Scientists Discover Giant Sand Bodies Beneath the North Sea

Scientists have discovered hundreds of giant sand bodies beneath the North Sea that appear to defy fundamental geological principles and could have important implications for energy and carbon storage.

Using high-resolution 3D seismic (sound wave) imaging, combined with data and rock samples from hundreds of wells, researchers from The University of Manchester in collaboration with industry, identified vast mounds of sand—some several kilometers wide—that appear to have sunk downward, displacing older, lighter and softer materials from beneath them.

The result is stratigraphic inversion—a reversal of the usual geological order in which younger rocks are typically deposited on top of older ones—on a previously unseen scale.

While stratigraphic inversion has previously been observed at small scales, the structures discovered by the Manchester team, now named "sinkites," are the largest example of the phenomenon documented so far.

The finding, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, challenges scientists understanding of the subsurface and could have implications for carbon storage.

“This discovery reveals a geological process we haven’t seen before on this scale," said lead author Professor Mads Huuse from The University of Manchester. "What we’ve found are structures where dense sand has sunk into lighter sediments that floated to the top