Russian researchers completed a successful expedition to the bottom of
one of Siberia’s unusual holes and are expected to reveal soon what they think
created these oddities.
by John
Tyburski
Copyright © Daily
Digest News, KPR Media, LLC. All rights reserved.
Earlier
this year, reports and photos began circulating on a mysterious crater suddenly
appearing in the vast, desolate plains of Siberia in Eastern Russia. Soon
after, during the summer months, more of these enigmatic holes were located, and speculation for what
caused them ranged wildly from extraterrestrials to methane gas bursts.
Curiosity
burned across the globe, but scientists waited until the colder temperatures of
winter came to freeze the walls of the holes so that they could safely enter
them using climbing equipment. The first successful descent into the largest of
the Siberian holes, or “funnels” as the Russians are calling them, was reported last week
by The Siberian Times.
The photos taken of
the mission and from within the explored funnel are both stunning and
revealing. The observations and samples collected by the expedition team, led
by Vladimir Pushkarev, director of the Russian Centre of Arctic Exploration,
are expected to shed valuable insight into what caused the holes to form and
may suggest how the emergence of future holes might be predicted.
‘We took
all the probes we planned, and made measurements,” said Pushkarev. “Now
scientists need time to process all the data and only then can they draw
conclusions.’
The
expedition team found a frozen lake of approximately 10.5 meters in depth at
the bottom of the funnel, which measures approximately 16.5 meters from the
lake surface to ground level, not counting the rock- and soil-formed rampart
that rings the funnel’s orifice that measures roughly 60 meters in diameter.
The
exploration took place in the largest of three similar holes that all formed
recently in the Yamal Peninsula of northern Siberia. A popuar current
hypothesis for how the holes formed is based on gaseous hydrates exploding
underground and pushing upward with great force, similar to what some speculate
happened in the Atlantic Ocean to cause the mysterious Bermuda Triangle
phenomena.
The team
will analyze their recordings and observations before speculating on what
caused the holes to form.
“Then we
plan to explore the surrounding area, comparing images from space, and even
those taken in the 1980s, to understand if there are—or were—some similar
objects,” said Pushkarev.
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