BU Researcher Discovers Sahara’s Largest Crater
Farouk El-Baz, director of the Center for Remote Sensing, discovered the largest crater of the Sahara.
For Farouk El-Baz, a research professor and director of the Center for Remote Sensing at BU, 2006 was a landmark year. While studying satellite images with a colleague, El-Baz discovered remnants of the largest crater of the Sahara — a crater likely formed tens of millions of years ago by a meteorite. Last month Science News deemed his discovery one of the top science news stories of the year.
The double-ringed crater, measuring 31 kilometers in width, is by far the largest ever found in the Sahara. Before El-Baz’s discovery, the desert’s largest known crater was roughly 12 kilometers wide. Fittingly, El-Baz named his crater Kebira, which means “large” in Arabic and also refers to the crater’s location in the Gilf Kebir region of Egypt.
Over the past three decades, El-Baz has studied major deserts around the world. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also a fellow of the Geological Society of America, which has established the Farouk El-Baz Award for Desert Research, to honor outstanding research in desert studies.
So how did Kebira elude scientists for so long? Because, El-Baz explains, locating a crater this size from the ground is relatively impossible, but satellite imaging now enables scientists to see what isn’t visible at the surface.
“Kebira may have escaped recognition because it is so large; equivalent to the total expanse of the Cairo urban region from its airport in the northeast to the pyramids of Giza in the southwest,” El-Baz says. “Also, the search for craters typically concentrates on small features, especially those that can be identified on the ground. The advantage of a view from space is that it allows us to see regional patterns and the big picture.”