North Sea Crater Linked to Asteroid Impact and Massive Tsunami
A decades-long mystery about the Silverpit Crater, a depression buried roughly 700 meters beneath the North Sea seabed, has been resolved. Scientists determined that the crater was formed when an asteroid approximately 160 meters wide struck Earth around 43–46 million years ago.
The impact ejected a column of rock and water about 1.5 kilometers into the air and triggered a tsunami more than 100 meters high. The findings provide evidence that even relatively small asteroid impacts can produce major geological and oceanographic effects.