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Post by swamprat on Jul 16, 2014 15:42:59 GMT -6
Aaron found this article: Giant hole appears at 'world's end'July 15, 2014 A mysterious giant hole spotted in northern Siberia has sparked an urgent expedition. Aerial images posted on YouTube indicate a hole up to 80m wide in Yamal, a peninsula jutting into Arctic waters whose name translates as "the end of the world". The hole was discovered by a helicopter crew working for an oil company in the gas-rich region, The Siberian Times reports. A scientific expedition organised by the Yamal authorities will leave tomorrow to investigate. The team includes experts from Russia's Centre for the Study of the Arctic, the Cryosphere Institute of the Academy of Sciences and Russia's Emergencies Ministry.
The cause of the hole's sudden appearance is not yet known.
Experts said that the darkening around the inner rim of the crater indicated "severe burning" that scorched its edges.
A spokesman for the Emergencies Ministry's Yamal branch has ruled out a meteorite strike and web speculation about the crater indicating "the arrival of a UFO craft" has likewise been dismissed. An expert from the Sub-Arctic Scientific Research Centre said global warming could be the culprit, releasing gases under the surface that mixed with water and salt and then exploded like a champagne cork. The expedition team will take soil, air and water samples for analysis
See video: www.9news.com.au/world/2014/07/16/04/48/giant-hole-appears-at-world-end?mch=mobilenh&mchpost=tabloid
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Post by auntym on Jul 17, 2014 13:56:45 GMT -6
Ямал - невероятная воронка Giant Hole in the ground - Yamal (Russia)
Published on Jul 10, 2014
Massive crater suddenly appears in Siberia Yamal
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Post by auntym on Jul 18, 2014 13:34:40 GMT -6
www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/18/huge_mystery_siberia_crater_not_caused_by_aliens_or_meteor_govt_insists/Huge MYSTERY Siberia CRATER: ALIENS or METEOR not involved, officials insistGlobal warming much more likely, say Russian boffinsBy Lewis Page 18 Jul 2014 A huge, mysterious crater which spontaneously appeared in a remote part of Siberia was not caused by an unidentified object falling from space, the Russian government insists. Definitely no sign of an explosion here. Credit: Konstantin Nikolaev "We can definitely say that it is not a meteorite. No details yet," a tight-lipped official spokesman told the Siberian Times, reporting on the mystery crater. A team of government experts is apparently at the site now, with the mission of finding out exactly what did cause it. However the Russian government does have an official theory as to what caused the strange crater, located on the remote Yamal peninsula, to appear. Anna Kurchatova from Russia's Sub-Arctic Scientific Research Centre told the Times that a mixture of water, salt and gas could have formed underground due to melting permafrost as a result of global warming. This could then have ignited, with the resulting underground pressure causing the earth above to erupt with an effect "like the popping of a champagne cork". Siberia is famous for its meteor strikes, including the Tunguska event of 1908 and the Chelyabinsk explosion of 2013 - though there are those who claim that these and/or other incidents actually involved alien spacecraft. Unsurprisingly, internet blabber has leaned heavily toward aliens or space objects of some type as being behind the new Yamal crater. Such speculation will of course not be damped by any official government statements blaming marsh gas or global warming, as it is a standard tenet of UFO belief that governments always suppress genuine alien discoveries using such cover stories. The only official line likely to generate more disbelief would be to say that the crater was caused by a weather balloon. Puzzlingly, another Russian government scientist, apparently a member of the team sent to the site, told the AP that there "were no traces of an explosion" to be seen there. ® MORE PHOTOS & CONTINUE READING: www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/18/huge_mystery_siberia_crater_not_caused_by_aliens_or_meteor_govt_insists/
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Post by skywalker on Jul 19, 2014 19:16:55 GMT -6
That doesn't look like a sinkhole to me. It looks more like a meteor crater or like something exploded underneath the surface. Notice the ridge of dirt going all the way around the outer edge of the hole...normal sinkholes don't have ridges like that. They just kind of collapse in on themselves. That ridge was formed by dirt and material that was blown out of the hole by some type of explosion. The question is what caused it? Meteor? Underground gas? Volcanic magma coming into contact with underground water? And underground nuclear test? None of the above?
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Post by paulette on Jul 19, 2014 19:44:11 GMT -6
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Post by skywalker on Jul 19, 2014 22:07:56 GMT -6
How can they say there is no trace of an explosion when there is a giant hole in the ground? That looks like a trace of an explosion to me. It certainly wasn't dug there by a bunch of leprechauns with magic shovels.
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Post by skywalker on Jul 30, 2014 22:45:18 GMT -6
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Post by paulette on Jul 31, 2014 18:17:42 GMT -6
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Post by skywalker on Aug 1, 2014 21:52:38 GMT -6
I think they may be right, Paulette. It does make sense when you think about it. The methane builds up pressure under the ground but because the ground is frozen solid it can't get through. When the ground thaws like it has been lately the gas explodes through like a geyser.
If that is what is causing the holes though it kind of makes me wonder why we have never seen any of them before. The Earth has been here for billions of years. The ground up there has been frozen for tens of thousands of years since the last ice age but there have been warming periods since then. The temperatures a hundred years ago were just as hot as they are now, and five hundred years ago they were even hotter than that. If thawing of the permafrost causes these geysers to explode out of the ground there should be evidence of it happening in the past. Where are the old methane gas explosion holes? There should be some somewhere and a hole that big and that deep should be pretty easy to spot, even if it is hundreds or even thousands of years old. If this is a natural phenomenon there should be more of them somewhere.
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Post by skywalker on Nov 11, 2015 19:33:11 GMT -6
Just found this documentary about the mysterious holes in Siberia and the nomadic Nenet deer-hearding people who live there.
According to the documentary there are about 300,000 lakes up in that area and many of them started out as these weird holes. After a while they fill up with water then the edges crumble away and the mud falls in the water and fills the holes up. That's why there are no ancient holes to be examined. Within a few years they just look like regular Siberian lakes. Also the nomads who live in the area have known about them for gazillions of years, they just never report them because they don't see any reason to. To them it is just a natural process that is meant to be. At the end of the video they also show some small domed hills that are forming in the region as gas builds up underneath them. Soon the gas will escape and holes will appear there also then they will eventually turn into lakes. It's just a natural process that has been going on probably every summer for millions of years.
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