Finally: Photos taken from inside one of Siberia’s mysterious holes

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.

First published at Daily Digest News on November 17, 2014

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.