The sudden appearance of a huge smoking hole on the side of a highway in Mexico left onlookers baffled and spawned some fantastic theories for its origin.
The massive chasm, which measures an astounding 26 feet across and 26 feet deep, dwarfed investigators near the city of Torreon as they circled the puzzling pit.
Initial reports on the find indicated that officials could not discern a cause for the crater which led to speculation that it had been caused by something 'out of this world.'
The two primary suggestions were that it was a UFO landing site or, in a testament to what feels like a growing global panic, that the giant divot was from a meteor.
Although the rather uniform shape of the hole does inspire one to imagine a proverbial ball of some kind smacking the planet, one would assume that an impact big enough to make such a crater would not have gone unnoticed.
Fortunately, it seems that the mystery may have already been solved as a media outlet in Tourreon indicates that the smoke emanating from the hole was determined to have come from burning tires.
As such, authorities concluded that the hole was being used as a garbage dump, literally trashing the more exotic theories some had hoped or dreaded, depending on whether a UFO or a meteor caused the 'crater.'
Source: El Siglo de Torreon via Google Translate