The most fascinating stories can be found in unexpected places, even in Google’s mapping services. Maps and Street View have been in the spotlight a few times in recent years, but what happened in the Côte-Nord region of Quebec, Canada, is quite unusual. What’s more, the discovery is so astonishing that several scientists have visited the area to determine whether it’s otherworldly.
The discovery. It all started when hiker Joël Lapointe was planning a camping trip in the region and came across an unusual sight on Google Maps: a massive hole. The images showed a clearly strange structure.
Further investigation revealed a giant spherical structure about 9 miles wide, surrounded by a ring of small mountains approximately 5 miles in diameter, enclosing Marsal Lake, 60 miles north of the village of Magpie. This perplexing find led him to seek professional help to solve the mystery.
Science comes to the rescue. Lapointe finally contacted Pierre Rochette, a geophysicist at the European Center for Research and Teaching in Environmental Geosciences in France, for help in identifying the strange structure. Upon receiving the coordinates, Rochette was impressed.
The geophysicist quickly assembled a scientific team, and they headed to the site to investigate what was clearly shown on the Google app. Rochette had an idea of its possible origin, but he needed to be on the ground to verify his hypotheses.
A celestial object. Upon arrival, everything started to make sense. “Looking at the topography, it’s very suggestive of impact,” Rochette said. Intrigued, the geophysicist and his colleagues took a closer look at the area and now believe that the ring of small mountains surrounding the lake may have been misclassified in the past.
“This formation, interpreted as a volcanoclastic diatreme formation named Marsal breccia, in an area devoid of post-Grenvillian magmatism (the nearest one, the Sept-Iles complex is 160 km away) is, in fact, more in agreement with a crater floor clast-poor melt rock, quite similar to the Mistastin and Janisjarvi cases,” the team states in a new paper.
The clues. The researchers explain that the area shows no signs of a gravitational anomaly, meaning that there are no indications of stronger or weaker gravity than expected based on the amount of mass in the area. However, they believe that the data isn’t precise enough to distinguish an anomaly smaller than 6-9 miles (10-15 kilometers) in diameter, requiring more field work.
Despite this, thanks to Lapointe, the clues are promising. Scientists suggest that the hiker may have discovered an ancient impact event while browsing Google Maps. Analysis of samples taken from the site revealed silicates, abundant magnetite, sulfides, and zircons, all of which are indications of impact-melted rock. Based on erosion levels, the researchers estimate that the impact may have taken place between 450 and 38 million years ago.
A final conclusion (almost, at least). Based on the preliminary evidence already available, “Lake Marsal seems to be a serious candidate to become the 11th confirmed impact structure from Quebec... Confirmation of impact origin may be gained from the available sampling or else may wait for a future dedicated expedition,” the researchers state.
According to NASA, an impact crater is formed when a meteorite crashes into the surface of a planet at thousands of miles per hour, causing shock waves that melt and recrystallize the rock. The final conclusion may come with the next explorations already planned in the area for 2025.
Image | Carlsbad Caverns National Park (via Facebook)
View 0 comments