Discovering new places on Google Maps has become a hobby of sorts for a lot of people, with many people trying their luck to find something unexplainable or mysterious on this scavenger hunt. This is exactly what happened with a Redditor who came across a mysterious black hole in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on Google Maps.
The reddit user kokoblocks posted a photo of the mysterious hole in the Google Maps subreddit (Yes, there’s a whole subreddit dedicated to the mysterious Google Maps findings because why not?) to get an explanation for the weird anomaly from the users. “What the f— is that? This looks nothing like an island,” is how she posed her question for the community. (they’re teenagers, cut them some slack).
Different people had different opinions about the true nature of the picture, which ranged from answers posted just for laughs to actual logical explanations. “Obviously Hollow Earth entrance. Duh,” one user replied, referring to the Hollow Earth theory that says the Earth is, well, hollow. “Looks censored for some reason,” one user said with other users concurring. “My first thought was that it’s censored,” another user replied. “It wouldn’t make sense for a natural formation to be black like that in such a shallow, small atoll/island.” Google Maps is known for blurring out sensitive areas such as military bases and an island airbase in the Pacific Ocean wouldn’t be too surprising. Some people also suggested a natural explanation for the picture, including volcanic rock.
Turns out, the black hole in the ocean is actually the island of Vostok, a few hundred miles south of Hawai’i. The island only looks black from that high up but is a pretty normal island up close. “What you see as black is actually very dark green, it’s a very dense forest made up of Pisonia trees,” one Redditor explained.
We’re glad that someone was able to debunk the mystery behind the black hole picture or else it would have given rise to a new controversial topic for people to talk about (Or who knows, maybe the answer for just to cover things up from finding the real deal?)