Giant Crater Appears In Northern Siberia 122
New submitter DavidMZ writes: The Siberian Times reports on a large crater of unknown origin that has appeared in the Yamal Peninsula in northern Siberia. The Russian government has dispatched a group of scientists to investigate the 80-meter-wide crater. Anna Kurchatova from Siberia's Sub-Arctic Scientific Research Center believes the crater was a result of an explosion when a mixture of water, salt, and natural gas exploded underground. The Yamai Peninsula is known to hold Russia's biggest natural gas reserve."
Where are the giant hands of Goatse? (Score:5, Funny)
Hmmm?
Re:Where are the giant hands of Goatse? (Score:5, Informative)
And yet again, the Internet has lived up to my expectations.
Re:Where are the giant hands of Goatse? (Score:5, Funny)
They are invisible, haven't you read Adam Smith?
Re:Where are the giant hands of Goatse? (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, the economy makes a lot more sense now.
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Possibly, but what I find more surprising is that someone was able to discover such a small crater. 80m isn't big relative to how big Siberia is. It must have been in someone's backyard.
Maybe it was just Ivan's still or meth lab that exploded.
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In Russia, its all krokodil these days. These fuckers can't seem to kill themselves fast enough.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wasn't that a movie? (Score:4, Insightful)
what I find more surprising is that someone was able to discover such a small crater. 80m isn't big relative to how big Siberia is.
True that it is not that big. But would you consider monitoring area + taking images from satellite(s) as the reason? Why would they monitor the whole area? I don't know. But images from satellite nowadays are much much higher resolution (compared to 15~20 years ago when I was using them on my study) and could easily be analysed using a computer software. So any changes in the area would alert those who are monitoring.
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As TFA says, there are a considerable number of gas pipelines in the area, so they'll be doing regular surveying to check for movement of foundations for the pipelines. Permafrost is notoroiously unstable, particularly once you start to do building on it. That, in itself, is sufficient to justify a lot of monitoring.
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Global warming (Score:1)
Melting permafrost.
Sequel? (Score:2)
Y E T I !!! (Score:1)
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It's* the Yeti it's = it is Learn this.
Your rite. I cun't tipe gooder for ewe.
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I read it as IT was the Yeti, implying an imminent attack by a hoard of Pennywise the Clowns Appearing as Yeti.
I'm very happy to see this is not the case.
Carry on with the pedantry.
Oh shit... it's Silurians! (Score:5, Funny)
Where is the Doctor when we need him?
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As Always ... (Score:5, Funny)
Headline has the wrong tense (Score:1)
"it is believed to have been formed around two years ago"
Crater dimensions (Score:2)
1:4:9?
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nothing new (Score:5, Informative)
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and even more in Blackburn Lancashire.
Re:nothing new (Score:5, Informative)
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But those holes were rather small....
Though the holes were rather small, they still had to count them all.
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Eeeewwwww
Re:nothing new (Score:5, Informative)
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It begs the next question of what has changed to cause the pingoes to melt? And here come the climate-change deniers!
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So what you are saying is that the natives have been eating too many beans? It seems this valuable energy source should be harvested.
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Damn Fracking!
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All permafrost pretty much looks like that. Tons of images online from Alaska and Canada, none of which have anything to do with natural gas or gas eruptions. The other holes up there don't have huge caverns beneath them (well, so far as we can tell). And the water is relatively shallow.
Fracking Orifice? (Score:3)
Re:Fracking Orifice? (Score:5, Funny)
They just found the asshole of the Earth.
Hmmmm indeed (Score:2)
black hole caused by a black hole (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:black hole caused by a black hole (Score:5, Funny)
Then it's gonna suck.
Re:black hole caused by a black hole (Score:5, Informative)
It would be more likely to be the exit point of a miniature black hole. The entry point would likely be a very small hole.*
I call these exit wounds; the physics is that the exiting hypervelocity thing sets up a shock wave moving matter out of the way, and it's the shock wave excavates the material in the hole. (Even a black hole does this; a decent sized one (say 10^10 kg) is very small, so not much matter would be eaten during a transit of the Earth. It does, however, pull matter towards it and its wake sets up an explosive shock wave that fractures and evacuates material.)
* A black hole the mass of the Sun would have a radius of ~ 3 km, so one the mass of the Earth is a few mm, and a likely primordial black hole, with a mass of maybe 10^10 kg, would have a radius of 10^-17 m, or well below the size of an atomic nucleus. Such a small black hole would not "eat" much in its passage through the Earth, which might take 20 - 40 seconds or so, because not much would actually hit it. It's gravitational wake, however, would be another matter. Such a primordial black hole would leave a tiny entrance wound, but a large exit wound.
Could it be ALIENS? (Score:2)
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I'm not saying the hole is the impact crater left from an alien landing.. but it was. It was aliens.
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You completely destroyed the punchline...
"I'm not saying the hole is the impact crater left from an alien landing... but it was aliens."
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C'mon, this Giorgio, he KNOWS it was aliens.
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Oh hang on - you probably don't know where the Yamal-Nenets peninsula is, do you? Fucking Anonymous Retard.
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I bIame sans-serif fonts.
Please dont toss a match in (Score:5, Interesting)
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They were wrong. They could have capped it off, albeit at great expense. Now, they can't.
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What do you base that on?
What makes you think they would have capped it properly? They clearly didn't know how much gas was there.
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I know that I don't know the details of this blowout ; clearly you've got much better clairvoyance than I have. Fortunately, I've never had to put my well control training into practice, but that's because a large part of my job for the last couple of decades has been to prevent such things from happening by thinking before doing.
Re:Please dont toss a match in (Score:5, Informative)
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The sequence of events that you relate implies that there was both significant H2S, and some sort of collapse of the surface casing and wellhead, which would have prevented bullheading and capping the well. If the well had been drilled under recent UK, Norwegian, Dut
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Often enough.
Why? to fulfil your desire for snuff porn?
Not laughing. People die in this sort of event.
I just checked again. Your desire for snuff pornography of my friends and colleagues dieing still doesn't cause me hilarity.
I was offshore when this [youtube.com] happened. Our radio operator relayed the "abandoning radio room" message at 2:50 into that video, and I still can't watch any more. We flew home (
Warn Tokyo (Score:5, Funny)
It hatched.
The War of the Worlds, Ch. Two: The Falling Star (Score:2)
Deep ice hole? Oh no! (Score:2)
I know what's down there [blogspot.com]
Ooh ooh! I know what it is...! (Score:2)
Gopher Overlords! (Score:1)
All Hail our Gopher Overlords!
Some thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)
First, if this is 80 meters in diameter, or 40 meters in radius, and say at a minimum 40 meters deep, that’ s not quite 10^9 kg of soil moved up order 40 meters, requiring (very roughly) the equivalent of 60 tons of TNT, at a minimum, and thus an equivalent magnitude of ~ 3.2 (again, roughly). Such an explosion should be detectable on seismological networks, such as the ones looking for nuclear testing.
Second, there is another mystery crater in Siberia - the Patomskiy crater [siberiantimes.com]. This one is in rock, not sediment, is about 160 meters in diameter, and is maybe 300 years old, but I have to wonder if they have a similar cause.
Third, I am interested in quark nuggets and other types of condensed matter, such as Q-Balls, generically called Compact UltraDense Objects [uj.edu.pl] (CUDOs) by Jan Rafelski of U. Arizona. If these things exist in the appropriate masses, they could cause holes such as this and the Patomskiy crater. Even better, if this were to be caused by transiting CUDO, it would cause a "linear earthquake [arxiv.org], which should be easily recognizable in the seismic record.
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Second, there is another mystery crater in Siberia - the Patomskiy crater [siberiantimes.com]. This one is in rock, not sediment, is about 160 meters in diameter, and is maybe 300 years old, but I have to wonder if they have a similar cause
Interesting link, but nothing at all seems similar to this new hole in the ground.
Re:Some thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)
Patomskiy Crater is in solid rock, this new one is in soft sediment. Solid rock requires energy to fracture, and it is thus less likely to be removed from an excavation. By the way, these sorts of holes (assuming that they are explosive in origin) are similar to "bench-blasting" in explosives work; there is a huge literature on this.
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I wonder if the scientists who go out there will bring along some drones to check out that monster hole and display some mad drone skillz. It would be neat if they did it similar to how some engineers used a drone to check out a Corevette car museum [youtube.com] that got noshed upon by a sinkhole.
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That's one big-ass sandworm. (Look at the pic - it's not a crater, it's just a hole in the ground.)
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Now that is a very interesting phenomenon. Very, very interesting.
Time to put on my geologist (hard) hat again.
My first impression was "kimberlite diatreme?" Subsequent reading of the rest of the article certainly leaves the hypothesis on the table. Since we've never (
Further towards the tipping point... (Score:5, Informative)
There are lots of gas pockets in Siberian and under the polar seas that are locked by cold temperatures only. As warming increases, more and more of these will burst, accelerating climate change.
Scientists have been warning of these for many years. There has been lots of talks about a "tipping point" after which no reduction in man's greenhouse gas emissions would have any effect, when carbon levels in the atmosphere could increase because of cascading natural gas eruptions alone.
This is why it is so important to reduce carbon emissions.
Re:Further towards the tipping point... (Score:4, Interesting)
unnatural (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure this new crater is just Nikola Tesla playing with his time machine again. After what he did to Tunguska, you'd think Russia would just ask him nicely to stay away or do his experiments in Canada or something.
Hell, he could do them in Alberta and nobody would notice if the whole province was sent 50 years back in time. Except the hockey players wouldn't be wearing helmets. They'd notice that right away.
Sandworm (Score:3)
The hole is about the right size for one of Dune's sandworms.
Move along, nothing to see here... (Score:3)
I'm guessing that less than 2% of you know probably what the heck I'm talking about here.
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I'm guessing that less than 2% of you know probably what the heck I'm talking about here.
Missed it by THAT much? Agent 86 once said that after he almost shot his dick off. I wonder if he ever screwed Agent 99? Man, I used to think she was hot. And the Cone of Silence? I saw a real one in action while on jury duty once. The judge lowered this stupid contraption when he was talking with the lawyers. It made this white noise which gave everyone headaches but I had no problem hearing their entire conv
Ow, my ears! (Score:2)
As if the loud (and completely unnecessary)noise of the helicopter on the video wasn't enough, did you have to keep it on the slowed down part of the video so that it sounds like the belching roar of Satan himself?
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As if the loud (and completely unnecessary)noise of the helicopter on the video wasn't enough, did you have to keep it on the slowed down part of the video so that it sounds like the belching roar of Satan himself?
It wasn't belching you heard.
Like Florida (Score:2)
wow (Score:1)
"the dark colour of the crater indicates 'some temperature processes', without explaining more what they may mean"
" it could be caused by a space object - perhaps a meteorite...We can definitely say that it is not a meteorite. No details yet,"
"one web claim suggested - evidence 'of the arrival of a UFO craft' to the planet."
That's some quality journalism right there.
Sorry (Score:2)
It was a joke that got out of hand.