Researchers have located the epicenter of an ancient meteorite impact along the Scottish coast, the largest impact in the British Isles.
The biggest meterorite ever to hit Britain has been traced to a spot under the sea between mainland Scotland and the Outer Hebrides. Evidence was first found near the Scottish town of Ullapool more than a decade ago, but the huge hollow left behind by the 13 billion ton space rock has now been pinpointed.
Over the last decade, researchers conducted field studies and analyzed rock samples in the lab. Their findings allowed them to identify the meteorite's exact point of impact. Which lies under the Minch, the rough sea that separates Lewis in the Outer Hebrides from the far Highlands of Scotland.
The 38,000 mph collision, which thumped a 12-mile-wide crater into the ground, happened 1.2bn years ago, when most life on Earth was still in the oceans and plants had yet to take root on land.
Lead author Dr Ken Amor, an earth scientist at the University of Oxford, said in a press release: ‘The material excavated during a giant meteorite impact is rarely preserved on Earth because it is rapidly eroded, so this is a really exciting discovery.
‘It was purely by chance this one landed in an ancient rift valley where fresh sediment quickly covered the debris to preserve it.
Previous researchers speculated that the distinctive red sandstone had come from a volcano, but Amor realised that “strange green blobs” in the rock resembled features of an impact crater that underlies the town of Nördlingen near the Danube in western Bavaria. Amor took samples of the SFM back to Oxford and found strong evidence of an asteroid strike: quartz crystals that had been deformed by the shock of an impact.
A view of the ‘shocked quartz’ which is evidence of the ancient asteroid impact (Photo: SWNS)
“The impact would have sent huge roiling clouds of dust and gas at several hundred degrees in all directions from the impact site,” said Amor.
The landscape would have looked a bit like Mars when it had water at the surface. Earth and other planets may have suffered a higher rate of meteorite impacts.
Scientists plan to continue surveying the region in order to more precisely characterise the nature of the ancient collision.
While the impact would have been dramatic, sending a mushroom cloud and fireball high into the sky, it was minor compared with the spectacular strike in Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula 66m years ago, when a space rock estimated at six to 50 miles wide put an end to the reign of the dinosaurs.
There is a possibility a similar event will happen in the future given the number of asteroid and comet fragments floating around in the solar system.
It is thought collisions with an object this size occur between once every 100,000 years to once every one million years – but estimates vary.