
Boxhole is a young impact crater located approximately 180 km north-east of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, Australia. It is 170 metres in diameter and its age is estimated to be 5,400 ± 1,500 years based on the cosmogenic 14C terrestrial age of the meteorite, placing it in the Holocene. The crater is exposed to the surface.
Flaxman is a meteorite crater in South Australia, Australia.
Lawn Hill ‘crater’ refers to an impact structure, the eroded remnant of a former impact crater, situated approximately 220 km north-north-west of Mount Isa in northwestern Queensland, Australia. The site is marked by an 18 km diameter ring of dolomite hills. The origin of this circular feature was uncertain until the discovery of shatter cones and shocked quartz from uplifted rocks at the centre was reported in 1987.
Liverpool is a meteorite impact crater situated in Arnhem Land within the Northern Territory, Australia. It was named after the nearby Liverpool River. Liverpool is remote and difficult to access. The crater has a raised, near-circular rim averaging about 1.6 km in diameter. It was first noticed by geologists during reconnaissance geological mapping in the 1960s, and although an impact origin was considered possible, this was not confirmed until a more detailed study was undertaken in 1970.
Strangways is a large impact structure, the eroded remnant of a former impact crater, located in the Northern Territory of Australia about 65 kilometres (40 mi) east-south-east of the town of Mataranka. It was named after the nearby Strangways River. The location is remote and difficult to access.
Tookoonooka is a large meteorite impact crater (astrobleme) situated in South West Queensland, Australia. It lies deeply buried within Mesozoic sedimentary rocks of the Eromanga Basin and is not visible at the surface.
Veevers crater is an impact crater located on a flat desert plain between the Great Sandy and Gibson Deserts in the center of the state of Western Australia. The site is very remote and difficult to visit. The crater was discovered from the air in July 1975 during a government geological survey and named in honor of Australian geologist John Veevers who had worked in the area in the late 1950s. At the time of discovery a meteorite impact origin was suspected, but could not be proven. The subsequent discovery of iron meteorite fragments around the crater by E.M. and C.S. Shoemaker in 1984 removed any doubt about its origin.
Woodleigh is a large meteorite impact crater (astrobleme) in Western Australia, centred on Woodleigh Station east of Shark Bay, Gascoyne region. A team of four scientists at the Geological Survey of Western Australia and the Australian National University, led by Arthur J. Mory, announced the discovery in the 15 April 2000 issue of Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
Ejecta are particles ejected from an area. In volcanology, in particular, the term refers to particles including pyroclastic materials (Tephra) that came out of a volcanic explosion and magma eruption volcanic vent, or crater, has traveled through the air or under water, and fell back on the ground surface or on the ocean floor.
The geology of the Moon is quite different from that of Earth. The Moon lacks a true atmosphere, which eliminates erosion due to weather; it does not have any known form of plate tectonics, it has a lower gravity, and because of its small size, it cooled more rapidly. The complex geomorphology of the lunar surface has been formed by a combination of processes, especially impact cratering and volcanism. The Moon is a differentiated body, with a crust, mantle, and core.
An ejecta blanket is a generally symmetrical apron of ejecta that surrounds an impact crater; it is layered thickly at the crater's rim and thin to discontinuous at the blanket's outer edge. The impact cratering is one of the basic surface formation mechanisms of the solar system bodies and the formation and emplacement of ejecta blankets are the fundamental characteristics associated with impact cratering event. The ejecta materials are considered as the transported materials beyond the transient cavity formed during impact cratering regardless of the state of the target materials.
Henbury Meteorites Conservation Reserve is a protected area in the Northern Territory of Australia located in the locality of Ghan.
The geology of Mars is the scientific study of the surface, crust, and interior of the planet Mars. It emphasizes the composition, structure, history, and physical processes that shape the planet. It is analogous to the field of terrestrial geology. In planetary science, the term geology is used in its broadest sense to mean the study of the solid parts of planets and moons. The term incorporates aspects of geophysics, geochemistry, mineralogy, geodesy, and cartography. A neologism, areology, from the Greek word Arēs (Mars), sometimes appears as a synonym for Mars's geology in the popular media and works of science fiction.
Yuty is a crater on Mars in Chryse Planitia, named after the town of Yuty in Paraguay. It measures approximately 19 kilometres in diameter, and is surrounded by complex ejecta lobes, which are a distinctive characteristic of martian impact craters.
Darwin Crater is a suspected meteorite impact crater in Western Tasmania about 26 km (16 mi) south of Queenstown, just within the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park. The crater is expressed as a rimless circular flat-floored depression, 1.2 km (0.75 mi) in diameter, within mountainous and heavily forested terrain. It is east of the West Coast Range and the former North Mount Lyell Railway formation.
3640 Gostin, provisional designation 1985 TR3, is a stony Florian asteroid from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 8 kilometers (5 miles) in diameter. It was discovered on 11 October 1985, by American astronomer couple Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker at the Palomar Observatory in California. The S-type asteroid has a rotation period of 3.26 hours. It was named for Australian geologist Victor Gostin.
Zunil is an impact crater near the Cerberus Fossae on Mars, with a diameter of 10.26 kilometres. It is named after the town of Zunil in Guatemala. The crater is located in the Elysium quadrangle. Visible in images from the Viking 1 and Viking 2 Mars orbiters in the 1970s, Zunil was subsequently imaged at higher resolution for the first time by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) in 2000.
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