In a fascinating discovery, a Canadian man stumbled upon a mysterious, massive hole while browsing Google Maps. According to CBS News, Joel Lapointe discovered this while he was browsing the map of Quebec's Cote-Nord in Canada while planning a camping trip. As he zoomed in on the unusual feature, he stumbled upon a mysterious, spherical pit approximately 9.3 miles (15 km) across, surrounding Marsal Lake. The shape and symmetry of the formation caught his attention, and he wondered if it could be a natural phenomenon or something more extraordinary.
Mr Lapoite then reached out to experts for guidance and connected with French geophysicist Pierre Rochette, who is now leading a team of scientists to investigate the site as a potential meteorite impact crater. "The topography is very suggestive of an impact," Mr Rochette noted.
The team has already received samples from the site, and preliminary analysis reveals that at least one contains zircon, a mineral that transforms the intense pressure and heat of a meteorite impact. Mr Rochette said the discovery of such a site would be "major" since the last meteorite of this size was discovered in 2013.
While the initial findings suggest that the crater may have been formed by an ancient meteorite impact, experts are still waiting for the results of all the ongoing tests and analyses before making a definitive statement.
According to NASA, an impact crater is formed when an object like an asteroid or meteorite crashes into the surface of a larger solid object like a planet or a moon. Tara Hayden, a postdoctoral associate at Western University's Department of Earth Sciences, noted that some craters can have origins dating back millions or even hundreds of millions of years. The meteorites that form these craters can be diverse in type and may have originated from ancient planets or even some of the earliest materials from the solar system.
"It could tell us about when it was delivered to Earth. That's the wonderful thing about impact craters. We get to have this link between Earth and the outside universe,'' Ms Hayden said.
