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A subsidence crater is a hole or depression left on the surface of an area which has had an underground (usually nuclear) explosion. Many such craters are commonly present at bomb testing areas; one notable example is the Nevada Test Site , which was historically used for nuclear weapons testing over a period of 41 years.
Kilauea with Halemaʻumaʻu Deep pit crater on Hualalai Hawaii. A pit crater (also called a subsidence crater or collapse crater) is a depression formed by a sinking or collapse of the surface lying above a void or empty chamber, rather than by the eruption of a volcano or lava vent. [1]
Subsidence crater formed by Huron King. Several minutes to days later, once the heat dissipates enough, the steam condenses, and the pressure in the cavity falls below the level needed to support the overburden, the rock above the void falls into the cavity.
Hundreds of subsidence craters dot the desert floor. A crater could develop when an underground nuclear explosion vaporized surrounding bedrock and sediment. The vapor cooled to liquid lava and pooled at the bottom of the cavity created by the explosion.
Although sometimes described as a crater, the feature is actually a type of sinkhole, as it is formed through subsidence and collapse rather than an explosion or impact. Compared to the thousands of volcanic eruptions that occur over the course of a century, the formation of a caldera is a rare event, occurring only a few times within a given ...
The site contains many subsidence craters from the testing. The site was the United States' primary location for tests smaller than 1 Mt (4.2 PJ). One hundred twenty-six tests were conducted elsewhere, including most larger tests. Many of these occurred at the Pacific Proving Grounds in the Marshall Islands.
A pit crater (also called a subsidence crater or collapse crater) is a depression formed by a sinking or collapse of the surface lying above a void or empty chamber, rather than by the eruption of a volcano or lava vent. [15] Pit craters are found on Mercury, Venus, [16] [17] Earth, Mars, [18] and the Moon. [19]
A "surface collapse feature", also known as a subsidence crater, was formed by material collapsing into the cavity formed by the explosion. [ 5 ] : 8 Cannikin was intended to test the design of the Spartan anti-ballistic missile (ABM) interceptor – a high-yield warhead that "produced copious amounts of x-rays and minimized fission output and ...