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Myterious Siberian Holes are not alien - made!
In July this year some strange holes have been found by reindeer herders in Siberia. The first crater was approximately 260 feet (80 meters) wide. Since then, two new chasms — a 50-foot (15 m) crater in the Taz district and a 200- to 330-foot (60 to 100 m) crater in the Taymyr Peninsula — have also been reported
And as usual several speculations about them surfaced! Like aliens landing in space ships that caused these holes and angels coming from space and making them. Some even thought that meteorites caused the strange cavities.
But cause of Mysterious Siberian Holes are possibly found by scientists.
The holes are likely a type of sinkhole formed from melting permafrost or ice, which most likely erupted due to a collection of natural gas within the underground spaces.
About 10,000 years ago, the area was a sea, and a mixture of salt, sand, gas and water froze into ice underground, Sub-Arctic Scientific Research Center scientist Anna Kurchatova told the Siberian Times. As the globe has warmed, she said, the ice is melting and the gas is being released, causing an effect like a champagne cork popping off a bottle.
These underground explosions are causing the holes, according to Kurchatova.
There is still a lot of reluctance from the researchers to conclude definitively that these events are a reaction spurred by climate change, though the previous theory that it was formed when melting permafrost triggered an underground blast of methane gas was bolstered by the discovery of an icy lake sitting at the bottom of the 230 foot hole.
According to Marina Leibman, chief scientist from the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of the Earth Cryosphere – which is leading this investigation – “Undoubtedly, we need to study all such formations. It is necessary to be able to predict their occurrence. Each new funnel provides additional information for scientists”.
More on this: 15-10-2014
And they brought back data that will help us understand what caused them (and lots of amazing pictures).
The hole stretched about 16 metres down to its floor - but at the bottom there's a frozen lake that's at least another 10.5 metres deep.
It’s taken this long for a team to get down there as they had to wait for that lake to freeze over - in the summer it’s a mud bath with water pouring into it from the ground above. But in the -11 degrees Celsius weather, they were able to get right to the bottom safely and investigate what had caused the phenomenon.
The researchers are looking into the theory that the holes were caused by underground gas explosions.
One unusual observation is that the largest hole is located on the intersection of two tectonic faults - although the region is generally stable in a seismological sense, the scientists found that the temperature beneath the hole was “higher than normal”.“Now scientists need time to process all the data and only then can they draw conclusions.”
Another theory is that the holes aren’t new at all - but no one had ever noticed them until now.
The researcher will also be studying images from satellites all the way back to the 1980s to find out if any similar objects have ever been recorded in the remote region.
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