Silverpit Crater Latest News
New research has confirmed that the Silverpit Crater was formed by a massive asteroid impact millions of years ago.
About Silverpit Crater
- Location: It lies about 700 meters beneath the seabed in the North Sea, roughly 80 miles off the coast of Yorkshire, United Kingdom.
- Silverpit is buried under a huge layer of sediment and was only discovered in 2002.
- Formation: It was formed by a high-velocity space rock striking the seabed roughly 43 to 46 million years ago.
- Scientific Evidence: Researchers identified “shocked” quartz and feldspar crystals in rock samples from a nearby oil well that only form under the extreme shock pressures of a high-velocity space impact.
Features of Silverpit Crater
- It measures roughly three kilometres wide and is surrounded by a ring of circular faults stretching nearly 20 kilometres across.
- It consists of a set of concentric faults up to 20 km in diameter in the southern North Sea.
- It is a rare and exceptionally well-preserved hypervelocity impact crater.
- Its round shape and central peak resembled classic impact craters.
Source: ET
Last updated on August, 2026
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