The Three Anniversaries of The Ries Crater

Springe direkt zu: Inhalt

Service-Navigation

• The Discovery 1960
• Apollo Astronaut Training 1970
• Ries Crater Museum 1990

Grafischer Identitätsbereich:

• Images

Ries Crater Museum 1990

The Ries Crater Museum was opened on May 6, 1990, after 3 years of planning and constructing. It is located in an old barn of 1503 which was rebuilt for the purpose of the museum by the city architect of Nördlingen, Ottmar Strauß. The idea of establishing a special geological museum at Nördlingen was initiated by amateur geologists, i.e. members of the Kavasch family, by the Lord Mayor of Nördlingen, Paul Kling, and by scientists working at the Ries crater, especially by the Institute of Planetology of the University of Münster. The exhibition was produced by a team of specialists from Stuttgart (Schober and Reinhardt Co., architect H.G. Merz, and video specialist Volker Lang), in close cooperation with Andreas Müller and Dieter Stöffler from the Institute of Planetology, Münster.

The central idea of the Ries Crater Museum was to put the Ries impact crater in the context of the collisional processes acting in the planetary system since 4.6 billion years and to show that the Ries crater is no longer the “Sphinx of European Geology” but rather a perfect example for a process which affected all planetary bodies of the solar system and had a major influence on the geological evolution of these bodies. The exhibition of the museum is divided into 6 sections on two floors as shown in the Figure. Hall F has been completely renovated in 2004 - 2005 and reopened on July 19, 2006. The Museum has attracted visitors from all over the world and kept a high level of visibility with a rather constant number of some 40000 to 50000 visitors per years.

The Ries Crater Museum is administrated by the City of Nördlingen and the “Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns” (State Collections of Natural Science of Bavaria) at Munich.

Cross section and floor plan of the Ries Crater Museum, Nördlingen. Halls A, B, C, D, E, and F are devoted to different topics of impact cratering in the planetary system and to the Ries crater itself. A = Introduction to the Ries crater, B = Impact craters on planetary surfaces, impactors and meteorites, impact craters on Earth, C = The Ries area before the impact; physics of crater formation, impact metamorphism of rocks, D = Movie show on the formation of the Ries crater, impactites of the ries, geophysics of the Ries crater, age dating of the Ries event, E = the Ries area after the catastrophe, the Ries lake, economic use of Ries rocks as building material and raw material for the cement production, F – Impact rate in the Earth-moon system as a function of time, effects of impacts on the biosphere, history of Ries research, exhibition of a lunar rock from the Apollo 16 mission.