New research has confirmed that the Silverpit Crater, buried beneath the southern North Sea, was created by a hypervelocity impact about 43 to 46 million years ago. The findings resolve a long-running scientific debate over the crater's origins.
A team led by Dr Uisdean Nicholson of Heriot-Watt University, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, combined seismic imaging, micros by Sophie Jenkins
London, UK (SPX) Sep 25, 2025
New research has confirmed that the Silverpit Crater, buried beneath the southern North Sea, was created by a hypervelocity impact about 43 to 46 million years ago. The findings resolve a long-running scientific debate over the crater's origins.
A team led by Dr Uisdean Nicholson of Heriot-Watt University, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, combined seismic imaging, microscopic rock analysis and numerical modelling to prove the crater's impact origin. Silverpit, discovered in 2002, is three kilometres wide and encircled by a 20 km fault zone, located 700 metres beneath the seabed, about 80 miles off Yorkshire.
Early studies proposed an asteroid strike, citing its central peak, circular outline and concentric faults. However, rival theories suggested salt tectonics or seabed collapse from volcanism. In 2009, a Geoscientist magazine poll of geologists largely rejected the impact idea.
The new work overturned that consensus. Seismic data and oil well samples revealed rare shocked quartz and feldspar crystals, which only form under extreme pressures caused by impacts. "These prove the impact crater hypothesis beyond doubt," said Dr Nicholson. "We were exceptionally lucky to find these - a real needle-in-a-haystack effort."
The team's modelling indicates a 160-metre-wide asteroid struck the seabed from the west, producing a 1.5 km high curtain of rock and water that collapsed into a tsunami over 100 metres high.
Professor Gareth Collins of Imperial College London, who provided the numerical models, recalled the 2009 vote. "I always thought that the impact hypothesis was the simplest explanation," he said. "It is very rewarding to have finally found the silver bullet."
Dr Nicholson emphasised Silverpit's rarity. "Hypervelocity impact craters are exceptionally uncommon and well preserved examples even more so. Around 200 are confirmed on land and just 33 under the oceans. Earth's tectonics and erosion erase most traces of such events."
The confirmation places Silverpit alongside impact structures such as Chicxulub in Mexico and the recently confirmed Nadir Crater off West Africa. The discovery provides new insight into planetary processes and highlights the risks of future asteroid collisions with Earth.
Research Report:The silver bullet - new evidence for a hypervelocity impact origin for the Silverpit Crater
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