There was an article on Digg.com this weekend about an fellow who discovered 2 previously undiscovered meteor impacts with Google Earth.

 

Well, I'm a big fan of Google Earth and Maps, and very interested in both Geology and Astronomy, so I thought I'd try my hand at the same thing. Within a matter of hours, I had found my candidate landform.It wasn't very hard, basically I panned around the Saharan region of africa with Google Maps. I would have used Google Earth if it worked under Linux, because Google Earth has automatic panning.

The candidate structure I found is a 4m structure with concentric rings and what appears to be a raised central hump. I believe I ruled out any volcanic origin as there is no sign of activity in the immediate area.

I double checked the object against both the The Earth Impact Database at the University of New Brunswick, Canada, as well as the Ernstson-Claudin Impact Structures database. Neither had the object listed.

I then proceeded to e-mail Ernstson and Claudin, who replied very promptly and asked for screen caps of from Google maps.

After a day, this was their response:

Dear Liem, you have reason...is a circular structure with rings....The problem is the size....In the earth, the transitional size - the diameter limit between simple and complex structures - is expected around 4 km.... Your structure have a diameter placed around 4 Km (and shows clear multiple rings......). In the image 3, you can observe that is a depressed zone because many rivers flow from the left zone (zone of black mountains or hills) to the right upper corner...The structure disrupts the geological tendency of the zone....and the central zone of the structure seems uplifted.....It's difficult to see if the layers dip radially from the center..... According to all: difficult to decide. His diameter not points to a complex structure, but you can see many rings (3 as minimum); disrupts the geological trend in the zone; have and uplifted central zone ..... The best solution: go to the field and try to decide according to the outcrops.... Remember that this kind of structures, as in this case, could be produced bysalt diapirs, volcanic domes or cone sheets (with rings of injected material; the only problem in this case is the uplifted central zone...), and impact process.... Well, I can't see more.....In any case the best is go to the field......

Thank you for send me the images and greetings,

Ferran

So, its not a confirmation, honestly I didn't expect one, I already understood that such a confirmation would require field work and direct investigation of the affected area, but it wasn't a flat-out "no". I was on the right track and I did find the right features that could have been produced my a meteor impact.

As expected, since the story was "Dugg", people by the hundreds are apparently now inundating researchers with 'circular features' of every kind. I am glad that my contribution was at least better than the first round feature that I came across. So here are the images I did find: