Now, a team led by Uisdean Nicholson<\/a> of Heriot-Watt University in Scotland has solved the mystery at last. Using modern 3D seismic imaging and drill cuttings from a 1980s oil well, the researchers pieced together the clearest picture yet of the crater, confirming its asteroid impact <\/a>origin.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n Simulation of an asteroid impact | Heriot-Watt University – YouTube Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n “Silverpit is a rare and exceptionally preserved hypervelocity impact crater,” Nicholson said in a statement<\/a>. “We can use these findings to understand how asteroid impacts shaped our planet throughout history, as well as predict what could happen should we have an asteroid collision in future.”<\/p>\n The new seismic data provided an “unprecedented look” at the structure, revealing unmistakable impact features, including a central uplift, an encircling moat, shattered rock zones and even smaller “secondary craters” carved by falling debris, the study reports. The pattern of faults around the crater \u2014 with rocks pulled apart on the west side and compressed on the east \u2014 suggests the asteroid slammed in from the west at a shallow angle, researchers say.<\/p>\n Microscopic analyses of drill samples were the smoking gun: rare grains of quartz and feldspar etched with microscopic scars that form only under the extreme pressures of a hypervelocity impact, not by any Earth-bound process.<\/p>\n “We were exceptionally lucky to find these \u2014 a real ‘needle-in-a-haystack’ effort,” Nicholson said in the statement. “These prove the impact crater hypothesis beyond doubt, because they have a fabric that can only be created by extreme shock pressures.”<\/p>\n Computer models that built on the evidence suggest the impactor was an asteroid<\/a> about 175 yards (160 meters) across \u2014 roughly the length of one and a half football fields \u2014 traveling at more than 9 miles per second (15 kilometers per second). The strike blasted a 1-mile-high (1.5-kilometer-high) plume of rock and seawater into the sky before collapsing into a tsunami<\/a> more than 109 yards (100 meters) tall.<\/p>\n The seismic record also shows the event took place during the middle Eocene<\/a>, between 43 million and 46 million years ago.<\/p>\n The debate over the crater’s origins came to a head in 2009 at a Geological Society meeting in London, where the vast majority of the geologist attendees voted for the non-impact origin.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n “For many, that was the final word,” Nicholson reflected<\/a> in a separate post on Springer Nature’s “Behind the Paper,” where researchers recount the backstory of their research. “I must admit that I had bought into the prevailing wisdom that the structure had a much more mundane origin, and that the evidence was stacked against it.”<\/p>\n Two decades after Silverpit was discovered, Nicholson and colleagues revisited the controversy almost by chance. In 2022, fresh off the discovery of the Nadir Crater<\/a> off West Africa, the team received a tip from a colleague at the North Sea Transition Authority urging them to take another look at Silverpit, the post says.<\/p>\n Examining old seismic records and new data from high-resolution surveys, drill cuttings and impact simulations, the team found converging evidence that Silverpit was carved by a violent asteroid strike, not mundane geology.<\/p>\n “I always thought that the impact hypothesis was the simplest explanation and most consistent with the observations,” study co-author Gareth Collins<\/a>, who is a professor of planetary science at the Imperial College London, said in the statement. “It is very rewarding to have finally found the silver bullet.”<\/p>\n The crater’s unusual preservation, including a flat-topped, pitted central uplift that may record intense chemical reactions immediately after the strike, makes it especially valuable to science, researchers say.<\/p>\n
\n![\"Simulation](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758840548_681_maxresdefault.jpg\")
<\/p>\n