Crater Of Biggest Asteroid To Hit Britain Found In Scotland

After over a decade of searching, a team of researchers have finally located the impact crater left by the biggest asteroid to hit Great Britain. According to the researchers, they were able to pinpoint the crater’s location by studying the surrounding area.

The researchers, led by Dr. Ken Amor of Oxford, detailed their findings in a new study published in the Journal of the Geological Society.

According to Amor’s team, the crater is located underwater between Scotland and the Outer Hebrides. The researchers were led to this location after studying rock formations on the side of The Minch, a strait located in northwest Scotland.

Amor noted that his team first found traces of an asteroid impact during a field trip in the area in 2008. During the trip, they discovered reddish rock formations that contained green blobs. They then discovered quartz crystals within the rocks that were deformed due to a huge impact.

Aside from these, Amor and his team also discovered traces of palladium and platinum, which are metals that are commonly found in meteorites.

After analyzing the content of the rocks, the researchers focused on the surrounding area. Specifically, they studied the orientation of the rocks as well as traces of debris and dust to trace the origin of the impact.

“If you imagine debris flowing out in a big cloud across the landscape, hugging the ground, eventually that material slows down and comes to rest,” Amor told BBC. “But it’s the stuff out in front that stops first while the stuff behind is still pushing forward and it overlaps what’s in front.”

This led them to a crater 12 miles wide that’s under 200 meters of water and sediment. Based on the size of the crater as well as the samples taken in the surrounding area, Amor concluded that a mile-wide asteroid crashed on Earth. Amor noted that the huge space rock was travelling around 38,000 miles per hour before it crashed.

Fortunately, the impact event happened about 1.2 billion years ago. Back then, the only signs of life on Earth were the organisms in the oceans and plants.