He’s a natural-born search engine.
A Canadian man researching an upcoming camping trip via Google Maps has uncovered what experts believe to be a gigantic crater — left by an ancient space rock.
Joël Lapointe, of Quebec, was scanning through the true north’s Côte-Nord region when he saw a roughly nine-mile-wide pit on the satellite image service.
He passed along his findings to geophysicist Pierre Rochette, who told the Canadian Broadcasting Company the crater — surrounded by a small mountain ring — is “very suggestive of impact.”
After analyzing samples from the site, Rochette detected a mineral called zircon, which shifts in form after events such as meteor impacts.
While more work needs to be done, Rochette was quick to say Lapointe may have uncovered something “major.”
If confirmed, the site has the potential to show a “link between Earth and the outside universe,” Tara Hayden of Western University’s Earth Sciences department told the TV channel.
“It could tell us about when it was delivered to Earth,” Hayden added, noting the deposit could be from an ancient planet, or material from the solar system.
Her colleague, Gordon Osinski, also spoke to how modern mapping sites are enabling amateur and professional sleuths like Lapointe.
A “lot of geologists [are] looking around and occasionally making discoveries like this,” he said.
“It’s quite easy with Google Earth these days to go on and find structures that are circular or semi-circular in origin. You know, nine times out of 10 they’re not [craters],” added Osinski.
To find out more, Osinski and his team need to go through channels to have a field trip green-lit to the remote location. If it’s a go, this is one research exploration that will definitely rock, so to speak.
“It’s super exciting,” said Osinski, noting that only 200 craters have been uncovered, 31 of which are in Canada.
“It doesn’t happen too often.”