Take a bow, students of Mazsalaca, Latvia, who fooled scientists, if only for a little while, into thinking a meteor had pierced the earth's atmosphere near the Estonian border. White-coated poindexters rushed to the site after reports that an astronomical rock had embedded itself in a field causing a 27-foot-wide, 9-foot-deep crater.
Minutes after looking at the crater, they spotted it was a hoax. Gutted, one said: "It's artificial, dug by shovel."
Painstaklingly the pranksters dug the entire thing, brilliantly taking care to leave a scorched patch in the centre!
Alas, they left a number of tell-tale giveaways, one being blades of grass in the pit that had supposedly survived the arrival of the scorching space bullet.
Full marks for endeavour. Check out footage of the hole after the jump...
