BLAST Vredefort Dome Tours

BLAST Vredefort Dome Tours Exploring the world's oldest and largest visible impact crater, the Vredefort Dome UNESCO world heritage site, just over an hour's drive from Johannesburg.

Asteroid impacts have been responsible for several of the great extinctions of life on our planet. Our tours tell the fascinating story of planetary impacts and take you to sites where you can see for yourself the destructive power of the asteroids, the loose cannons of the solar system.The Vredefort Dome marks the centre of the oldest and largest visible impact crater, which happened 2 billion ye

ars ago. It did not cause a great extinction, but if such an impact happened again it would probably wipe out most life on Earth. Yet, asteroids could help to enrich humanity by supplying water and precious minerals - and we could use them as transit vehicles to travel into deep space. The Vredefort blast buried the gold rich Witwatersrand rocks deep beneath the surface, allowing for its rediscovery in human times. Today, South African gold mining technologies - in the hot, deep earth - are far advanced, suggesting that the country could be at the forefront of asteroid mining. We offer various formats of tours from driving to hiking, rafting through the Dome, mountain biking the trails, and simply watching our videos and getting the map briefing before driving yourself to sites of interest. We also do Battlefield tours of this "crucible of conflict" which lies at the heart of South Africa and, because of the presence of gold and diamonds, has created the wealth as well as the warfare that marks this country's history. Contact us for a quote. Tell us what interests you and what kind of trail you wish to do. There are discounts for families, groups, schools and universities. Prof Graeme Addison or his wife Karen are both qualified and registered tour guides.

WHERE'S THE ROCK?Giant Vredefort asteroid vaporisedOne of the things I'm always asked on Dome tours and briefings is - "...
20/09/2024

WHERE'S THE ROCK?
Giant Vredefort asteroid vaporised

One of the things I'm always asked on Dome tours and briefings is - "Where's the rock? What can we see?"

The fact is that nothing was left of the huge impactor, even at the time. People who come looking for a smallish crater with bits of debris or even a space rock conveniently placed in the middle are going to be disappointed. But it's no disappointment to hear the story of what actually happened and imagine the impact - as shown here in an AI rendering - at the moment of contact with our planet.

For one thing, the multiple rings thrown up up by shockwaves formed mountain ridges, with the inner ring being as high as, or even higher than, the Himalayas - up to 10km high. These burst into existence in a matter of minutes. They have since worn down during two billion years of erosion to about 350 metres high. That's the Dome Bergland (pictured).

Mountain ranges can take ten to 50 million years to form. Not these ones. The Dome Drift river trip that we do down the Vaal takes us floating on calm but moving water right through the inner ring. The river is flat here due its valley having been scoured out by glacial ice in an ice age some 300 million years ago when our subcontinent drifted through the South Pole.

Such wonders of the world can be seen and appreciated on guided tours, either by river, road, on foot or on cycles. We'll take you there, show you the amazing landscape, and show the evidence that is baked into the rocks.

The reason the asteroid completely vaporised is that it was a very large body going incredibly fast: the resulting release of energy as it suddenly stopped was equivalent to - well, at a guesstimate - up to five trillion Hiroshima size nuclear bombs. The rock turned to gas and even plasma. (Plasma is superheated matter – so hot that the electrons are ripped away from the atoms forming an ionized gas.).

The crater that formed had multiple rings, of which three are still visible. The outside ring is the Witwatersrand, stretching from Springs around through Johannesburg and Klerksdorp to Welkom. This is the Arc of Gold where deep strata of gold ore were upended to the surface and buried at a steep angle. The incredible engineering achievement of mining at more than 4km down is another marvel of the world - this time created by us.

If you want to know more about the best preserved impact crater on Earth, twice the size of the one that caused the death of the dinosaurs, contact me for a talk or tour. The roads into and around the crater are open to the public but unless you know what you are looking at it will all be blasted hard to understand. We have a self-drive map and booklet showing it all, that kids can use for school projects.

I'm Prof Graeme Addison, writer on popular science, author of many books and a new one coming - on the crater. Call or WhatsApp me at +27 84 245 2490.

Only an hour south of Joburg! and we have beautiful accommodation too.

AN ICY TIPPING POINTA sudden cataclysm ends a slow build-upVast expanses of ice have accumulated on the Antarctic contin...
08/09/2024

AN ICY TIPPING POINT
A sudden cataclysm ends a slow build-up

Vast expanses of ice have accumulated on the Antarctic continent and Greenland, in Norway and in mountain chains like the Himalayas and Andes. Now these are melting at a rapid rate, and what happened slowly over millennia is now about to become a catastrophic deluge into the world's oceans.

The ice has reached a tipping point. Cities will be flooded, farms in river deltas submerged. Changing ocean temperatures and currents will cause climatic changes that threaten whole countries.

Ice used to be one of those geological forces that gradually reshaped the surface of the Earth. But now it's a source of dramatic changes that threaten us all with massive planetary disasters.

In the past, geologists thought change came slowly, in a uniform manner. An old joke is that if you asked a geologist a question, the answer would take a long time. But in the past century it has dawned on Earth scientists that some major changes are quick and cataclysmic - like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Today we are witnessing how the crawl of time can become a leap into the unknown.

The science of geology has changed to face realities that earlier theorists were reluctant to admit. The Earth is a product of tremendous and violent forces. The universe itself was born in a big bang.

Impacts from asteroids and comets built up of the Earth's bulk after it and the other planets had begun to coalesce from clouds of space dust and gases. In geology the concept of gradual evolution, or "uniformitarianism" (steady, uniform change) was challenged by mounting evidence that some major changes happened almost instantly.

By the late 20th century, the synthesis of uniformitarianism and catastrophism was absorbed into geology. The recognition of impacts from extra-terrestrial objects, like the asteroid that contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs, firmly established catastrophe as a vital part of geological science.

The scientists who broke the mould of gradualism came from a range of backgrounds. One of them, the American Eugene Shoemaker, revolutionised geology by demonstrating that many craters on Earth and the Moon were formed by asteroid and comet impacts, not by volcanic activity, as previously believed.

In the 1950s he studied Meteor Crater in Arizona, providing conclusive evidence that it was the result of an extra-terrestrial impact. He was later asked to train the astronauts that landed in the Moon to recognise signs of cratering and bring back rocks that might tell us how the Moon was formed.

The Earth and Moon may have formed together as a result of a collision between primitive blobs of matter in the early solar system. According to this hypothesis, some 4.5 billion years ago, shortly after the formation of the solar system, a Mars-sized body, often referred to as Theia, collided with the early Earth. This impact was so immense that it ejected a significant amount of debris into orbit around Earth. Over time, this debris coalesced to form the Moon.

That was a catastrophe like no other ever to happen on Earth. It shows that massive disasters are have the power to make or break the world we live in. Today the Earth and Moon are the only twin planets in our solar system. We won't be together forever and are slowly drifting apart.

Bombardment (between 4,5 and 3,8 bya) a large number of these bodies struck the Earth (and other planets). The solar system was clearing out its debris, left after the planets formed by the clumping-together of space dust. Asteroids and comets played a crucial role in delivering water and other volatiles that helped to make the planet inhabitable.

Catastrophes created the conditions for life to exist on Earth. But they have ended it too in mass extinctions.

Learn more about Earth's catastrophic past at the Vredefort Dome, the biggest, best preserved meteorite crater on Earth, in the heart of South Africa.

WhatsApp or call +27 84 245 2490. https://vdome.co.za

A BROWN MOON AT DAWN Caught these shots on Monday morning, with the full "Blue Moon" sinking out of sight for the day.
22/08/2024

A BROWN MOON AT DAWN

Caught these shots on Monday morning, with the full "Blue Moon" sinking out of sight for the day.

20/08/2024

THE SHOCKING TRUTH
Not your common or garden sights

You'll be shocked by the little, explosive talk I give when doing a briefing on crater impacts. I like to unwind a detective tale about how a young Phd student in Arizona told his professors he'd found a meteorite crater - and they wouldn't believe him.

From there the story unfolds as Eugene Shoemaker persisted, from the 1950s to his death in a car crash in the central Australian desert in the 1990s. He found plenty of craters peppering our Earth. In 1994 he and an amateur astronomer, Karl Levy, predicted that a comet was going to hit Jupiter and right on time and on target, it did. This proved without a doubt that planets were still being hit by rocks from space.

There is another thread to the story. In 1916 a British geologist at Stellenbosch University, Dr James Shand, was asked to identify a peculiar rock consisting of a black substance like obsidian with rounded piece of granite embedded in it. He couldn't. He called it false volcanic (psuedotachylite). And from there the great debate about what formed the Vredefort Dome burst into life.

It is people that make science, and their stories become the legends of our time.

The reality of these planetary impacts is that they are forms of what is called shock metamorphism - or rocks changed by tremendous forces that you don't get every day.

Address

Otters Haunt, Kopjeskraal Road
Parys
9585

Opening Hours

Monday 06:00 - 20:00
Tuesday 06:00 - 20:00
Wednesday 06:00 - 20:00
Thursday 06:00 - 20:00
Friday 06:00 - 20:00
Saturday 06:00 - 20:00
Sunday 06:00 - 20:00

Telephone

+27842452490

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