What the heck is this.. a direct link to hell?

[Peacetrain]

This is supposed to be a crater that opened up after a tropical storm.. Is this not the weirdest thing you have ever seen?

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/05/31/honduras.storm.emergency/index.html?hpt=T1

[CountAllVotes]

1. jesus f'n christ!!!!!!

[Peacetrain]

4. That is almost what I said..after my jaw hit the floor

[CountAllVotes]

9. It is Mother Nature showing off

[bananas]

53. Original 3888 x 2592 image on Guatemalan Government's Flickr feed

Embedded links in:

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/31/guatemala-first-volc.html

Update, 2pm PT: HOW TO HELP, after the jump. Above, this photo just posted to the Guatemalan Government's Flickr feed shows a massive, spontaneous sinkhole ("hundimiento") that appeared today in Zone 2 of Guatemala City, after overwhelming saturation of rains from tropical storm Agatha. Not Photoshop, sadly: these happen from time to time during major storms in part because of unstable geology. There are rumors of similar sinkholes now forming nearby. See it on Google Maps. (News reports: Prensa Libre, and blogs)

Direct link to flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gobiernodeguatemala/4657053554/
Click "All Sizes" then "Original" to see the original 3888 x 2592 image.

[AsahinaKimi]

16. I wonder if it might not be

an old Lava tube, where lava once spilled out from the earth.

[virgogal]

27. I don't know what is is,but it's man made IMHO.

[dixiegrrrrl]

36. What about it makes you think it is man made?

Beside the symmetry, of course.

[ohheckyeah]

82. I agree.

That doesn't look like any sink hold I've ever seen.

[Pushed To The Left]

I wouldn't want to fall in that thing!

[LeftyFingerPop]

2. Jesus Christ, what next? n/t

[Sebastian Doyle]

3. It's not a crater, it's a hatch !11!!!

Goddamn Dharma Initiative was in Guatemala too? :wow:

[XemaSab]

61. .

:P

[Odin2005]

5. OMG! That's a BIG sinkhole!

[csziggy]

68. Given the location, I think I would call it a cenote

I'm kind of surprised it opened up after a storm, though. Usually sinkholes drop when the limestone dries out since dry limestone is more brittle than wet limestone.

I wonder if there had been a cenote there before the modern town was put in and it was filled in at some point. Then the water from the hurricane could have saturated the sill and let it fall into the water filled cave below. If the water below was flowing, it could have also washed the fill from below.

The problem with that theory is that the sides are so clean - they do not look as they have been previously weathered at all the way a sinkhole would have been if it had been previously exposed.

[yella_dawg]

6. I haven't got a clue.

Let's fill it up with BP executives, Goldman Sachs executives, etc. Every dark cloud has a silver lining, and every unfathomable void in the Earth has a purpose.

[Arctic Dave]

7. WTF! Are you f&*kin with me?

[spanone]

8. i saw that...looks like a science fiction movie.....unbelievable

[chrisa]

17. I could see man-eating raptors flying out of that, or something.

X-Files-like.

[Edweird]

10. Holy crap!

[HCE SuiGeneris]

11. That's one hella storm drain.

[Liberal_in_LA]

12. !!!!

:wow: :scared:

[Webster Green]

13. I've never seen anything like that.

WTF? Its a perfect circle. It's gigantic.

I'm pretty sure the world is ending. :shrug:

[CountAllVotes]

18. it makes an oil well seem small

this shows the omnipotent power of Nature at work.

I'm beginning to fear for the worst too! :scared:

:kick:

[csziggy]

71. Ever look at a map of Central Florida?

All though perfectly round lakes, some of them very very large? Those are all sinkholes, as this has to be. And yes, they tend to be perfectly round, look like someone took a large drill to the ground.



Look up sinkholes and karst topography, you'll find out a lot.
While doing my searches, I found this shot of a different sinkhole in Guatemala!

[DJ13]

14. Next question

Is that creature from Cloverfield going to crawl out?

[Webster Green]

43. That would be awesome!

I mean really, who gives a fuck anymore. That would be really cool.

[tabasco]

69. LOL!

I'm over 50. I stopped giving a damn on my 50th b-day.

Let the shit hit the fan!

[blueworld]

96. Now THAT's funny! You sound like my husband.

We're a little older than you are, but every morning at breakfast we discuss the news & he ends with, "Only 20 years to go (usually followed by 'they can kiss my ass')". :rofl:

[Whisp]

15. it looks so....

odd. almost pshopped? holy hell if not

[Peacetrain]

19. How the heck is so perfectly round down the sides?

If it is not photo shopped.. well all I have to say is

Mother?

[Whisp]

24. lol! I'll say.... mama!!

:D

[Blue-Jay]

20. Looks like a scene from F. Paul Wilson's novel Nightworld.

[Frank Cannon]

93. Hell, yeah. I remember that series of books.

Actually, it wouldn't surprise me these days if chew wasps and belly flies came out of it.

[SocialistLez]

21. Wow. So now I'm extremely paranoid.

Those people pretty much didn't have a chance.

[Cleita]

22. Isn't that part Central America full of underwater caverns that could

have given away in a storm? It seems that part of the city was built over unstable ground.

[Blue-Jay]

26. The entrance to Xibalba, according to the Mayans.

[Parker CA]

33. Same thing clicked in my mind. That's gotta be the only explanation, except photoshop.

[Fumesucker]

23. There is a cave underneath..

I adjusted the brightness to bring out detail in the hole, it makes it clear that there is a cave at the bottom of the hole.

[Dappleganger]

29. That must be where the momma spider lives.

Jesus H. Christ on a Hitch, I've never ever seen anything like this!

[unblock]

25. they really should do something about those potholes before they really get out of hand.

[yella_dawg]

28. This has to be a fake.

The hole looks perfectly round and the sides are smooth. This is too weird to be real. Even if it is real.

[Bluebear]

49. It's real, the source is the Guatemalan governement.

[yella_dawg]

51. I know.

It's just too weird to be real, as I said before, even if it is real.

[Occulus]

67. Hollywood just got some very cool free footage

if they can get cameras in the air to film it.

What's down there, anyway? Cthulu?

Seriously, though, I was questioning the origins of this hole until I did a bit of Googling. Normally, I trust Wikipedia's information about as far as I can throw Sarah "Bag 'o Hammers" Palin until I have a chance to verify it, but what I was looking for in this case were photos. There are, indeed, perfectly circular sinkholes that exist in various locations on Earth (at least one here in the US, apparently) that have rather astonishing depths, as shown on the Wiki page. Though those pictured are filled with water, it makes sense that when they were newly-formed they would have been empty.

It's startling, really, but this does in fact seem to be a perfectly natural occurrence. What I want to know now is more information about the cavern that's apparently under part of the city.

[DavidDvorkin]

70. No, the site says it comes from the government

But that's not a government site. And it doesn't provide a link to a government site.

[csziggy]

73. It is not the first in Guatemala

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070226-sinkhole-photo.html

[Synicus Maximus]

30. There was another sinkhold like this one in Guatemala City

in 2007 that was 330 feet deep.

[intheflow]

44. But was it perfectly round like this?

:shrug: Any links you can give to photos of that event?

[csziggy]

74. Yes

[Ruby the Liberal]

31. Whoa - that is freaky looking.

[Sheepshank]

32. strange how it happend to form in the middle of an intersection

instead of under an apartment building, or hospital !! Many be not so much strange as lucky?

[Lucian]

34. That's common in karst topography...

although, on a smaller scale, but it still happens.

[Birthmark]

35. "They're taking the ground away!"

/Zaphod Beeblebrox

[Synicus Maximus]

37. I wonder why sinkholes are almost always round>

[dixiegrrrrl]

46. Here's a shot of one before total collapse, in Fla.

[csziggy]

77. A lot of Central Florida sinks don't drop very far

The limestone layer is too shallow so they cannot develop the huge caverns underneath the ground to really make the bottom drop out - literally.

That said, the town I grew up in was known for a while as the Sinkhole Capital of the World. We had a spate of sinkholes over a few years. My Dad's theory was that a developer on the north side of town drained a low area any built a neighborhood which was the location of most of the sinkholes. Shortly after, Hurricane Donna came through, then a drought. During the drought was when most of the sinkholes opened as the dry limestone was too brittle to hold up the layers of sand above.

Since Dad is a mining engineer who worked that area for his entire professional life, following his father who began his career in the area in the 1920s I'd say his opinion is a pretty good one.

That is why the Guatemala sinkhole has me puzzled - why would it collapse now when there is a lot of water in the system? Perhaps the cavern underneath was getting close to collapsing and the additional runoff from the storm washed enough of the limestone away to weaken it despite it being moist.

[nashville_brook]

78. don't know if this helps...might have something to do with acidity?

[csziggy]

89. Oh certainly more acid rainwater contributes

And in some areas, like up here around Tallahassee, there is a clay layer with acidic clay above the limestone. But since the clay tends to retain moisture, the limestone layers underneath are less likely to dry and break.

Most sinkholes are more like the one on the right in your picture or may not even drop enough to become a hole, just a depression. A few are like the one in the middle. When ocean levels are lower, as they were in the past, or ground and aquifer water levels reduced from drought or too much pumping as in Plant City last January, the limestone caverns are not supported by the water. Dry limestone is more brittle and more likely to collapse under the weight of the ground above. That is why you usually see more sinkholes during a drought.

[TransitJohn]

38. Well, obviously, shai-hulud can withstand water now.

[conspirator]

39. They found cheney's lair n/t

[rurallib]

41. beat me by 2 minutes

the hole that Cheney crawled out of.

[Peacetrain]

48. Ohhh so that is where it has been hiding

At the bottom of a scary black hole.. how fitting!!

[Johnny Noshoes]

40. Okay so was Walter Bishop recently in Honduras...

call Fringe Division...

[AnnieBW]

66. He was looking for more Brown Betty

:hippie: :rofl:

[Synicus Maximus]

42. A even more fun hole in the ground

http://www.yousaytoo.com/patricia/the-burning-gates/6431

[Canuckistanian]

45. When I saw the picture, I thought it was 'shopped

It looks like someone applied a gigantic drill bit to the earth.

[lazarus]

47. so I'm reading HP Lovecraft....

and this reminds me of a story.

[proud2BlibKansan]

50. It looks like it was drilled out by a machine

That's no crater caused by a storm.

[and-justice-for-all]

54. It sure does look like it was cut out a machine or.....

[nichomachus]

101. Probably by the aliens when they visited thousands of years ago

[and-justice-for-all]

52. Reminds me of War Of the Worlds...nt

[ET Awful]

55. It's the beginning of the 2012 (the movie) scenario. Crustal displacement is about to begin.

:scared:

[Peacetrain]

58. I have not seen that movie...

and now I think I will avoid it for sure..

[ET Awful]

92. That's probably for the best, but . . . crustal displacement is an actual

scientific theory believe it or not. Hapgood's Theory or something like that.

[lunatica]

56. If our infrastructure doesn't get some help that will happen here too.

The article says it's a poor drainage system.

[jp11]

57. They better go down there and take pictures of that cave or I'm boycotting that country.

[TK421]

59. They're going to need Tom Cruise!

[CoffeeCat]

62. Now I'll have nightmares...

I don't know what it was about War of the Worlds, but I thought it was the
scariest damn movie I've ever seen. The spaceships, the sounds, that big
eye think that scouted out abandoned houses for humans. Plus, that bloody
gunk growing all over everything.

I'm into scary movies and I've seen many. This tops my list as the most
nightmare-inducing!

:scared:

[TK421]

76. I really liked the camera work in that movie...especially when the

tripod first came out of the ground, it looked pretty eerie!

[CoffeeCat]

85. I agree, that first scene when the tripod emerged...

...was terrifying. It's rare that I watch a movie with my jaw dropped.

And the sound effects. So amazing! They sounded "foreign", if that makes sense.
The sound of those tripods was mechanical, but they also sounded like animals
bellowing and growling.

I shouldn't talk about this...I'm almost guaranteed a nightmare tonight! ;) :scared:

I love being scared!

[boobooday]

60. OMFG - I could not have been prepared for that picture

I have never seen anything like that in my life!

[scarletwoman]

63. It looks like a cenote.

It's a natural formation that happens in the underlying limestone. And yes, they are naturally round like that.

[Cleita]

79. Thanks I couldn't remember the name for my post above.

That's exactly what it looks like.

[scarletwoman]

81. I'm a little disappointed that we seem to be the only two DUers who know about cenotes.

I remember reading about the "Sacred Cenote" at Chichén Itzá in National Geographic decades ago -- I was totally fascinated and always remembered that word, "cenote" ever afterward. It's a perfectly round formation just like this "sinkhole".

:hi:
sw

[Cleita]

83. Yes, back in my school days they were called sacred wells where sacrifices were

made to the Mayan gods. I learned the word cenote much later in life, which is probably why I have a problem remembering it.

[volvoblue]

64. ooooh! that is nasty

[AnnieBW]

65. A Hellmouth!

Actually, with the state of politics in Guatemala, a Hellmouth would explain so much.

[taught_me_patience]

72. Don't worry... just a street 3/D painting

nothing to see here...

[Shadow Creature]

75. lol

this is the second post with the link to that picture.

It's pretty amazing, so clean it looks sort of fake, but CNN wouldn't have it if they thought it was fake.

[MrMickeysMom]

80. "Bad Urban Engineering"

.... Yeah, that's some bad urban engineering, alright...

[Kablooie]

84. It can't be real. Where is the fallen house? Where are the under street sewer pipes?

I don't believe it. It's fake.

[Blue-Jay]

88. It's real. Here's a bunch of other photos from different angles.

http://www.leaderpost.com/news/guatemala+sinkhole+caused+tropical+storm+agatha/3094112/story.html

Not all places on the earth have advanced sewer systems, least of all Guatemala.

[Judi Lynn]

99. Thanks for the link. It's a total nightmare in broad daylight. n/t

[surrealAmerican]

94. If they had tried to put sewers under there ...

... they would have known not to put a road there.

[HughMoran]

86. Cylindrical & deep

how bizarre!

[Ned Bro]

87. I've seen MUCH weirder stuff!

Like, for example, snow that falls UP!

[Judi Lynn]

100. Really! Where can you expect to see snow falling upward? Have never heard of this, either. n/t

[Lorien]

90. I've seen a lot of sinkholes, but nothing like that

that looks more like a massive tunnel.

[inna]

91. The *real* link to/gates of hell, from a sister thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8457779#8457846

Scary stuff. :scared:

[LibertyLover]

95. It's a cenote -

they are common in the area.

[IronLionZion]

97. Some info on sinkholes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinkhole

[librechik]

98. Mexico and Central America are honeycombed with underground water caches

perhaps this leads to one. That's amazing.