An Asteroid Fell into the North Sea, 130 km off the Yorkshire Coast

The dispute over the origin of the Silverpit crater went on for more than twenty years after its discovery. Scholars split into several camps: the first saw the trace of an asteroid, the second the shifting of underground salt layers, the third a volcanic collapse of the seabed. In 2009 the profession even put the matter to a vote, and the majority rejected the impact theory, which was finally confirmed only in 2026, by the research of a team from the University of Edinburgh.

The decisive evidence proved to be crystals of quartz and feldspar in samples from an old oil well. The collision of the asteroid with the planet is dated to 43 to 46 million years ago. The asteroid measured roughly 160 metres across. The impact raised a wall of rock and water a kilometre and a half high, which gave rise to a tsunami more than a hundred metres tall