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back to article UK's biggest meteorite impact rocked Scotland

It's lucky for the good burghers of Ullapool in Scotland that they weren't around 1.2 billion years ago, because it was around then that the biggest meteorite ever to hit the British Isles would have made a bit of a dent in local house prices. That's according to the combined forces of the University of Oxford and the …

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  1. Pete
    Flame

    "would have seen quite a show"...

    ... before suffering various horrible things like being melted, seared, sandblasted and pulped. Quite a show indeed...

    flame because it looks vaguely like the moment of impact

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The up side

    Mass destruction can only have improved the look of the village.

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  3. Andy
    Coat

    Not another Northern Rock story...

    Coat already on...

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re : The up side

    Are you sure anyone would really notice their?

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  5. Christopher Reeve's Horse
    Pirate

    Bug Invasion?

    "I'm from Buenos Aires, and I say kill 'em all!"

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  6. Slaine
    Flame

    PMSL Andy - oops - more wee

    "threw material over an area 50km across" - That wouldn't even reach Inverness so there's absolutely no possibility of any harm being done then, or even today - except possibly to a couple of fish farms who, lets face it, could probably do with the insurance money about now.

    Apologies to anyone living North or West of Inverness - life is hard enough without escapees like me pretending that there's no electricity north of Edinburgh.

    Mine's the one with a predatory micro-organism living in it.

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  7. Darkside
    Alien

    Conspiracy !

    At that date, Scotland was near the Antarctic, in the barren heart of a vast supercontinent where the technologically-advanced giant clams were just on the point of wiping each other out in a war to end wars.

    Until now the Government has covered this up because the clams

    ++ NO SIGNAL ++

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Ahhh...

    Now we know where the Scots came from.

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    It's likely the Nu Insect Overlords

    have evolved their targeting since then. OK boys, down a bit, a bit more, now go right. Fire when you're ready. That will be the Lothian Question settled then.

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Improving Look

    Mass destruction can only have improved the look of the village.

    Well perhaps. There are still some nice places which have not been touristed into oblivion... Serves as a great base though...

    Im off to Submarine watch now...

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  11. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    @Ahhh...

    "Now we know where the Scots came from."

    So superior beings did come from outer space...

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  12. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Meteorite hits Scotland!!

    Resulting in it being in the news for the first time since Braveheart was released :)

    Paris--because she could teach the Scots a thing or two about how to get publicity :)

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  13. The Prevaricator
    Paris Hilton

    pedantism alert...

    "threw material over an area 50km across"

    Does this mean that the ejecta reached 25 km away from the impact?

    What about the Silverpit crater? Or has this been discredited as an impact crater? That crater alone is 3 km wide, with rings extending out to 10 km. Usually ejecta from an impact crater reaches distances hundreds of times the crater diameter.

    Maybe I've misunderstood something...

    PH, as she knows how to make an impact.

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  14. ck
    Coat

    Did it drown out the whining?

    I bet even that didn't stop the miserable Scots whining about how much they hate the English, and how anything south of Hadrian's wall, especially London, sucks.

    My coat, because it's grim up North.

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  15. Shaun
    Go

    new icon

    I am hereby formally requesting a Groundskeeper Willy icon to be added to the bunch

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  16. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Halo

    But this is only...

    ...just the side effect of an extreme event in the Highland games.

    That's me by the way.

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  17. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    @ ck

    ck: "I bet even that didn't stop the miserable Scots whining about how much they hate the English, and how anything south of Hadrian's wall, especially London, sucks."

    So, are you saying that London ISN'T an overcrowded, overpriced, and overrated shit-hole, that is primarily populated by 'foreigners' (Scots included)?

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  18. Scott
    Paris Hilton

    Remember to forget

    The sound of all their voices echoed down through eternity; Serves those dumb squatters right! This is just the beginning of the end hhrrmmpphhh! who did those bacteria think they were anyway! an amoeba or something!?!

    PH because who else?

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  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @The Prevaricator @Slaine

    Silverpit is still not confirmed as an impact crater (and probably won't be unless someone stumps up the readies to drill it). There are problems with it being an impact structure because it doesn't resemble anything else on Earth - multiring craters such as those seen on the Moon and the Galilean moons of Jupiter are usually orders of magnitude larger than Silverpit.

    There is a plausible alternative hypothesis that it is nothing more than a collapse caused by the withdrawal of the underlying Zechstein salt deposits.

    @Slaine

    Some of the reports are putting this as a 145 gigatonne explosion, it would have thrown enough crap into the air to darken the skies across the entire Northern Hemisphere, so yes, the good burghers of Inverness would have had plenty to worry about.

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