On October 21, 2026, scientists confirmed the buried Silverpit Crater off Yorkshire was carved by a 160-meter asteroid 43 million years ago, ending a 20-year argument over whether it was an impact at all.
The October 21, 2026 announcement from Heriot-Watt University: seismic imaging and shocked crystals finally pin the Silverpit Crater on a hypervelocity impact.
First spotted in 2002 in oil-industry seismic data, this 3 km structure 700 m below the seabed split geologists for two decades: impact, salt movement, or collapsed volcano?
In 2009 a vote of geologists mostly rejected the impact idea. Space.com lays out how new 3D seismic data and rock samples flipped the verdict.
Models of the low-angle strike throw up a 1.5 km curtain of rock and water and a wave over 100 meters high that swamped the Eocene coastline in minutes.
Two tiny grains of shocked quartz and feldspar from a nearby oil well sealed the case. These scrambled crystals only form under the pressures of a cosmic impact or a nuclear blast.
Silverpit's asteroid was a pebble next to Chicxulub, the 180 km scar off Mexico left by the impact that ended the Age of Dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
Kurzgesagt on what it would actually take to deflect an incoming rock, and why some killer asteroids are spotted only days before a flyby.