A decades-long scientific debate over the origins of the Silverpit Crater in the southern North Sea has been resolved. New evidence confirms that it was caused by an asteroid or comet impact about 43–46 million years ago.
A team led by Dr. Uisdean Nicholson from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh used seismic imaging, microscopic analysis of rock cuttings and numerical models to provide the strongest evidence yet that Silverpit is one of Earth's rare impact craters. Their findings are published in Nature Communications.
The Silverpit Crater sits 700 meters below the seabed in the North Sea, about 80 miles off the coast of Yorkshire.
Since its discovery in 2002, the 3 km–wide crater, which is surrounded by a 20 km–wide zone of circular faults, has been at the center of a heated debate among geologists.
One of the big obstacles when searching for astroblemes (a scar on the earth's crust made by the impact of a meteorite*) is how much of the planet is under water.
* Let me whine. A meteorite is was we call it after impact. The scar is made by the impact of a meteor.
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