Autopsy of a dream landscape
Museum of Natural History: Lecture on 17 April, 6.30 pm, 1st floor, TIETZ
On Wednesday 17 April at 6.30 pm, interested parties are invited to a lecture at the Museum of Natural History, Museum Education on the 1st floor of the TIETZ. Under the title "Order in chaos: the great Ries puzzle", speaker Dr Karl Wimmer will report on the Nördlingen Ries crater.
Admission is free. Pre-registration is not required.
Almost 15 million years ago, an asteroid crashed into the Franconian-Swabian Alb near the present-day town of Nördlingen, creating the largest crater in Central Europe with a diameter of 24 kilometres. Over the course of the earth's history, this catastrophe has given rise to one of the most beautiful and fertile landscapes in Germany, which has attracted people since time immemorial: the Nördlinger Ries.
Although the Ries crater is the best researched in the world, its literally "crazy" geology remains a challenge for scientists. Almost everything can be found everywhere and almost nothing where it belongs. The attempt to bring some order to this chaos can only succeed if you look beneath the surface of the dream landscape to understand the spectacular processes involved in the formation of craters.
The speaker, Dr Karl Wimmer, is a (un)retired physicist and a Nördlinger by conviction. He tries to complete the picture of the giant impact with a few more pieces of the mosaic.