Quebec student wins gold at national science fair for work on Mayans

Quebec teen William Gadoury won gold at the Canada Wide Science Fair at McGill University this week for a project that has earned him both high praise, and a few well-placed doubters.

Gadoury, a 15-year-old student from Saint-Jean-de-Matha, Que. combined his knowledge of modern technology and his love of Mayan astronomy to identify the potential location of a 4,600-year-old forgotten city in Mexico. 

He worked on the project for over two years, using ancient star charts, images he requested from the Canadian Space Agency, and Google Maps to identify what he suspects could be lost ancient ruins.

• Quebec teen uses stars to locate possible lost Mayan city in Mexican jungle
• Experts question Quebec teen's possible discovery of lost Mayan city

Connecting cities and constellations

Gadoury said he grew curious when he read a book about the ancient Mayan civilizations.

"They were very intelligent, they liked astronomy, but they put their cities in weird places like far from the river or in the mountains."

Trying to understand why such an advanced civilization would choose to do this, he studied 22 Mayan constellations and found that when he overlaid them on a map, they matched the placement of 117 known cities.

However, a 23rd constellation that appeared on the ancient star chart was incomplete.

Gadoury began to study satellite images of the area on Google Earth, looking for any clues in the dense jungle canopy that could lead to the missing city. Eventually, he approached the Canadian Space Agency to request images of the area. He said he found photo evidence of what could be ancient Mayan platforms at that site.

Experts question findings

Gadoury's project received attention from international media with coverage by the BBC and Popular Mechanics, among many others. But some experts questioned his findings, calling them "junk science."

Now a gold medallist, Gadoury said he isn't too concerned about his critics. 

"These people had never seen all of my project, so their arguments [are not] so good. Because what they saw [was] not the biggest part of my project," he said.

Brad McCabe, executive director of Youth Science Canada and an organizer of the science fair, said critics are overlooking the innovative research methods and resources that the budding scientist used to draw his conclusions.

"It's one of those things where you've got to remember he's a 15-year-old student. Regardless if there's a city there or not, it's great from an archaeological point of view, but from a science point of view, he's just done an amazing project."

McCabe said Gadoury's project showcases where scientific curiosity can lead.

"The one thing that we do with these students is ask them to identify something that's a personal interest to them, and then use the project to build a solution to that."

Over 16,000 schools and 500,000 students participate in the Canada Wide Science Fair. This year, nearly 500 made it to the final round held at McGill University.

Gadoury said the most exciting part of the science fair was seeing the research conducted by other students. He has been invited to publish his findings in a scientific journal, and attend an international conference organized by the Canadian Space Agency. 

 "It's special, it happened for the first time in my life," he said.