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It is the world’s biggest crater in basaltic rock. Located in Buldhana district of Maharashtra, India. Co-ordinates: 19 degrees 87 minutes longitude (N) and 76 degrees 43 minutes latitude (E). Scientists estimate its age to be ~50000 years. The meteorite hit the Deccan basaltic trap near Buldhana. The thickness of basaltic rock around this region is believed to be between 30 to 1000 meters. The basaltic rock is in many layers or flows in this region[1]. These flows were created by volcanic activities over several million years.

The meteorite hit created the crater which is about 165 meters deep and 1830 meters in average diameter. This meteorite hit exposed a few basaltic layers at the rim of crater. The elevated rim around the crater is 12 to 15 meter in height. It is covered with 5 meter ejecta over it. The rim can be clearly seen in the satellite image[3]. The rim is mostly made of ejecta blanket spread over the distance of 1.5 kilometers around the crater with slope of 4-7 degrees and approx 15-30 degrees inclination at the inner edge of the rim.

Early in the 19th century, when a scientist pointed out this crater, it was believed to be a volcanic crater. Almost one and a half century this belief was intact. In 1961 two scientists named N. C. Nandy and V. B. Deo. They found breccia in drilling done at site. Breccia is another feature of shocked rocks found in impact craters.

This inference was reasserted by the studies conducted by Eugene C Lafond and Robert S Dietz in 1964. They conducted a survey and studied the crater. Based on their study they concluded that the crater is not of volcanic origin but it is of impact origin.

For the support of their conclusion they provided several reasons.
1 The crater is highly circular in diameter and has a characteristic depth-to diameter ratio of an impact crater.
2 The crater has a raised rim, about 20 m above the surrounding.
3 The surrounding rock dips away from the crater edge at inclinations of 15-30 degrees.

The theory of impact crater was further affirmed when V. K. Nayak of Center for Advanced Studies in Geology, University of Sagar, M.P., India, found glass like objects near the site. In drilling he also found breccia with shocked features, broken and twisted, highly oxidised. All these features indicated towards high velocity impact.

In 1973, some US scientists along with India scientist from GSI worked together to establish its impact origin. They discovered breccia with shatter cones and material containing maskelynite. Maskelynite formation requires very high pressure almost 4 lakh times the average atmospheric pressure on the Earth. And this is created only during hypervelocity impact. No volcanic process can form maskelynite. Thus impact origin of Lonar crater was proved. Three other scientists estimated its age to be about 52000 years.[4]

[1] http://www.virtualexplorer.com.au/journal/2003/12/tewari/
[2] http://www.mantleplumes.org/Deccan.html
[3] http://www.whoi.edu/hpb/viewImage.do?id=20170&ppid=153&sid=67&cl=2&isProj=1
[4] http://www.khagolmandal.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=4

After quite a long time I traveled to an amazing destination - Lonar Crater. On this evening of 25th June ‘06, me and Chetan were having an evening tea at Bandu Bhau’s tapri :-), pondering over our long-back-planned visit to Lonar. Both were really unsure whether we should go or not. After passing almost half an hour we finally decided to have dinner first and then rethink about after getting revitalized with ’saojenergy’ (’Saoji energy’).

On the dinner table(?) after having a little more brainstorming, we finally decided to visit Lonar. You see, we are the biggest believers of the great optimist, Edward Murphy, who said “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong”, so why be afraid? Immediately we started to our respective places to gather very necessary stuff like toothbrush, paste, Binoculars, Camera and other stuff.

Having gathered everything we went to Chhatrapti chowk to catch the bus to Wardha from where we were to board the train to Shegaon and from there, our destination Lonar. It was little too late to discover that there were 3 travelers and not 2, third being our beloved Edward Murphy. We missed the bus and so the train. In an effort to catch another vehicle we lost our map as well. With these two incidences we were about to drop the plan. Thats when Anup came to help and suggested us to catch a bus to Washim and from there find a bus to Lonar.

With this new plan we again went to the bus stop. The bus was already there about to leave for Pusad, which is located just before Washim on the same route. So we boarded the bus with smiling faces. Afterall its Murphy’s law’s another derivation which says “Smile, tomorrow is worse”. Reached Pusad at around 6 in the morning. The bus dropped us in front of ST stand of Pusad. Luckily there was a bus to Lonar in an hour. Thanks to Murphy (not being sarcastic here, really!).

We boarded once again at 0700 Hrs and left for Lonar. Reached there at 1130 Hrs in scorching heat. There we bought some water bottles and Haldirams’ packets, took an auto to reach the rim of the crater. From Lonar bus stand, Lonar crater is 1.5 Km away. Autorikshaw took 15 Rs to drop us there.

Just near the rim there is a Restaurant named Gulmohar where we dumped our extra luggage and left for the Lake Lonar. At around 1230 Hrs we reached near the Basin of Lake and started to take a walk around the Lake. In 3 hours we finished the round (6 Kilometers) about the Lake. Climbed back to the rim, reached the Restaurant and collected our stuff. Rested there for about an hour, had some food. By this time the weather turned good and it started raining bringing a little relief for us. We reached back to the bus stand at around 1800 Hrs.

According to plan we would have reached Akola directly from Lonar. Here too we missed the bus and Murphy’s law of late-comers which says “those who have the shortest distance to travel invariably arrive latest” came true. There was no direct bus to Nagpur or Akola until next day. So we decided to reach Akola by any means. Finally at 1730 Hrs we boarded a bus to Mehekar from where we were supposed to get a bus either to Akola or Amraoti according to some locals.

We reached Mehekar at 1900 Hrs. There we came to know that were not going to get any bus direct to Akola so we had to take the bus to Washim. We took the bus to Washim from there and reached at 2030 Hrs and from there to Aakola at 2245 Hrs. Till Akola we were totally exhausted so we decided to take up train which would have let us sleep in the night. According to the decision we reached Akola Railway station and luckily found a suitable train. So we bought tickets for Nagpur and boarded the passenger train.

The train took freekin 10 hours to reach Nagpur (which is actually 5-6 hours’ journey) but in the night we got good sleep - the best part of entire return journey. That was end of another freak travel decision.

Looks like google.com is still running orkut on M$ plateform. It keeps failing every now and then. Sometimes I wonder if they ( DefectiveByDesign.org ) refer to M$ ?

Is it just me (poor victim of Murphy) or you too see one of these often these days?

Here is a “Sad PHP Poem” Martin posted on php-general list.

======================

List: php-general
Subject: Re: [PHP] Sad PHP Poem
From: “Martin Alterisio”
Date: 2006-06-26 6:07:43
Message-ID: 52dbac0f0606252307q109d866fp59a86d35f099c43e () mail ! gmail ! com
2006/6/26, Ligaya Turmelle

:
>
> Martin Alterisio wrote:
> >
> >
> > A sad poem of an algorithm where solitude brought excessive use of cpu
> > cycles and memory allocation for redundant data (it copied over and over
> > again the same image till all memory was filled with it)
> >
> > ——————————
> >
> > $timeWaiting = 0;
> > while (!$you->near($me)) {
> > $me->thinkAbout($you);
> >
> > switch (true) {
> > case $timeWaiting < 5:
> > $me->wait($you);
> > break;
> >
> > case $timeWaiting < 10:
> > $me->worry();
> > break;
> >
> > case $timeWaiting < 20:
> > $me->lookFor($you);
> > break;
> >
> > case $timeWaiting < 40:
> > $me->worry();
> > $me->lookFor($you);
> > break;
> >
> > case $timeWaiting < 80:
> > $me->worry();
> > $me->cry();
> > $me->lookFor($you);
> > $me->lookFor($you);
> > $me->lookFor($you);
> > break;
> >
> > case $timeWaiting < 160:
> > $me->worry();
> > $me->cry();
> > $me->drink();
> > $me->lookFor($you);
> > $me->lookFor($you);
> > $me->lookFor($you);
> > $me->thinkAbout($you);
> > $me->thinkAbout($you);
> > $me->cry();
> > $me->lookFor($you);
> > $me->lookFor($you);
> > $me->drink();
> > $me->drink();
> > break;
> >
> > default:
> > throw new CantLiveWithoutYou();
> > die(”alone”);
> > }
> >
> > $timeWaiting++;
> > }
> >
> > $me->happy = true;
> >
> > ——————————
> >
> > I hope you enjoyed the poem and the fact that I didn’t ask you to fix it
> or
> > find the bug in it =D
> >
> > PD: Run in your web server at your own risk.
> >
> >
> >
> See we do have a softer side. Outstanding!

I was a hard man till she threw me a ImNotSoSureAnymore exception =S

PD: I’m on fire today, maybe AJAX and the greek muses are behind my
inspiration

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