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Planetary science

Impacts in the round

Nature volume 418, pages 487–488 (2002)Cite this article

A well-preserved crater has been identified deep beneath the bed of the North Sea. It may well have been produced by the impact of an extraterrestrial body some 60 million years ago.

The North Sea, off Britain's eastern seaboard, has proved a rich source of oil and gas. Much time and money has been spent in surveying the area, but a different kind of payoff is described by Stewart and Allen on page 520 of this issue1. They have revisited seismic reflection data, obtained in the early 1990s from an area about 130 kilometres offshore from the Humber estuary. From their analysis, they conclude that beneath 40 metres of sea water and a further few hundred metres of sediments lies an impact crater that is some 20 kilometres in diameter and has a multi-ring structure.

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Figure 1: The main types of impact structure, as currently defined from studies of the Earth and Moon.

References

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  1. the Planetary and Space Science Centre, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, E3B 5A3, New Brunswick, Canada

    John G. Spray

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  1. John G. Spray
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Correspondence to John G. Spray.

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Spray, J. Impacts in the round. Nature 418, 487–488 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/418487a

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