Clearwater Lakes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Clearwater Lakes as seen from space shuttle (North lies roughly to the bottom left)
Clearwater Lakes as seen from space shuttle (North lies roughly to the bottom left)

The Clearwater Lakes (officially known by their French name, Lac à l'Eau Claire [1]) are a pair of circular lakes on the Canadian Shield in Quebec, Canada, near Hudson Bay.

The lakes fill depressions that are interpreted as paired impact craters (astroblemes).[1] The eastern and western craters are 26 km and 36 km in diameter, respectively. Each crater has same age, 290 ± 20 million years (Permian), and it is believed that they formed simultaneously. The impactors may have been gravitationally bound as a binary asteroid. This suggestion was first made by Thomas William Hamilton in a letter to Sky & Telescope magazine in support the then-controversial theory that asteroids may possess moons.[citation needed]

The lakes are actually a single body of water with a sprinkling of islands forming a "dotted line" between the eastern and western parts. The name is due to the clear water it holds. There are actually 25 lakes of that name in the province (26 if you count the "Petit lac à l'Eau Claire" —the "Small Clearwater Lake"). These are the largest and northernmost.

  1. ^ Robertson, P.B. & Grieve, R.A.F. 1975 Impact structures in Canada: Their recognition and characteristics. Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, v. 69, pp. 1-21.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Coordinates: 56°6′N 74°18′W

Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.