Man Discovers Ancient Asteroid Crash Site While Planning a Camping Trip

A man may have discovered the site where an asteroid once hit Earth, as he spotted a suspicious pit while exploring Google Maps. 

Joël Lapointe was planning his camping holiday in the Côte-Nord region in Quebec, Canada, when he found the pit on Maps. 

The spherical pit found was approximately 9.3 miles (15 km) across and surrounds Marsal Lake in Quebec. Lapointe noticed that the pit had an unusual look and after seeing the spherical landscape he decided to contact researchers including Pierre Rochette, geologist from the Centre de recherche en géosciences de l’environnement (CEREGE) in Aix-en-Provence, France, to discuss the site. 

Researchers concluded that an ancient asteroid impact event may have caused this site and that an ancient meteor could be to blame.

One of the Few Maps Discoveries

A lot of people find craters and abnormalities on Google Maps, but they are normally false alarms. This isn’t the case with this particular discovery:

“Looking at the topography, it’s very suggestive of impact,” Rochette told CBC.

NASA explains that 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 and craters may be millions of years old.

The expert Pierre Rochette has already obtained samples from the site and there are reports of zircon being found, this is a durable mineral that changes under the force of an impact.

It is unknown what the cause was at this moment, but Rochette has explained that the last meteorite of this magnitude was found over 10 years ago.

Earth sciences professor at Western University in Canada, Gordon Osinski explained just how rare this sort of discovery is on Google Maps.

“It’s quite easy with Google Earth these days to go on and find structures that are circular or semi-circular in origin,” Osinki said.

“You know, nine times out of 10 they’re not [craters]. It’s super exciting. It doesn’t happen too often.”

Full tests will be carried out before it can be concluded what actually caused this crater and how old it may be.