Tennessee Crater Inches Toward Recognition
Sorry, I'm not seeing it. Everything I see posted here can be adequately explained without the presence of an impact. Sinkholes are also often round. Magnetic material can accumulate in and weather out of most rock types, and can be introduced through secondary contamination. Vugs are, and other holes/porosity often are, the result of dissolution and weathering (coincidentally, the same processes form sinkholes under the right conditions).
To convince me, do several things:
1. Cut open the weird looking metal pieces and acid-etch them to reveal any Widmanst?tten patterns. (Note: the metal in meteors will not react quickly to water or other weak acids, but limestone will. Iron minerals commonly occur in most rock types, not least of all sedimentary rocks, including limestone, that are likely to form sinkholes. Magnetic minerals are actually pretty common. I'd be a little surprised not to find small grains of magnetic material pretty much anywhere on Earth.)
2. Take the rocks to an expert and get an opinion. This often annoys most geologists a little bit since, as one recounted to me, he's had hundreds of people bring him "meteorites" over the years and precisely zero of them were actual meteorites. But if you can get an appropriately trained geologist to glance at them it should be moderately easy to see that they are or are not meteorites, or represent a rock that has melted. If that person can't say definitively, he/she may be sufficiently intrigued to investigate further.
3. If the rocks look interesting to the geologist, running through an electron microprobe and electron microscope will reveal many more interesting things about their precise chemical composition and microscopic structure, as will thin sections under an optical microscope. For the metallic parts reflected light microscopy will tell a great deal. The presence of certain high pressure SiO2 polymorphs is diagnostic in rocks from the impact zone, and iron/nickel composition is a very good indicator in a suspected meteorite.
4. Careful mapping will help, as will a geologic map of the area. Geologic mapping is not difficult, but defensible results require practice and a thorough understanding of geologic principles. Look for the character of the ground, the distribution and size of different material both vertically and laterally, its composition, texture, the nature of contacts between areas with different materials, and the orientation of any different layers, amongst any other notable characteristics. Relate your findings to those on existing geologic maps. Create your map on top of a high resolution topo map.
5. Consider multiple working hypotheses, and keep an open mind. For example, the two obvious hypotheses are that this feature represents a sinkhole or that it instead represents an impact crater. Find as much evidence as you can that contradicts or informs both of those ideas; consider all evidence in light of them. For example, you might observe that the area is characterized by shallow crystalline silicate metamorphic bedrock that is not subject to dissolution, thus pointing away from a sinkhole origin. On the other hand, you might note there are caves in the area, topographic maps show creeks and stream ending abruptly, that there was cement production there in the late 1800s, limestone clasts show traces of pyrite, and there's little evidence of breccia.
It's a logical fallacy to conclude an unusual process must be responsible for an observed feature when your evidence can be adequately explained by more pedestrian processes. Make sure you have solid evidence that can't be explained by more mundane processes before jumping to a novel conclusion -- ad hoc conclusions are inimical to real understanding and the process of science. If an impact is still a reasonable explanation after carefully considering your evidence in light of other hypotheses, systematically write up your findings. Start by giving an overview of the general area, then the feature itself, then the details of specific observations you've made a
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