Marla Carter, age 13, of Longview, Wash., for her question:

WHERE IS THE WORLD'S LARGEST METEORITE CRATER?

A meteorite is a chunk of metallic or stony material that travels in an orbit around the sun. Sometimes one will hit the earth's atmosphere and blaze for a few seconds, becoming what we call a shooting or falling star. Occasionally one will hit the earth's surface.

In the 1950s, scientists discovered what may be the earth's largest meteorite crater. It is a wide depression on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay in Canada. It is 400 miles wide.

Canada also has four other giant sized craters that were found in the 1950s. One at Deep Bay, Saskatchewan, is seven to eight miles wide. The Chubb cratir;",which is two miles wide, is in the Ungava Peninsula. Two are in Ontario: a two mile wide crater at Brent and a crater measuring a mile and a half wide at Holleford.

Between Flagstaff and Winslow in Arizona is a crater simply called the Meteor Crater. It is about 4,150 feet wide and 570 feet deep. Its rim towers more than 150 feet above the surrounding ground level. Scientists believe that a meteorite struck the earth here about 50,000 years ago and dug the gigantic hole.