THE VREDEFORT DOME
JOURNEY TO THE
Centre of the Earth
The Vredefort Dome takes you there
Visitors may think Parys is a small town far away from the big issues in the world today . Not so . One of the biggest issues in science is how the planets were made , and we have the answer right here .
The spectacular scenery around Parys - with its mountains , Vaal River and many adventure activities - is a product of a world-creating event . The Dome Bergland represents the first “ ring ” of the three-ringed crater . The second ring goes behind Potchefstroom and the third , outer ring , is the Witwatersrand . Many Joburgers don ’ t know they are living on the edge of the world ’ s greatest impact crater .
Biggest bang
The Vredefort Dome marks the biggest visible and confirmed meteorite crater on Earth . Much of what built the Earth came in the form of asteroids ( rocks ) and comets ( ice ). Millions of years of impacts by these bodies added to the blob that was the Earth , originally formed by space dust clustering together by the force of gravity . When the rocks and ice plunged into this primitive body they brought iron , many other minerals including gold and uranium , and water .
All the water on Earth - its rivers , oceans , and the water in our bodies - is thought to have come from the planet-building process that made the Earth and the other planets in the solar system . We are really children of the stars .
The Vredefort Dome is important in Earth sciences because it reveals how the Earth has developed from this early bombardment . The Dome is only the centre of a far larger structure , it is the heart of the crater that stretches from Johannesburg to Welkom . Caused by an impact that happened 2,023 billion years ago ( approaching half the age of the Earth , which is 4,5 billion years old ) the crater far outranks others that have been identified worldwide .
Visible from space
Most people know about the impact that caused the death of the dinosaurs , 66 million years ago . That crater at Chicxulub on the Yucatan Peninsula , Mexico , is the second-largest on Earth after Vredefort . South Africans can be proud that we
62 Parys Crater Street Mile