The Richat Structure

      What is known as the Richat Structure is truly one wonderment.  So what is a wonderment, you may ask?  And why is that the name of my blog?  Before I get into today's wonderment, I'll answer that question.  A wonderment is something that makes you pause and reflect on things.  It is something that makes you think.  It is something that makes you go "huh."  I got the word itself from an obscure source.  It came from Cliff Robertson's portrayal of Cole Younger in the movie "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid."  The movie was about the James-Younger gang's ill fated attempt to rob the bank in Northfield, Minnesota.  A couple of the brothers were killed, and the rest were captured, except for Jesse and Frank James, who dressed as (ugly) old ladies to slip away.  Throughout the film every time Cole Younger saw something, like a new invention, a new or better technique for doing something, or even an awesome sunset, he would say, "now that's truly a wonderment."  
      No, I am not endorsing Cole Younger's behavior, his political sentiments, nor any of his actions.  I just like the word.  Cole Younger was actually a fairly intelligent man.  He was an avid reader, and kept up on the latest advances in technology.  After he got captured in Northfield, he spent the remainder of his life in Stillwater Prison.  One of the first things he did when he got there was to start a newspaper and he published that newspaper for the rest of his life.  The newspaper he started is still being published.  Now that's a wonderment (and I guess that is one thing he did that I do actually endorse - but that's all).  
      And of course "sundry" means sundry; various, a plethora of.  

      Now onto the Richat Structure.  The Richat structure is about 50 miles in diameter, and sits in the Saharan part of Mauritania.  The name "structure is somewhat misleading (at least it is for me), because that makes it sound like something that someone built.  It was actually created by natural causes, but no one seems to agree on what those causes were.  
      When I first read about it in an article about space (NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day website) I looked up more on the subject (that by the way is what I do with most of my articles, or posts - I read up all I can on them, condense it down to the basic gist, and then start writing.  I figure that if you find it interesting, you will read up more on it too).  When I read about how big it is, I turned on Google Earth, spun the globe to West Africa, zoomed in and started looking.  It is so big that I found it in only a couple of minutes.  

                  The Image of the Richat Structure that I took from Google Earth

      Some people say that it is a meteoric impact, I and I would have to agree with that theory.  The perfect circle, and what looks like ripples in a pond, frozen in place.  Around a couple of the "ripple" rings are what appear to be splash marks, also frozen in place.  It looks like whatever hit the earth there made so hot that it was temporarily molten, and then cooled down again instantly while it was still in mid splash.  .  
      The people who disagree with the impact theory declare that the walls surrounding the "structure" are not high enough to be a crater.  In fact there are no walls, and it isn't a crater.  
      Other people claim that this is volcanic in nature, except that there is no dome.  The official statement concerning this is that it is still a mystery.  To me that doesn't sound like a very scientific statement.  It sounds more like a statement of, "We give up." 
      I'm sure that the fans of alien stuff and related conspiracy theories have their own ideas about this phenomenon.  I'm sure they're pretty weird ideas too.  
      Personally, I am still going with an impact, and I think that when they figure this out, it will also be discovered that not all impacts make a crater.  It could be that the typical crater is what happens in normal type soil, or sedimentary soil, and that different types of ground make different types of impact marks.  That is merely a hypothesis though - a well educated guess.