Scientists at the Tucson Institute of Planetology have discovered that megatsunamis on Mars may have been caused by an asteroid impact similar to the dinosaur-killing Chicxulub. The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Combining data from several rovers, scientists analyzed maps of the Martian surface and identified an impact crater that may have formed during a collision with a large asteroid. The crater, which they named Pohl, is 110 kilometers in diameter and is located in the northern lowland region that may have been covered by the ocean, according to previous surveys. The authors suggest that the Pole may have formed about 3.4 billion years ago – this estimate is given by the age of the rocks found here.

The authors simulated an asteroid impact and found that the effects of the predicted impact could be similar to the impact of the Chicxulub asteroid on Earth. As previous studies had predicted, Chicxulub pierced a temporary crater 100 kilometers in diameter on Earth, 200 meters deep at sea level, and also caused a 200-meter-high megatsunami on land.

The simulations showed that, depending on the size of the asteroid, it released 0.5-13 million megatons of energy, in the equivalent of TNT, on impact with Mars. For comparison, the amount of energy released by the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear bomb ever tested, was about 57 megatons in TNT equivalent. The megatsunami caused by the asteroid about 250 meters high reached 1500 kilometers from where the asteroid hit.