3d rendering, Meteor asteroid impact the ocean
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The Silverpit Crater is situated in the Silverpit Basin in the southern North Sea, off the eastern coast of the U.K. The crater was first identified from seismic data in 2002, as a 3 to 8 kilometers-wide basin buried under 400 to 500 meters of sediment.
The origin of the crater has been a topic of dispute over the last two decades, with its formation instead being attributed to a salt diapir or linked to volcanism.
In a new study, researchers from the U.K. and U.S. used seismic surveys, petrographic and biostratigraphic data, and numerical impact simulations to test the impact hypothesis.
The seismic data provide exceptional imaging of the entire impact structure, confirming the presence of a central uplift, where the chalk bedrock rebounded in response to an object slamming into the ground, a circular damage zone, and numerous secondary craters.
Three-dimensional model showing the crater surrounded by concentric faults forming a damage zone around the impact site.
Springer Nature
Microscopic analysis of debris recovered from the seabed revealed feldspar and quartz grains with a parallel fracture pattern. This indicates a sudden and enormous burst of energy as experienced during a hypervelocity impact by an extraterrestrial object.
The scientists used microfossils to date the sedimentary rocks covering the crater, concluding that the impact occurred during the middle Eocene, between 43 to 46 million years ago.
So far, there are 190 confirmed impact craters on Earth. This is a surprisingly low number; the Moon alone is dotted with over 30,000 craters. On Earth, erosion and tectonic activity tends to erase any traces of an extraterrestrial impact.
The full study, “Multiple lines of evidence for a hypervelocity impact origin for the Silverpit Crater,” was published in the journal nature communications and can be found online here.
Additional material and interviews provided by Springer Nature.