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posted by azrael on Monday July 28 2014, @07:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the hidden-depths dept.

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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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday July 29 2014, @02:17AM

    by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday July 29 2014, @02:17AM (#74846) Journal

    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 ;)

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  • (Score: 1) by DeKO on Tuesday July 29 2014, @03:58PM

    by DeKO (3672) on Tuesday July 29 2014, @03:58PM (#75105)

    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.