About 35 million years ago, a meteorite smashed into what is now the lower Chesapeake Bay with so much force that debris flew for thousands of miles.
This fall, scientists will try to figure out what else it did.
Researchers plan to drill more than a mile under the bay in Virginia to search for watery pockets of a prehistoric ocean, bacteria that thrive in boiling heat and clues about the meteorite that left a Rhode Island-sized dent in Earth's surface.
"Whatever we find is going to be interesting," said Charles Cockell, a professor of geomicrobiology at England's Open University.
Cockell, who met with U.S. scientists last month to discuss the drilling project, is coordinating the search for microscopic life amid the rocks and sediment that rushed into the crater in the moments after the impact.
Scientists believe that the mile-wide meteorite that splashed into the sea millions of years ago created a tsunami, shattered rocks and incinerated everything in its path as it plunged a mile below the surface.
"Material as big as houses flooded into the impact area," said Gregory S. Gohn, a U.S. Geological Survey geologist who is one of the scientists overseeing the project.
Since the bay impact crater was discovered in 1993, scientists have drilled at least 12 holes. But previous drilling projects were mainly designed to assess the crater's effect on groundwater supplies.
By going deeper and studying the microfossils, rocks and sediment they dig up, scientists hope to better determine how fast the meteorite was traveling, its size, its effect on surrounding rocks and whether it was an asteroid or comet.
More than 40 researchers from the United States, Austria, South Africa and Japan will also study the sediments and rocks to learn more about East Coast geology and Earth's climatic past. "It can tell us things about what sea levels and ice formations were like thousands of years ago and essentially how the climate has changed," said Kenneth Miller, chairman of geological sciences at Rutgers. He will examine rocks and sediment to look for patterns in Earth's climate history.
The $1.3 million drilling effort is being funded by the U.S. Geological Survey and the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program, a consortium of scientists that funds drilling projects at fault lines, volcanoes and craters around the world. Scientists will probably spend an additional $3 million conducting their own studies of the rocks and sediment dug up.
