Siberian Crater Mystery - 300-Foot Hole Opens Suddenly In Yamal Peninsula, Near Arctic Ocean

[hatrack]

A massive crater seen 20 miles from a gas field in the Russian peninsula of Yamal. The crater was originally seen in a video originally shot by a TV station run by the Russian Defense Ministry — video which The Washington Post was unable to verify.(The Siberian Times)

Under no circumstance is the Russian peninsula of Yamal considered hospitable. Extending 435 miles into the Gulf of Ob, its subsoil is permanently frozen, chilled by temperatures that can plunge to 122 degrees below zero. The sun rarely shows in winter, and to locals called the Nenets, the name of the place translates to “the ends of the Earth.”

As uninviting as all that sounds, it just got even less enticing. For reasons no one has yet figured out, a massive, 300-foot-wide crater has just appeared. Seemingly out of nowhere. According to video originally shot by a TV station run by the Russian Ministry of Defense — video which The Washington Post was unable to verify — the crater appeared about 20 miles from Yamal’s biggest gas field, igniting an international intrigue.

EDIT

Others don’t blame gas emitted through global warming, but the gas that drives the Russian economy. “The Siberian area the crater was found in — the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region, which lies approximately 20 miles from the Bovanenkovo gas field — is one of the most geologically young places on Earth,” according to the science Web site From Quarks to Quasars. “It also happens to be extremely rich in gas. In fact, it contains the largest natural gas reservoir in all of Russia (it might even be the largest gas reserve on the planet).”

The article concluded that explosions in such terrain are not uncommon — especially in areas of substantial subsoil melt.

The crater may also have been caused by something called a “pingo.” That’s a block of underground ice that can push through the Earth to reach the surface, where it melts and leaves a hole behind. The region’s permafrost can be hundreds of feet thick, a width that may engender such an glacial push, Chris Fogwill, a polar scientist at the University of New South Wales, told the Sydney Morning Herald. “It’s just a remarkable land form,” he said. “This is obviously a very extreme version of that, and if there’s been any interaction with the gas in the area, that is a question that could only be answered by going there.”

EDIT/END

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/17/the-curious-case-of-the-massive-crater-that-just-appeared-at-the-end-of-the-earth/?tid=hp_mm&hpid=z3

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. This post links it to a methane explosion..

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025251093

[hatrack]

3. Possible, but could also be from a pingo collapse . . .

Until we start getting some information from the on-scene science team, which was supposed to arrive today, too early to say.

[Nihil]

4. Wouldn't have thought a pingo collapse would produce the shape in the OP photo though.

The raised edge and the amount of bare soil seem inconsistent with a simple
collapse but I'd agree that we really need to wait until there has been some
on-site investigation (rather than bored bods looking at a fuzzy photo on the
good old internet!).

[progressoid]

2. Paging Fox Mulder.

[OnlinePoker]

5. From Watts Up

Has its usual anti-warming bent, but has info on Pingos and closer images of the one that's formed in Siberia.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/18/new-pictures-of-the-hole-in-yamal-and-pingo-was-its-name-o/