I kid you not. The level of stupid here is unprecedented. Forget the UFO theories, or the fact that it is Yamal, which started Climategate through the distortion of tree ring data and the witholding of FOI requests on the issue, or forget that Yamal is roughly translated as ‘End of The World’, no, forget all those. This statement from a supposed scientist takes climate craziness to a whole new level. Video follows.
Anna Kurchatova from the Sub-Arctic Scientific Research Centre, thinks the crater was formed by a mixture of water, salt and gas igniting an underground explosion, a result of global warming.
h/t to WUWT contributor, John Goetz
1 Is the posited explosion possible? I – with limited access to the literature – am not aware of one – certainly not one associated with water, salt, and gas igniting.
And the proposed mechanism is – pray? (Ah – that may be my ignorance!! but I’ve never sorted this. . . .
I did not read the entire article, but what the Russians said did not seem to be so crazy:
Global warming releasing to me (and I am no expert at how the Russians phrase things) means that the gasses released by the crater are a part of the global warming cadre. Which is not unheard of. Methane explosions happen all the time.
And then on second thought, it could be they are saying that global warming released the gas. I guess you have to read it a couple of times. in that case, we do not have to worry about fracking. Global warming is now skynet and is self sustaining.
Anna Kurchatova from the Sub-Arctic Scientific Research Centre, thinks the crater was formed by a mixture of water, salt and gas igniting an underground explosion, a result of global warming.
Is that a misprint?
Shouldn’t that be “…a result of global underground warming”?
/grin
Uh, can anyone say “Earth farts”?
Just askin’?
/grin
More likely it was caused by one of those global warming meteorites. [/sarc]
Sorry about that last one, but anytime I see a topic titled “Climate Craziness”,
I fell it is a person call to post something.
If this is not caused by global warming – what is?
==============================================================
Al Gore said it’s already 1,000,000°F down there.
(Or was that C? Guess it doesn’t matter much when it’s that hot.)
Ant, You Should do a poll on what caused it before they arrive on site to figure it out.
I say it was caused by an under ground volcanic like feature.
#earthburp
It also looksblike it has been there for several months or longer due to the soil erosion around the rim of the crater.
“Warming” did this? Maybe they should check a few of the local treemometers for confirmation.
[no, we’ll not have another threadjacking with links to your studies – Anthony]
.
Maybe Global Warming causes Global Acne?
Are we sure it isn’t one of their underground nuclear testing?
I didn’t see anything to indicate scale. Someone probably set a teapot on the ground and it melted down through until it wasn’t visible. Then they did the shaky camera thing while walking around the hole and recording, ya think? ;o)
Say the magic word and bring down the duck, umm, grant…..
The good news is global warming is now being lumped in with things like UFOs.
Maybe something lost in translation?
97% of global warming IS caused by things like UFOs !!…
or was it 97% of things like UFOs are caused by global warming ….?
anyway, send grant money & I’ll make a model (I got lots of paper & glue). :-))
“Global warming may have caused an ‘alarming’ melt in the under-soil ice, released gas and causing an effect like the popping of a Champagne bottle cork, Ms Kurchatova suggests.”
Global warming must be an amazing phenomenon. Capable of melting lower levels of ice, yet leaving the surface unmelted. It couldn’t be radiant heat; it couldn’t be convective heat; so, it must have been conducted heat. But heat rises …………
Oh, and the released methane from the melted ice, being lighter than air, would have vented to safety.
An explosion would have been seismologically detected & reported.
What a load of bullshit.
Impact crater? – most certainly not. Search “Gene Shoemaker USGS”
Gaseous vent? Possible. The venting velocity appears quite gentle, as nothing is thrown far from the throat. No ejecta rays indicating high velocity exhaust.
Jumbled appearance of ejecta may indicate permafrost blocks that subsequently sublimed.
But global warming? Anyone who has worked in shallow underground shafts, caves, or (even) basements knows that the temperature is nearly static below about 10 feet, regardless of outside air temperature.
Sheesh!
That’s the second biggest gopher hole I ever saw!
I’ll place my bet on a longshot that global warming causes mediocre fake crater footage to be combined with helicopter audio.
Here’s my theory. There was no explosion. It’s a sinkhole. Based on the evidence in the video there’s not enough material around the hole to indicate an explosion. Instead it looks like a deposit of debris from water flowing into the hole. I think the sink hole formed under a large shallow lake and the water flowing into the whole washed it clean. It looks like a natural cavern in the bottom of the sinkhole. It is difficult to tell the size, but there could be a massive underground cavern complex there. If we knew the exact coordinates of the hole we could google earth it and see if there was a lake there before.
[snip -STOP POSTING OFF TOPIC COMMENTS PLEASE ]
Somewhere there’s a hole in her theory.
==================================================
UnFounded Onubilating?
Why crazy? After all, the Corvette museum also disappeared in a hole due to climate change only recently 🙂
The comments are also true to Daily Mail’s form: somebody asking where the millions of tons of soil have gone to… WTF.
Let’s see… It is 80m wide, so the area is 3*40*40, and 80meters deep gives 400.000 cubic Meters. That’s 400K tons, not millions. As a side note, of course there wasn’t that much soil in the first place, or else where was the exploding gas hiding? Other Daily Mailers like to see the result of a nuclear explosion. Please stop posting DM “news “…
It is not likely to be a sinkole. I do not beleive sinkholes can create a substantial ring of piled up material around the central feature like that.
If the material is very soft, it could have been a small meteor.
If it was a meteor, then it is proof of global warming causing more meteor/asteroid strikes. ;^)
It is fairly mysterious, actually. Manmade? Where are the roads and tread/wheel marks?
Methane explosion? Hmmmmmmm that is not so likely either.
I hope the canary is OK.
Once upon a time there was a tree, a very lonely tree.
It came to be the chosen tree of Mann.
Sadly, it didn’t know that it carried the whole weight of global warming on its tree rings.
Eventually, the heavy responsibility it felt for Mann’s AGW began to bear down on its roots and it sank.
Ignominiously.
Into the tundra beneath.
The gaping hole it left behind was directly proportional to the one in the global warming hypothesis.
RIP Tree of Yamal – TOY to your friends – and much played with by Mann..
Global warming. That’s one hole in end of the earth Russia. Report back when these things are popping up everywhere.
If you look at the Yamal from above it’s covered in circular pools. Perhaps they all started this way?
Well, let me see now. Since “Global Warming” is said to be caused by the magic molecule CO2, and this hole is said to be caused by “Global Warming”; that means CO2 caused this hole. CO2 can do anything!
As someone said some time ago,
“If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen Yamal”….. (sorry)….
(or for the Gian Carlo Menotti fans, Yamal and the Night Visitors…)
Obviously this is nothing more or less than the terminus of the alimentary canal of Gaia. It always has bean (so to speak).
What’s the black stuff on the bottom, is it water, or is it just a deep whole?
Assume warming is the cause. Are there diagnostic tools that could distinguish between global warming and local warming as the relevant factor? If so, wouldn’t one have to spend a week or two examining the site?
temperatures have been going down in Siberia….
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Lxqre8hMG3M/Sywk8yHIEGI/AAAAAAAAA9Y/R2s5gdDCZKc/s400/weatherSiberia88stationsGSImgtmp4361.png
We found the missing heat!
Lou said:
July 15, 2014 at 2:26 pm
Are we sure it isn’t one of their underground nuclear testing?
————
You gotta point – Yamal ain’t that far from Novaya Zemlya.
It was Michael Mann’s Yamal tree.
The Hockey Stick made it so hot, it exploded!
BB King redux – “The Tree is Gone”
Sing along, y’all. “I’m free from your spell”
For us Unix geeks: sed ‘s/[Tt]hrill/tree/’ Thrill_Is_Gone.lyrics >Tree_Is_Gone.lyrics
I wonder how many skeptics’ first thought on seeing a hole in the world in Yamal was the miracle tree. The Mann-made gift that keeps on giving 🙂
Methinks there is a “mixture of water, salt and gas” in said “scientist’s” brain.
Those Russians and their holes:
Kola Superdeep Borehole
Mir Diamond Pipe
“We will bury you”
It certainly doesn’t look like a sinkhole, with that ring of ejecta. But the ejecta don’t seem to have been ejected very far, so not likely a meteorite crater. Perhaps a maar explosion??
Everyone is missing the truly spooky explanation. WHAT THE HECK CRAWLED OUTTA THAT THING! Looks like a 13-year locust hole. Maybe it’s a 75-million-year locust hole! Probably headed for the California Redwood forests.
It’s a sink hole caused by the roof of a cavern falling in.
We get lots of them up here in the Yorkshire Dales, some are enormous, Gaping Ghyll for example is so large St. Paul’s Cathedral will fit in it.
For anyone of you who might be familiar with the Dante’s divine comedy, that photograph does remind me of the City of Dis. It was on of the nine circles of hell, the one reserved for fraud and violence. It’s even rumoured to be guarded by fallen angels …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dis_(Divine_Comedy)
Pointman
===================================================================
OOPS! I misspelled a word I use everyday!
That should be:
” Gunga Din says:
July 15, 2014 at 2:58 pm
Elmer says:
July 15, 2014 at 2:34 pm
The good news is global warming is now being lumped in with things like UFOs.
==================================================
“UnFounded Obnubilating?”
Aside from the audio of helicopter noises, there isn’t much in the video to give a solid indication of scale. Also, I think the sides of the hole below the actual debris mound are too vertical and too smooth to be any kind of natural phenomenon (meteor/volcano) or explosion(natural or man made). I think it’s ja bore hole that someone took up close video of and spliced on the helicopter sound track..
What person is going to fly over such a mysterious feature in a helicopter with a hi-res camera on-board and …
… only provide 15 seconds of footage.
Maybe that ant lionish thing from Star Wars moved from Tatooine and relocated to Earth?
It is UFOs!
My guess is that it is either something to do with this . . . http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/oct/20/yamal-gas-reserves
or this . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mud_volcano
Geologist Down The Pub Sez says:
July 15, 2014 at 3:37 pm
It certainly doesn’t look like a sinkhole, with that ring of ejecta.
Yes, I thought the same thing at first, but it doesn’t look like an explosion either. It is very difficult to tell the topography from the video. It occurred to me that what appears to be piles of rock and mud piled above the hole and the surrounding plain, might be a bit of an optical illusion. The piles may actually be below the level of the surrounding plain, but appear to be above it due to their coloring. Then I noticed water flowing into the hole, apparently from the marshy area (to the upper left when the video starts), indicating that the edge of the hole and the surrounding material would be lower than the marshy area. In which case, the material would not be ejecta, but piles of denuded earth that did not wash completely into the hole.
Another factor is the water erosion channels that appear all around the circumference of the hole, indicating that a lot of water went into the hole from all directions. If it was just rain water and snow melt, it would have taken a long time to form those channels, but if the hole was at the bottom of a lake, the channels would have been formed in a matter of hours, as the water drained away.
The combination of the water channels and what certainly appears to be a large, natural cavern in the depths of that hole, make me think it is a sinkhole. If I am right, the sinkhole had to open up a couple months ago, to allow for the vegetation sprout on what was the bottom of a lake. If it is much younger than that, then I am baffled.
Those bloody North Korean’s have been at it again with missile test’s.
@Fred
Yea, they aimed it at the Sea of China.
Those disposal wells in Oklahoma, that salt water’s gotta go somewhere. Stop fraccing now!
/s
Far be it from me to contradict an expert, but to my naive eye it looks like a meteor punched through the roof of a cavern, and that’s why it doesn’t look like a usual impact crater. Hard to tell from the video, but it certainly looks hollow under that rim.
/Mr Lynn
You all saw the melting asphalt in Yellowstone last week. It to could be called global warming according to this definition.
Looks like computer generated movie to me. Strange reflections on the ‘water’, no ripples, low resolution, strange.
Clearly a giant mole hill. What is the UN going to do about the Giant Mole Threat, the GMT?
Mothra emerges
A Google search will give you this: “A maar is a broad, low-relief volcanic crater that is caused by a phreatomagmatic eruption, which is an explosion caused by groundwater coming into contact with hot lava or magma. A maar characteristically fills with water to form a relatively shallow crater lake.” For those who think it’s a sinkhole, think again. Sinkholes don’t have raised rims of debris that was thrown , and out of the hole.
This photo from Google Earth Panaramio of the Yamal landscape makes me think that permafrost zit-pop eruptions might be quite common up there . . . http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/96862505.jpg
My anthem for Global Warming is
‘It’s the End of the World as we Know it (and I feel fine)’
thankyou Michael Stipe
It’s those damned prehistoric gigantic car eating worms from the sci fi movie Tremors. No need to go to Tatoine. Their relatives are here on Earth. They were in the movie. I saw them there myself–so they must be real. No doubt awakened by failed North Korean nuclear tests that reverberated (not) to the Yamal end of the world. The burrow holes are the same!!! Netflix knows!!!
Sarc off/ how can anybody speculate on the geology of a 238 foot diameter hole that looks like a Floida sinkhole or a Greenland moulin but for the appearance of a very modest apparent ejecta rim (which could have several other explanations, and in no way equals the apparent displacement volume of the imaged hole). Before anyone has gotten there to investigate? Ready, fire, aim… Guarantees collateral damage. There will probably be some here.
Bill Illis says:
July 15, 2014 at 4:04 pm
What person is going to fly over such a mysterious feature in a helicopter with a hi-res camera on-board and …
… only provide 15 seconds of footage.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nor land and get some close ups?
REPLY: Might have been a heli crew whose job it was to survey gas or oil lines for problems, and they noticed this. They have a schedule to keep and would have to defend a landing for such a curiosity not connected to their primary mission. – Anthony
Spice worm !!
Oh Mann!
This puts a completely different perspective on one of the articles that solidified my suspicions of climate science.
Go figure!
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/9/29/the-yamal-implosion.html
Also…watching the waterfalls in the real-time portion of the video gives me the impression that this thing is really massive. Large rain drops fall at about 29 ft per second. The water flowing into the hole would likely break up into bigger drops than that, although that process would continue until the drops reached the size of large rain drops. There are subtle variations in the curtain of water. I tracked one for about 5 to 7 seconds before loosing it in the darkness, so it wasn’t the entire drop. If we assume an average speed of say 34-40 feet per second, I watched that ripple in the curtain of water fall somewhere between170 to 280 feet. Again, that wasn’t the whole drop. I am guessing it was about 2/3 of the total distance. That gives a total drop of about 230 to 420 feet for the waterfall. The natural looking cavern in the back looks much deeper still. (Of course, I could be completely full of it, but is kinda fun to to take the clues at hand and try to come up with good description of this thing.)
Is it just a whole in the ground, or perhaps the opening to one of the largest cave systems ever discovered? I am hoping for the latter.
REPLY: Might have been a heli crew whose job it was to survey gas or oil lines for problems, and they noticed this. They have a schedule to keep and would have to defend a landing for such a curiosity not connected to their primary mission.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
I suppose. On the other hand, I’d think that a hole that big in the vicinity of oil and gas lines would be considered a potential problem…. 😉
On a possibly related topic, here is a google search-results page for “Washington state mystery divot”.
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=washington+state+mystery+divot&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
well…the water is not flowing up the ejecta and then back down….doesn’t look like that much stuff was ejected
Dennis Cox says:
July 15, 2014 at 5:05 pm
“For those who think it’s a sinkhole, think again. Sinkholes don’t have raised rims of debris that was thrown , and out of the hole.”
Watch the video again and freeze it around the 30 sec mark. Try to imagine that the vegetated area on the right is actually higher than anything between it and the hole. You can also do this using the wet area in the upper left. It certainly appears that the water is flowing from that wet area down into the hole. A close examination shows that the ground appears to sloop down towards the hole from the outer fringes. Advance to about 40 seconds and this becomes even more apparent.
Now imagine what would happen if this hole opened up under a large, shallow lake. The water would pick up speed as it approached the hole, washing away all the soil down to the bedrock. Nothing would grow in these areas. Move away from the hole, where the water wasn’t quite as fast, and you would have a mixture of rock and gravel, with more and more topsoil thrown in as you moved away from the hole. Vegetation would take root in the areas were some soil still remained. You would also have ‘steps’ leading down into the hole as different layers of sediment were washed away. Isn’t that what you see when you freeze it around the 50 second mark?
The more I look at it, the more I am convinced that it is a hole in the bottom of a depression, and it is only an illusion that the lighter colored rock is above the surrounding plain.
My God!
What is the matter with you people?
It is obvious that this was caused by giant ants.
Don’t you remember that there was a documentary made about those giant ants in the 1950’s? Everybody laughed and the government and the CIA secretly tried to cover it up.
Not only that, but there is a secret committee in Congress that has a deal going with the ants to supply them with humans (especially the pneumatic, blonde types) and use them for slaves. Especially if they like cigars.
In exchange some of them go to Area 51 where they are irradiated by the Men in Black, and then get elected to congress, or get tenure as Climate Scientists.
Do you think it is accidental that the White House has numerous sub-basements? That is where they hang out and which are connected by tunnels to the main hive in Siberia.
Do you think it is an accident that for years they have been growing weird anty stuff behind the White House? And that they have been shipping the stuff to Area 51 in exchange for tree rings that cause global warming?
Now that the truth is coming out we should be afraid. Very afraid..
Run! Run while you still can…….
I don’t see a sink hole when watching the footage. The elevation of the ground around the hole appears to be clearly higher than the surrounding land, and in way of relatively freshly piled soil, with boulders or large clods of soil visible as well.
MattS says:
I think it’s just a bore hole that someone took up close video of and spliced on the helicopter sound track..
If you look closely at the slo-mo part of the tape you can see the shadow of the helicopter.
looks pretty big to me, interesting waterfalls running through ejecta debris , looks like one of those war of the worlds machines crawled out….
My guess is it’s PR for the new Godzilla movie.
Willhelm says:
July 15, 2014 at 5:45 pm
My God!
What is the matter with you people?
It is obvious that this was caused by giant ants.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
No way! Ants leave a mound, no hole in the middle. If it was a giant anything, it was a rabbit. He was supposed to make a left at Albuquerque.
There used to be a theory that the moon was made of green cheese. Now we have proof that the earth is made of Swiss cheese.
I was told that in Auckland a developer wanted to build a tower block of offices on Queen St (main road in the CBD). After clearing the one storey building off the site, he had a drilling outfit test the subsoil. They drilled, and at 13 ft they broke through into a small cavern. When they got down 600 ft without reaching bottom they gave up. The high rise was not built.
Definitely Swiss Cheese..
In USA, explosion causes giant hole.
In Russia, giant hole explodes you!
Gary,
Wait…if…..where the crap is that gopher NOW? :-0
OMG! They blew up The Most Influential Tree In The World!
Wow. I had heard Mann was dead set on keeping people from finding out the truth about his work, but who would have guessed he’d kill a tree to keep it from talking?
Farewell, poor YAD06. All you wanted was to be a good tree and grow the best you could in difficult conditions. Then they forced you to lie, then you had to die. Death by global warming, indeed. Sadness.
‘We can definitely say that it is not a meteorite,’
Based on what? It certainly looks like a low velocity impact crater to me. The rim appears to be raised tens of feet and the crater is surrounded by a ring of ejecta. If the diameter of the crater is ~275′, the ejecta halo is at least 100′ wide. It looks like a classic (albeit relatively small) impact feature.
It could possibly be the result of a subterranean gas explosion, but the video shows no evidence of gas bubbles in the crater lake. I find it hard to believe the gas has completely vented. The ‘Doorway to Hell’ in Turkmenistan was drilled in 1971 and is still burning:
Also, for there to be an explosion, there would have to be an ignition source. Any ideas? At this point, an impact seems much more plausible than a subterranean explosion.
So, from a seismic stand point, we should be able to ID the exact time this event happened in that spot, no?
Last thing we need are sandworms 🙂
That is a roof collapse over a wet cavern. A sinkhole that the plug fell in, and then the ejecta as the water at the bottom shot out of the cavern as it was displaced. That also explains the wash back in and the streaking on the cavern walls.
PS – at :01 to :03, you can see what may be where the rest of the water washed from the hole as it was ejected. There looks like a stream of silt at “7 o’clock” on the ejected rim out into the field just as they zoom in.
“Anna Kurchatova from the Sub-Arctic Scientific Research Centre, thinks the crater
was formed by a mixture of water, salt and gas igniting an underground explosion”
But for such an exothermic reaction the fuel source needs an oxidizing agent,
and so where did that come from ? How come the billions of Methane Gas
reservoirs worldwide don’t explode ? It is for the same reason, lack of an
oxidizing agent. The whole sorry story is baloney.
If this is an example of the scientific “knowledge” of a graduate of
Tyumen State Oil and Gas University , then their degrees are worthless
as the macerated dead tree remains they are printed upon.
Crop circles.
If you take a look at the entire region from above it has more holes than Swiss cheese.
The Many Thousands of Similar Holes in The Yamal
http://goo.gl/maps/tEunP – satellite view
What kind of scientists thinks that one hole is so special among these ?
It’s a pingo sinkhole:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingo
Yamal is part of Siberia that was covered by a truly gigantic freshwater lake during the last ice age due to the glaciation damming the Ob and Yenisei river systems, which are supposed to have flowed backward for some time:
http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/lake.html
At the bottom of the crater is running water. This is a pretty standard sinkhole caused by an underground river. The dark layers on the sides are permafrost. The crater-like appearance is probably because it occurred within a pingo formation, which are associated with subterranean water and permafrost.
Don’t thank me – thank my science teachers, most particularly my 8th grade homeroom teacher who loved geology, taught us some research skills, and set our minds free to examine the world we see around us without resorting to theories about witches, UFOs, or paranormal X-men climate disruptors. Here’s to you, Mr. Brennan.
Okay…one more argument. If the material surrounding the hole was deposited from an ejection, it would have at least some of the darker rock that makes up the sloped rim around the cavern. In fact, this dark rock makes up the majority of the layer from the surface to the top of the gaping, cavernous hole. If this scene is the result of a subterranean explosion or a meteor impact, much of what appears to be ejecta would be dark rock. But there is absolutely no dark rock in the so-called ‘ejected’ area.
This is because nothing was ejected. The lighter material is undoubtedly made up of the near surface layers and is likely sitting in the same place as it has for hundreds of thousands of years, but the soil that covered it has been washed away. The lighter material in the video is actually below the vegetation covered plain. All of the dark rock that used to span the hole is now at the bottom of the cavern.
It is a massive sinkhole and it ate a lot of water.
g3ellis says:
July 15, 2014 at 7:28 pm
“PS – at :01 to :03, you can see what may be where the rest of the water washed from the hole as it was ejected. There looks like a stream of silt at “7 o’clock” on the ejected rim out into the field just as they zoom in.”
Sorry, but the stream that created that trail of silt was (is) flowing into the hole, not away from it.
This argument remains me of one of my favorite expressions:
“From here on up it’s all downhill!”
Looks like a mud volcano.
Gas gets trapped in substrata and pressure builds up.
Every once in a while the gas breaks the seal or cap and vents to surface through a natural fracture in the rock above caused by the pressure below.
This makes a small volcano while the gas freely vents spurting out mud and gas like a geiser.
Eventually the gas pressure drops to atmospheric pressure and then the ground subsides (a sink hole occurs) as the porous once gas bearing strata are no longer able to support the soil above.
Nothing uncommon or unusual about this at all.
Good place to look for oil & gas though but the Russians already know that.
If you look at Google maps satellite view of the Yamal area in Russia (just google Yamal), and then zoom in, you will see huge areas (hundreds of kms) with thousands of small round lakes. The whole area is pockmarked with them – thousands of them. This is just a new one forming. And considering the area is known to be permafrosted and it also has huge gas reserves (the Yamal project will be one of the largest gas projects in the world) – then it is quite conceivable that this was an underground gas/methane explosion, or more likely an outgassing or “burp” of some kind – especially when you look at the Google satellite view, it becomes obvious that the whole area has been doing this for a very very long time.
I doubt that an explosive gas mix would have the energy density to cause this feature. Not possible to speculate about origins without more info.
It’s the insertion point for the enema tube, heretofore alleged to be somewhere in New Jersey.
The bottomless pit of Revelation 20.
Whatever it is, it’s a pretty common feature. I tried to copy and paste a photo, but apparently I can’t do that on this site. If you go to these coordinates, you can see hundreds of those circular crater-like features. 69.32.54N 70.15.19E
Pure speculation, but I think it’s something common: ice freezing, bulging up the earth, then melting in the summer to leave a crater with a central lake. Either that, or this is a glacially-smoothed karst, with thousands of sinkholes. I don’t think it’s the latter. If you use Google Earth and zoom around the northern terrain, you can see similar features just about anywhere above 65N.
Jim Clarke says:
“Here’s my theory. There was no explosion. It’s a sinkhole. Based on the evidence in the video there’s not enough material around the hole to indicate an explosion. Instead it looks like a deposit of debris from water flowing into the hole. I think the sink hole formed under a large shallow lake and the water flowing into the whole washed it clean. It looks like a natural cavern in the bottom of the sink-hole. It is difficult to tell the size, but there could be a massive underground cavern complex there. If we knew the exact coordinates of the hole we could google earth it and see if there was a lake there before.”
Deposit of debris sounds credible. If it was an explosion or collision, there would be smaller ejecta further out. Does not seem to be the case.
Noting the erosion markes, this feature has been around for a long time. Much of this regions spends most of the year buried under snow and ice.
Maybe the “global warming” angle on this is that it’s a natural drain hole into an underground cavern that has been eroding for centuries but which has only recently been exposed.
This peninsula is about the size of Ireland. but with minimal human presence. You would never even notice the feature from the ground unless you were on top of it. Maybe it’s been exposed for decades but no one ever flew over it in a helicopter before.
“Enormous crater appears suddenly in part of Russia ”
The idea that this “suddenly” appeared is spurious.
The Russians are looking into it…..
@somersetsteve
So is everyone viewing the video apparently. 😉
Not unlike ‘sink holes’ on the dark side of the moon…
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/12jul_rabbithole/
Is there any cheese with this one?
Easy
That landscape is dotted with sinkholes most if not all filled with water. It is easy to see from the footage there is a large cavern underground. Most of the missing rock layer fell into that cavern which contained a large volume water. The displaced water then neatened up that hole as it shot out of the cavern and came back in after the event. It would have looked like mud bubble bursting in a hot mud pool rather than a explosion hence the slow velocity of the ejecta . It also appears there are mud waterfalls falling into the cavern.
It will fill with water then look like all the other sinkholes of that size in the area.
MaxedOutMama says: “It’s a pingo sinkhole.”
I think we have a winner!
1. the footage looks completely fake. The types of rock present do not make sense. The dark area looks like volcanic ash, the light area looks like volcanic tuff. Yamal is built on sedimentary sequences.
2. methane is only explosive in the range 5-15% in air
3. salt (the kind she is talking about) is not explosive and is a complete red herring. Nor is water explosive.
4. there are three things required for a gas explosion: fuel, ignition source, and oxygen. Two would have been missing.
If this person claims to be a scientist, I’d be checking what area they qualified in. Probably one of the pseudo sciences.
“Experts say that the darkening around the inner rim of the crater indicates ‘severe burning’ which scorched its edges.”
Hmmm… Looks like shadow to me. But then, I’m no “expert”.
Anyone in the area see a silver guy on a flying surfboard? Just sayin’
And nobody noticed she was a tennis player.
Me thinks somebody is taking the mickey here.
Continually repeating what stupid said does not make one smarter than stupid.
it is manbearpig’s entrance to his home, silly.
“Leigh says:
July 16, 2014 at 3:52 am
And nobody noticed she was a tennis player.”
I think you mean Anna Kurnikova (Анна Ку́рникова ),
not Anna Kurchatova. Ms. Kurchatova is indeed a researcher.
There’s also http://mamboo.co/en/mb1204493028, listing
Anna Kurchatova 32 years, Gemini. Russian Federation, Nizhny Novgorod
not sure if they’re the same person.
Apparently other researchers are on their way now to see what’s going on (or away, whatever).
Jim Clarke says:
July 15, 2014 at 8:04 pm
g3ellis says:
July 15, 2014 at 7:28 pm
“PS – at :01 to :03, you can see what may be where the rest of the water washed from the hole as it was ejected. There looks like a stream of silt at “7 o’clock” on the ejected rim out into the field just as they zoom in.”
Sorry, but the stream that created that trail of silt was (is) flowing into the hole, not away from it.
This argument remains me of one of my favorite expressions:
“From here on up it’s all downhill!”
—-
Are looking at a different point Jim? It appears downhill in the two pics on the Daily Mail screen caps too. But I will say that the screen cap resolution is pretty bad. But maybe 15 frames into the video, you can see a bank that looks like it is flowing right to left, not into the hole. But it is hard to tell.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-2693105/Giant-hole-appears-Siberia-Huge-crater-emerges-end-world.html
“water, salt, and gas”
One key ingredient missing. Oxygen.
Teams of scientists are rushing east to fathom the cause of this unusual – and rare – geographical occurrence
Wait, wait, wait… you’re telling me it’s both unusual and rare? Well, I can certainly see why the Super Scientician Go Team was called in to investigate…
I tried to find out the average depths of the lakes in Yamal to no avail, but their descriptions would indicate that most of them are very shallow, forming on the surface of the tundra. This is obviously something very different. The hole goes well below the tundra and through several layers of sedimentary deposits into an huge cavern. The erosion marks indicate that it has already sucked in a lot of water, but there are no signs of it ‘filling up’. Granted, the video sucks, but there is no developing lake visible in the depths. The water has gone elsewhere.
If it ever fills up, it will not be at all like a shallow Yamal lake, but like a blue hole, similar to this one in Belize:
http://belizescuba.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Belize-Blue-Hole.jpg
I am still hoping for a new and exciting underground cavern system.
noaaprogrammer says:
July 15, 2014 at 5:56 pm
MattS says:
I think it’s just a bore hole that someone took up close video of and spliced on the helicopter sound track..
If you look closely at the slo-mo part of the tape you can see the shadow of the helicopter.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Not at all difficult to fake in scale.
It bears an odd resemblance to the Kimberley diamond mine in South Africa.
My first thought was it was an anchor pull out from a radio tower guy line. The erosion around the hole seems to point to the hole being there for some period of time. Maybe it is a bomb crater left by Curtis LeMay in 1962 demonstrating to the Russians the United States could bomb the USSR with impunity during the Cuban Missile Crises.
The flammability range of methane is ~5% to ~15% in AIR. So underground you have to mix methane and air and find an ignition source. Quite a mixing job unless you have an existing underground cavern with an ignition source.
It looks like an initial upheaval with fairly low energy for the amount of earth moved. As in, just enough to push it up and out, a burp. After that, a sink hole formed from the new chasm and caused most of the internal structure including the steep, artificial looking center hole.
Who cares how it formed, guys? Now we have somewhere to put the IPCC, Greenpeace, WWF, FoE, et al! 😉 Seriously it would be very interesting to know how it formed, from an engineering & geological viewpoint!
No question about it, this is a hole made by something coming down straight, big, and very fast. Looks classically like meteorite impact…
A couple of people have mentioned this, but this looks like a common feature in this area.
https://www.google.com/maps/@69.2849362,70.6613638,61144m/data=!3m1!1e3
It’s probablly a Pellucidarian exploration bore hole.
It’s obviously a geo-vortex tectonian plasmionic surge hole produced by a magneflux field pulse triggered by an intersected quasi atompospheric/subteranian alignment.
That is all.
I’d gladly take look at it for further study if a few of you will send me some research funding.
The chemistry should be elucidated. There is little reason for there to be much oxygen available below the surface for such an explosion. I’ve seen methane being lit at surface when you stomp on a bog in northern Canada and have a lighter handy to light it – a puff of flame then it goes out. I’m not sure you would get methane development in the presence of a surplus of oxygen.
It looks like an underground cavity collapsed, a sinkhole rather like the cenotes in the Yucatan. The geology is permafrost on sands, sandy loams and peat.
Good observation Servius. Here is a brief analysis of the geology. Thermokarsts page 11.
http://www.geobotany.org/library/talks/OrekhovPT2010_yamal_tal100408.pdf
I heard that the original Daily Mail headline was going to be, “Learn how to create your own global warming sinkhole with this one weird trick.”
rip
Frost heaving caused a sinkhole.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost_heaving
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/Permafrost_stone-rings_hg.jpg/220px-Permafrost_stone-rings_hg.jpg
“thinks the crater was formed by a mixture of water, salt and gas igniting”
_________________________________________________________________
I’m never making spaghetti again.
So — why do all the references to “Sub-Arctic Scientific Research Centre” that I find all reference this article? Doesn’t the “Sub-Arctic Scientific Research Centre” publish anything? Or is it because the real name is in Russian and this is just the translation? In which case don’t they publish anything in English? (Also: “Centre” is the UK spelling, in the USA it would be “Center”.)
Clearly caused by warming in the deep ocean by thousandths of a degree.
I think they have tried to dig out a mammoth, but it exploded like a whale before they could remove it. Seems just as likely than some warming.
Simple. Someone dropped a match into the long drop.
Ah, someone agrees with me! Some have objected that the ejecta is concentrated around the edge, not flung out for a distance, but that might be because there wasn’t much stuff to eject. The object punched through the roof of the cavern like a nail into an egg shell. . .
/Mr Lynn
Looks like a big black hole to me. Maybe it was caused by a slug of anti-matter?
This is not from natural causes, nor is it new. It is from underground nuclear testing and the hole is enhanced by CG. Thank you very much.
Since that is the arctic and was once under the sea, it could be a small salt dome that collapsed and left the impression that the stuff on top is ejecta.
I seriously doubt that Anna Kurchatova used the word “ignited” as in “fiery explosion” and what’s more Anthony I think you know that. Either that or you should know better than ascribe accuracy to quotes taken from the Daily Mail.
What she was saying, and it can only be speculation at this point, albeit reasonable informed speculation, is that the permafrost in that region is melting rapidly which naturally results in the release of gases underground and those gases could build up to the point where they could explode out of a weak point, like a champagne cork. That is not crazy, that actually makes some sense. Equally plausible (maybe more plausibel) is that the underlying ice just plain melted and the pingo collapsed. Either way its not crazy to attribute this structure to increased temperatures since, you know, that is what leads to melting.
You know Anthony you keep doing this. If your position on something is logically sound and supportable it should be unnecessary to resort to disingenuous tactics like putting misleading spin on otherwise valid view points to convince the weak minded to your view point. Either your view stands on its own or it doesn’t.
REPLY: Oh, please. I made no spin whatsoever, I called it crazy (see the title) and now you say I put spin on the exact words I quoted from the article that I call crazy. I’m really not concerned that you are “concerned”, because your “concern” is simply not warranted.
Pingo as a cause, sure. Global Warming as a cause, still crazy. It’s summer there, so melting happens. – Anthony
Warning shot from the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. We need to get out of the way.
The USSR left quite a mess, environmentally. Perhaps this is more.
Reblogged this on Head Space and commented:
Looking over the stratigraphy of Barents Sea Region, there is certainly other options besides ‘global warming/climate change disruption,’ etc.
Why not? Global Warming cauased Al Gore didn’t it?
Or perhaps; If Al Gore didn’t exist, Gaia would have had to create him.
You haven’t been paying attention. Yamal was Briffa’s baby, not Mann’s.
pfff, that’s not a hole, They’re probably just making a commercial for that new black material
http://www.buzzfeed.com/richardhjames/scientists-create-a-new-black-the-darkest-material-ever-made
Further to MaxedOutMama says:
July 15, 2014 at 7:51 pm
Here is a link to Parks Canada and a couple of photos of pingos and collapsed pingos.
http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/docs/v-g/pingo/sec3/natcul1.aspx
Look familiar?
New Video is out on the Crater,
I have no idea what they are saying in Russian so maybe some one can translate it.
@chris Beal – I do not understand Russian either, but the new pictures seem to support the Pingo conclusion reached by several. Thanks for the video.
Well, where is it? What are it’s coordinates?
One poster above said there al many such surface features at 69.32.54N 70.15.19E
It is on the Yamal Peninsula
I read that it is 25 miles from the Bovanenkovo gas field. (NYPost, 7/16)
http://www.gazprom.com/about/production/projects/deposits/bm/
According to the Gazprom map, Bovanenkovo should be at about Lat and Long 70 12′ N 62 20′ E.
But on Google Earth I don’t see drilling pads, pipeline roads, or any other man made surface feature on Imagery dated 4/9/2013.
Bovanenkovo Gas Field should be at about Lat and Long 70 12′ N 67 20′ E
Found some facilities, white (drilling/facility pads?) at 70 12.5′ N 68 50′ E.
Says imagery date is 2009, but copyright Digital Globe 2014.
A good set of pictures here:
http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/news/first-pictures-from-inside-the-crater-at-the-end-of-the-world/
Bovanenkovo Gas Field ?HQ? at Lat and Long 70 21′ 40″ N 68 26′ 50″ E
I had never heard of a ‘pingo’, so I looked it up. The Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingo suggests that pingos are eruptions of the permafrost, rather the reverse of sinkholes, and can look like small volcanic mounds. I suppose that if one formed atop an existing cavern, it might implode and look like the Yamal hole.
I still like the image of a meteorite puncturing the crust over a cavern. They should look in that lake at the bottom.
/Mr Lynn
Man, I wanna become present. Sick of the past
This phenomena has an unique alluvial location along with the accompanying terrain. The surrounding debris field and soil type also make for some interesting speculation as to the possible geologic causes of the vertical displacement. See: New video! Giant hole on Yamal (1:05 & 1:20)