Ancient asteroid crater located off coast of Scotland
Ancient asteroid crater located off coast of Scotland
Space object about a mile wide believed to have crashed into Earth around 1.2bn years ago
Ian Sample Science editor
@iansample
Sun 9 Jun 2019 19.01 EDT
The location of an ancient impact crater made by the biggest asteroid ever to hit Britain has been traced to a spot under the sea between mainland Scotland and the Outer Hebrides.
Researchers at Oxford and Aberdeen universities found signs of the violent collision in Scotland on a field trip in 2008, but have only now pinpointed where the asteroid came down.
Tests on rocks near Ullapool in north-west Scotland revealed that an object about a mile wide had crashed into a spot in the Minch, a strait that separates the mainland and northern Inner Hebrides from Lewis and Harris, six miles west of the village of Lochinver.
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. At the time, what is now Scotland was a semi-arid land that lay close to the equator.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jun/10/ancient-asteroid-crater-off-coast-scotland
