He saw a suspicious pit on Google Maps. Experts say it could be a crater from an ancient space rock
CBC
When Joël Lapointe was wandering with his Google Maps cursor to plan his camping vacation in Quebec's Côte-Nord region, he stumbled across a pit.
About 15 kilometres in diameter, he said something about its curve seemed suspicious.
He then saw a ring of small mountains about eight kilometres in diameter surrounding Marsal Lake, about 100 kilometres north of the village of Magpie, Que.
Lapointe turned to professional researchers, eventually getting in touch with French geophysicist Pierre Rochette, who's now part of a team of scientists investigating the site as a potential meteorite impact crater.
"Looking at the topography, it's very suggestive of impact," said Rochette, with the Centre de recherche en géosciences de l'environnement in Aix-en-Provence, France.
Having already received samples from the site, Rochette says at least one contains zircon — a resistant mineral that transforms under the effect of an impact.
The analyses are encouraging, but not yet conclusive.
He says the discovery of such a site would be "major" since the last meteorite of this size was discovered in 2013.
Formed when a meteorite crashes into the surface of a planet at thousands of kilometres per hour, an impact crater is forged from shockwaves which melt and recrystallize rock, according to NASA.
Some craters can date back millions or even a hundred million years, says Tara Hayden, postdoctoral associate at Western University's department of Earth sciences.
She says the meteorites can vary in type and could come from ancient planets, or some of the earliest solar system material.
"It could tell us about when it was delivered to Earth," said Hayden. "That's the wonderful thing about impact craters. We get to have this link between Earth and the outside universe."
Thirty-one of the world's nearly 200 confirmed impact craters are in Canada, says Gordon Osinski, an Earth sciences professor at Western University.
He says they're often found in older rocks and nearly a third of these sites are in Quebec.
This story is part of CBC Health's Second Opinion, a weekly analysis of health and medical science news emailed to subscribers on Saturday mornings. If you haven't subscribed yet, you can do that by clicking here.
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