About 35 million years ago, an asteroid collided with the ocean off the East Coast of North America, creating a 25-mile diameter crater now buried beneath the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia and Maryland. This catastrophic event triggered fires, earthquakes, molten glass droplets, an air blast, and a massive tsunami. The “Chesapeake Bay impact crater,” now entirely concealed, was discovered in the early 1990s through scientific drilling. It holds the title of the largest known impact crater in the U.S. and the 15th largest on Earth. The asteroid impact also produced an ejecta layer, which includes …