A vast crater discovered in a remote region of Siberia known to locals as "the end of the world" is causing a sensation in Russia, with a group of scientists being sent to investigate.
The giant hole in the remote energy-rich Yamalo-Nenetsky region first came to light in a video uploaded to YouTube that has since been viewed more than seven million times. "The crater is enormous in size--you could fly down into it in several Mi-8s (helicopters) without being afraid of hitting anything," the person who posted the video, named only as Bulka, wrote.
The crater is located in the permafrost around 30 kilometres (18 miles) from a huge gas field north of the regional capital of Salekhard, roughly 2,000 kilometres northeast of Moscow. [The deputy director of the Oil and Gas Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vasily Bogoyavlensky] said the crater was likely to have been caused by the melting of underground ice in the permafrost, freeing gas that then built up high pressure and broke through to the surface. "At some point an explosion took place without any flame," Bogoyavlensky said.
In an effort to discover its mysteries, regional governor Dmitry Kobylkin sent a group of scientists into the tundra where the crater is located in the Yamal peninsula--which translates as "the end of the world", Interfax reported.
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Remember that story about the Siberian mystery crater last June? Turns out there are six more and, as Siberian Times reports, there could be dozens of others which popped out recently enough to allow satellite comparisons between before and after.
Respected Moscow scientist Professor Vasily Bogoyavlensky has called for 'urgent' investigation of the new phenomenon amid safety fears.
Until now, only three large craters were known about in northern Russia with several scientific sources speculating last year that heating from above the surface due to unusually warm climatic conditions, and from below, due to geological fault lines, led to a huge release of gas hydrates, so causing the formation of these craters in Arctic regions.
Two of the newly-discovered large craters - also known as funnels to scientists - have turned into lakes, revealed Professor Bogoyavlensky, deputy director of the Moscow-based Oil and Gas Research Institute, part of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Examination using satellite images has helped Russian experts understand that the craters are more widespread than was first realised, with one large hole surrounded by as many as 20 mini-craters, The Siberian Times can reveal.
-- more after the break ---
The Guardian reports that the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a seed bank near Longyearbyen on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, has flooded due to "melting and heavy rain." The seeds remain safe, according to the article.
coverage:
previous stories:
Researchers Identify Remains of 14,000-Year-Old Seeds: Fava Bean
Syrian Seed Bank Gets New Home Away From War
Bayer AG Offers to Buy Monsanto
30,000-Year-Old Giant Virus 'Comes Back to Life'
An Isolated Vault Could Store Our Data on DNA for 2 Million Years .
Giant Crater in Russia's Far North Sparks Mystery
30,000 Year Old Virus Revived
(Score: 3, Funny) by e_armadillo on Monday July 28 2014, @07:44PM
The scientists would then find that some ancient power like the Tesseract caused the crater
"How are we gonna get out of here?" ... "We'll dig our way out!" ... "No, no, dig UP stupid!"
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Monday July 28 2014, @07:49PM
I've been following this phenomena for a while. Some sinkholes are obvious cases of limestone subsidence. However, some cases remind me of the science fiction book Earth by David Brin [wikipedia.org]. If you're unfamiliar with this book, it is worth reading for its accurate futurology.
1702845791×2
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Monday July 28 2014, @08:06PM
Accurate and Future can't logically be put in the same sentence.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Monday July 28 2014, @09:02PM
So you're saying the sentence you just wrote is not logical? :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday July 28 2014, @09:11PM
It most certainly isn't logical. Its probably not even accurate.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday July 29 2014, @05:48PM
Using Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation we can accurately predict the future speed of a dropped object if we know it's mass.
QED
(Score: 2) by khallow on Tuesday July 29 2014, @01:21AM
"Earth" was ok, but I found myself rolling my eyes at the fate of Switzerland. In a nutshell, Switzerland becomes a nuclear wasteland because Brin hates rich people and Swiss banking law. As a result of said unfortunate event, Switzerland became a naval power. Seriously.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Tuesday July 29 2014, @09:42AM
I don't want to spoil the plot for anyone who hasn't read the book. However, for a book written in 1990, I thought it was perceptive to extrapolate wealth inequality. From the perspective of 1990, these funds were most likely to accumulate in Swiss bank accounts. Indeed, we can only presume how much money the richest 1% has deposited with UBS and other banks.
You may think militarization is unlikely but Switzerland is a special case where gun ownership is practically mandatory [wikipedia.org]. On that basis, I'm willing to entertain it as a special case. You may argue that there is no precedent for a full-out war with Switzerland. However, with sufficient inequality and sufficient transparency (through hacking or disclosure), means, motive and opportunity may arise.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by khallow on Tuesday July 29 2014, @07:17PM
I thought instead that this book was a typical facile bit of wish fulfillment from yet another sci fi author who was a bit ignorant of economics and human nature. For example, if all these countries nuke Switzerland, then where will their parasitic elites stash their loot? Instead, it would have been easy (and use a lot less of those valuable nuclear weapons) to do a bit of international posturing, have Switzerland deliver a few high profile black hats for public execution, declare victory, and carry on the status quo.
Also, anyone desperate enough to nuke Switzerland, is desperate enough to nuke their far more convenient neighbor. My view is that most parties who care enough about income inequality to kill people tend to be the same kind who'll burn a local corner deli down rather than walk/drive the long miles to any place that has rich people in it. Nuking Switzerland takes more planning and logistics than a local war or just targeting the local rich people.
Finally, the sort of people who would go way, way out of their way to nuke Switzerland, wouldn't stop with just that bit of destruction. They'd have a long list. It would be a whole different world with a lot less people IMHO.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by metamonkey on Tuesday July 29 2014, @02:25PM
When the NSA spying scandals broke the first thing I thought of was Earth, that yeah, in the book, around this time a war between the masses and the plutocracy broke out over secrecy. Prescient.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 5, Informative) by VLM on Monday July 28 2014, @08:51PM
If it weren't for the outward explosion features, I'd think its just another glacial kettle. Where a iceberg cracks off a glacier and gets surrounded on all sides by glacial dirt / runoff and then finally melts out, leaving a mysterious pit in the ground. I live in glacial terrain and have seen quite a few kettles. The story relates its from a permafrost area so glaciers are not unheard of in that area.
(Score: 1) by arslan on Monday July 28 2014, @10:15PM
Are we sure it wasn't the silver surfer? OMG Galactus is coming!!
(Score: 4, Funny) by bob_super on Monday July 28 2014, @07:48PM
So, I need to keep the cat off the control panel of my Giant Moon Laser...
(Score: 2) by present_arms on Monday July 28 2014, @09:39PM
I think you have been using an old version of apple maps, the NSA is nowhere near there.
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 1) by pillo on Wednesday July 30 2014, @08:05AM
[from TFA]:
Giant Moon Laser? Naaah, don't believe it for a second.
Given the name, clearly somebody should have kept their cat off of a Battlecruiser's main deck in the past.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by richtopia on Monday July 28 2014, @07:51PM
I haven't done much research on this, but one speculation is that the crater is a natural gas explosion. There have also been comparisons to this crater and the lakes that cover the Yamalo-Nenets region (look on google maps, lots of circular lakes).
Now as far as the end of the world, I suspect this is actually one of the most likely end of the world events we have seen, with some leaps of faith:
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday July 28 2014, @08:09PM
Dibs on the assless chaps and sawed off shotgun...
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday July 28 2014, @08:45PM
Dude, why wait!
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday July 28 2014, @08:18PM
Explosion as used in most of the news reports merely meant eruption (escape) without fire.
That's probably worse for the atmosphere than if it had caught fire.
Looking at the pictures, there is no burning near the hole.
Also TFS says someone claimed:
"you could fly down into it in several Mi-8s (helicopters) without being afraid of hitting anything,"
Since a Mi-8 has a rotar span of 22 meters, and the hole is only 60 meters in diameter, there would be more than a little intestinal fortitude involved in navigating even ONE chopper down there.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday July 29 2014, @03:01PM
Oh pah, they have over 5 meters of clearance among the choppers and the wall. Grow some balls ;)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 28 2014, @09:04PM
You forgot the most obvious, it is a crater left by an explosion of a Russian guided anti-air missile fired from the Ukrainian border that went astray.
(Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Tuesday July 29 2014, @05:49AM
You aren't that far off. I was reading an article on this. They perfectly natural, these have happened before. they are kind of excited to see one in progress rather than finding it years afterward.
However, if it is an indication of accelerated release of methane as Siberia softens, it is a SHIT-TON of methane in that ice. Enough to ramp up global warming by an order of magnitude.
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Monday July 28 2014, @07:58PM
..And I feel fine....
(Score: 3, Informative) by WizardFusion on Monday July 28 2014, @08:08PM
Link to the actual Youtube video, as it was missed in the summary.!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kMs05VaOfE [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday July 28 2014, @09:00PM
And it is not the only such crater. [youtube.com]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 28 2014, @11:30PM
Doesn't seem like a crater, but rather as a sinkhole.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Funny) by sl4shd0rk on Monday July 28 2014, @08:22PM
first thought: goatse crater
second thoght: dont click any links
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday July 28 2014, @08:47PM
Well, it is going to need a name other than "that big crater in the middle of nowhere" so I propose it be named the goatse crater.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday July 29 2014, @02:24AM
Since it was not a firery explosion, we already have a name for the ejecta surrounding the orifice: Santorum! Google it!
(Score: 2) by Jaruzel on Tuesday July 29 2014, @07:22AM
Awesome. I'm going to use that word every opportunity I can!
-Jar
This is my opinion, there are many others, but this one is mine.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday July 29 2014, @02:17AM
So there's some possibilities:
* Melted permafrost - check for geological structure signs from things like pressure or scraping
* Glacier movement or melting - check geological..
* Gas outlet or explosion - test chemistry
* Asteroid impact - look for microscopic shock signatures
* Nukes - check radioactivity
Until checked, we know that we don't know anything for sure..
As for the name: No such crater ;)
(Score: 1) by DeKO on Tuesday July 29 2014, @03:58PM
Asteroids don't puncture the ground too deeply; they are made of the same stuff as the ground (i.e. rock), they are not resistant enough to bury too deeply. Everything just explodes right there, and you get wide craters.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 29 2014, @03:33AM
miniature antimatter-meteor crater created by exotic deep space particles propelled into our solar system by a supernova blast wave or similar forces.. sorry if my occam`s razor is a little rusty ;)
(Score: 2, Funny) by nwf on Tuesday July 29 2014, @04:20AM
Nah, it's a pussy riot viral video designed to irk Putin.