Question

Chicxulub is a crater on the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. It was formed 6.5 × 107 years ago. Vredefort crater in South Africa was formed approximately 2 × 109 years ago. Sudbury Basin in Canada is a crater that formed approximately 1.8 × 109 years ago. Acraman crater in Australia was formed 5.8 × 108 years ago. Which crater is the oldest?

Answer 1

Answer: The oldest one is Vredfort Crater.

Step-by-step explanation:

The data is:

Chicxulub was formed 6.5x10^7 years ago.

Vredfort was formed 2x10^9 years ago.

Sudbury basin was formed 1.8x10^9 years ago.

Acraman crater was formed 5.8x10^8 years ago.

We want to find the oldest, so we need to find the larger number of the 4 we have.

For this, we need to see at the exponents, the larger the exponent the larger the number.

We have two with a 9 in the exponent:

Vredfort and Sudbury.

Now we look at the number, Vredfort has 2x10^9 and Sudbury has 1.8x10^9.

Both have the same exponent, but the scalar of Vredfort is larger (2 is greater than 1.8) so we have that Vredfort is older.

Answer 2

Answer: Vredefort

Step-by-step explanation: Vredefort is 2 billion years old unlike Chicxulub crater which is only 65 million years old.