A Teen Discovered An Ancient Mayan City By Using Star Maps

This 15-year-old is putting your high school achievements to shame. William Gadoury, who lives in Saint-Jean-de-Matha in Quebec, Canada, used ancient star maps to locate a lost Mayan city in Central America. Gadoury found the city, hidden in Mexico, by matching stars with the locations of various known temples on Earth, The Telegraph reports. He studied more than 20 constellations and concluded that the star maps aligned with 117 Mayan cities. "I was really surprised and excited when I realized that the most brilliant stars of the constellations matched the largest Maya cities," Gadoury told the Journal de Montreal. Before the teen's research, scientists hadn't connected the cities with the constellations, Gizmodo notes. When Gadoury located a star that didn't align with any known Mayan cities, he determined its location in Mexico. Then, he reached out to the Canadian Space Agency, which sent him satellite images from the location he'd pinpointed. The images showed dozens of geometric structures, including what appeared to be a Mayan pyramid. The city hasn't been verified and explored by experts yet, but Gadoury has already given it a name. He called his discovery K'aak Chi, which means "Mouth of Fire." Gadoury will present his findings at Brazil's International Science Fair in 2017, The Independent reports. Yeah, that definitely beats our "exploding volcano" science projects.