Giant Guatemalan 'Sinkhole' Is Worse Than We Thought

reillymj writes "Despite hundreds of media reports to the contrary, Sam Bonis, a geologist whose life work has been studying Guatemalan geology, has plainly said that the dramatic 'sinkhole' in Guatemala City that opened over the weekend isn't a sinkhole at all. Instead, he called it a 'piping feature' and warned that because the country's capital city sits on a pile of loose volcanic ash, the over one million people living on top of the pile are in danger. 'I'd hate to have to be in the government right now,' Bonis, who worked for the Guatemalan government's Instituto Geografico Nacional for 16 years, said. 'There is an excellent potential for this to happen again. It could happen almost anywhere in the city.'"

Comments

Boohoo

[kyrio]

and nothing of value will be lost.

Re:Boohoo

[Anonymous Coward]

lopl

Piping Feature? No...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about "Passage to Hell!"

Look on the bright side

[IndustrialComplex]

Looks like the city nearly doubled its surface area!

Re:Look on the bright side

[Barrinmw]

This was the perfect opportunity for him to make a pun. "There is an excellent potential for this to happen again. It could happen almost anywhere in the city.' Should have been "I have a sinking feeling that this could happen again."

Re:Look on the bright side

[NotQuiteReal]

That sucks.

Re:Look on the bright side

[Maxo-Texas]

The city could have a hole lot of problems.

Re:Look on the bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is he might get buried alive.

Re:Look on the bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think your joke did sunk in.

Re:Look on the bright side

[AvitarX]

this would have certainly gotten him coverage in the press at least.

Re:Look on the bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

Seal it with concrete and call it a big basement.

Re:Look on the bright side

[Muad'Dave]

And all that money they invested in the clothing factory went down the drain.

Re:Look on the bright side

[Romancer]

No Silver Surfer references yet?

Re:Look on the bright side

[aquila.solo]

Yeah, what a money pit.

Re:Look on the bright side

[matrim99]

After seeing that amazing picture and realizing that it wasn't a really bad Photoshop job, I almost expected the headline to read "Higgs Boson Found!".

Re:Look on the bright side

[SnarfQuest]

Top kill didn't work in the gulf, why do you think it would work here?

Re:Look on the bright side

[jgagnon]

There was too much sweat in the sweat shop and it ate away more than their profits.

Re:Look on the bright side

[jgagnon]

Then fill it with water and call it a swimming pool?

Re:Look on the bright side

[Low Ranked Craig]

maybe they should try the Russian nuke idea.

Re:Look on the bright side

[Sulphur]

It takes quite a piper to play this feature.

Re:Look on the bright side

[blair1q]

I have a sinking feeling he's used that before and doesn't want to put any more craters in his resume'.

Re:Look on the bright side

[hosecoat]

[It] isn't a sinkhole at all. Instead, he called it a 'piping feature'

it's not a hole it's a feature

Re:Look on the bright side

[dgatwood]

From orbit? It's the only way to be sure.

Re:Look on the bright side

[MarkGriz]

Nah... it's probably all downhill from here.

Re:Look on the bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

So now the went from "GuateMala" to "GuatePeor"..

Re:Look on the bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a sinking feeling <sunglasses> that this could happen again.

YYEEAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Re:Look on the bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the Windows ME of city landscape

Re:Look on the bright side

[AliasMarlowe]

The city could have a hole lot of problems.

...unless they take a holistic approach to them!

Re:Look on the bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

Please take your lame memes back to digg. They aren't welcome here.

Re:Look on the bright side

[nstlgc]

*puts on sunglasses* yyyeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh

Re:Look on the bright side

[thewiz]

Look, when you live on or near a volcano and holes begin appearing, it's time to get your ash out of there!

Re:Look on the bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of BP, I've heard rumours they're going to try and shake off their bad image by resurrecting an old oil logo.

Re:Look on the bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed...In Soviet Slashdot memes take back you!

Re:Look on the bright side

[oldspewey]

Don't worry, I'm sure he's holed up somewhere safe by now.

Re:Look on the bright side

[Maxo-Texas]

I personally really like this new "yyyeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh" meme I'm seeing the last few months on slashdot.

I think I even got to use it once.

Of course, I suppose the first rule of memes on slashdot, should be that you don't break the third wall and talk about memes on slashdot.

Re:Look on the bright side

[PingPongBoy]

probably all downhill

If people need to move, going downhill if possible would be easiest in the short term. Provided the mass up the hill doesn't avalanche... Globally, there's certainly been a nice set of trouble leading up to 2012 - financial crisis, Greek debt, Iceland volcano, BP, sinkhole, to mention a few - the end times are giving good value for the hype. These problems are characterized by a lot of hand wringing, lack of instant solutions, and uncertain prognosis. As a software developer, the parallel of harsh test cases that show weaknesses can be drawn: in spite of the ingenuity of man, we have not prepared much for large scale problems, and 2012 may be the wakeup call, at least we hope it is just a warning.

To the spcific problem, what about shoring up the ground underneath? In New York there is subway digging under existing buildings, and in spots where there is too much groundwater, the ground is frozen before the tunnel is made. Also, at the WTC construction site, there is a special wall built as part of the excavation in order to keep the ground from collapsing.

Re:Look on the bright side

[RobertLTux]

"Of course, I suppose the first rule of memes on slashdot, should be that you don't break the third wall and talk about memes on slashdot."

err that would be FOURTH WALL not third and if you need it in the future

http://www.instantsfun.es/csi (bunches more buttons on that site)

Re:Look on the bright side

[bar-agent]

Indeed...In Soviet Slashdot memes take back you!

Me: Please take me back, baby! You know I didn't mean it!

Meme: *puts on sunglasses* YEEEEEEAAAAHHHH

Re:Look on the bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they don't understand the gravity of the situation.

Re:Look on the bright side

[Ex-MislTech]

MOD PARENT UP !

Re:Look on the bright side

[Maxo-Texas]

I considered 4th wall, but the stage is three dimensional while slashdot is two dimensional.

okay.. yuh got me.... I'm lying.
I just fucked it up.

Re:Look on the bright side

[theguyfromsaturn]

Won't ever complain about the pot holes in my street again.

Re:Look on the bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

Old meme is old.

Sup /b/

Re:Look on the bright side

[The Archon V2.0]

I considered 4th wall, but the stage is three dimensional while slashdot is two dimensional.

okay.. yuh got me.... I'm lying. I just fucked it up.

That's okay, some Slashdot posters are known for being consistently off a wall.

Re:Look on the bright side

[BigBadRich]

Man, that's a hole lot of funny right there.

Moving the country?

[MalHavoc]

Probably not even remotely possible due to its size, but a similar problem seems to have been created in Kiruna, in Sweden. The town sits on top of the world's largest iron ore mine, and the mine has created a large cavity under the town. They are moving everything, in some cases, literally brick by brick. There's a neat article about it in this month's National Geographic.

Re:Moving the country?

[swanzilla]

Probably not even remotely possible due to its size, but a similar problem seems to have been created in Kiruna, in Sweden. The town sits on top of the world's largest iron ore mine, and the mine has created a large cavity under the town. They are moving everything, in some cases, literally brick by brick. There's a neat article about it in this month's National Geographic.

Guatemala != Guatemala City

Thirteen and two million resindents, respectively...either way, your idea is awful.

Re:Moving the country?

[Anonymous Coward]

Been there, but I think they have the situation "slightly" better planned, as they know when which part of the city will be in danger. And have considered hiring a firm to move entire buildings at once.
That aside, the tourist mine is pretty impressive.

Re:Moving the country?

[nightfire-unique]

Probably not even remotely possible due to its size, but a similar problem seems to have been created in Kiruna, in Sweden. The town sits on top of the world's largest iron ore mine, and the mine has created a large cavity under the town. They are moving everything, in some cases, literally brick by brick. There's a neat article about it in this month's National Geographic.

I dunno why, but I suddenly pictured a bunch of embarrassed Swedes whistling as they quietly move the town over a few hundred meters.

Re:Moving the country?

[couchslug]

"Thirteen and two million resindents, respectively...either way, your idea is awful. "

It isn't "awful" if it's necessary, then it's just "unfortunate".

The intelligent thing to do is (gradually) either relocate (much work to replicate systems) or DISPERSE the city elsewhere. Efficient dispersal of population is likely the lowest-impact way to deal with the disaster.

Re:Moving the country?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Probably not even remotely possible due to its size, but a similar problem seems to have been created in Kiruna, in Sweden. The town sits on top of the world's largest iron ore mine, and the mine has created a large cavity under the town.

Sweden? Trouble? I think this guy was responsible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_i_L%C3%B6nneberga

I have only seen him as this guy though: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_aus_L%C3%B6nneberga

Re:Moving the country?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect, in practice, there will be a certain amount of moving going on(of the "run screaming" variety, if not a formal program.)

The tricky thing is, though, that moving large numbers of people is actually pretty difficult, and has a history of not working out very well, especially in areas where resources are slim, or governance isn't brilliant.. Moving slightly under 20K people, as part of a formal program, in a country with a GDP per capita of ~$36,000, is a pain in the ass, and won't be cheap; but is doable.

Moving 2 million(or even a substantial fraction thereof), in a country with a GDP per capita of ~$2,700 could get ugly. Like "squalid children with big eyes huddled under sodden tarps in disease-infested refugee camps" ugly.

While the occasional sinkhole is scary and dramatic, the human costs of staying put and paying closer attention to hydrology, and possibly dealing with the occasional sinkhole incident, are almost certainly lower than trying to move on that scale.

Re:Moving the country?

[arkane1234]

If previous history is any idea of how that kind of thing works, we can just look at African dispersal to less "lifeless" areas to see how much of a battle you get.
"Oh but I live here, this is my home!"
yeah... but... til death do you part...

Re:Moving the country?

[Cheeko]

Having just gotten back from Guatemala, you already see a fair amount of the "squalid children with big eyes huddled under sodden tarps" even if not in the urban centers.

The country has some pretty significant poverty/living condition issues and the city is one of the BETTER parts of the country. Any sort of relocation project is entirely impossible given the finances and state of the nation.

The issue really is that any sort of infrastructure project might be equally crippled. This in many ways reminds of the situation in Haiti prior to the earthquake. They know they are in a hazardus environment, but the lack of ability to implement anything in terms of building code or infrastructure programs means that prayer and luck are the only options.

Re:Moving the country?

[IndustrialComplex]

Probably not even remotely possible due to its size, but a similar problem seems to have been created in Kiruna, in Sweden. The town sits on top of the world's largest iron ore mine, and the mine has created a large cavity under the town. They are moving everything, in some cases, literally brick by brick.

That sounds like an aweful lot of bork.

Re:Moving the country?

[Bakkster]

He said the intelligent thing to do, not realistic.

It would be the 'best' thing, but as it concerns humans, which are emotional and irrational beings, it's highly unlikely.

Re:Moving the country?

[Phoenixlol]

Won't this hole get bigger and bigger the as rain erodes and potentially collapses the walls?

Re:Moving the country?

[Hatta]

Simpsons did it.

Re:Moving the country?

[yurtinus]

Virginia City, Nevada has similar problems but on a smaller scale. Seems to be rare enough that folks don't worry too much, but a few years ago a collapsed mine sucked up part of the road leading there.

Re:Moving the country?

[Reziac]

Exactly. Accumulating too many people with too few resources is why cities get squalid in the first place. The backcountry illiterate farmer's dream of a great city job to get out of subsistence farming is actually a nightmare. Better to disperse them back to subsistence farming; at least that's SOME living, rather than NO living.

Alternatively, expand the sinkhole and consider it a low-cost urban-renewal project.

Re:Moving the country?

[tlhIngan]

I dunno why, but I suddenly pictured a bunch of embarrassed Swedes whistling as they quietly move the town over a few hundred meters.

And a bunch of confused tourists wondering why their GPSes are off so badly - the map is right, but it says the town is somewhere else.

Re:Moving the country?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are similar problems in the Ruhr-valley area in Germany, the main center of the German coal and steal industry since the 1870s (with a strong decline in the last decades). There are areas where the surface sank by ~20 meters in the last 100 years. Here is a map showing the hight difference between a survey from 1892 and today:

http://www.lwl.org/westfalen-regional-download/Abbildungen_Buch/091n_Abb_1_BU.jpg

The corresponding article (http://www.lwl.org/LWL/Kultur/Westfalen_Regional/Wirtschaft/Bergbau/Bergsenkungen , in German) says that (apart from damages to buildings, which produce anual costs of 70 Million Euros) it takes a large effort to ensure that the water from rain and rivers does not flood the areas (which are often densely populated). One river (the Emscher) is enclosed by up to 10 meter high dikes for 75km to ensure that the water flows through the sunken area.

Re:Moving the country?

[timeOday]

While the occasional sinkhole is scary and dramatic, the human costs of staying put and paying closer attention to hydrology, and possibly dealing with the occasional sinkhole incident, are almost certainly lower than trying to move on that scale.

I agree relocating en masse is unlikely. There has to be some way to map this. If we can find oil deposits under a mile of water and another mile of rock, there must be a way to do this. Maybe ground penetrating radar. Perhaps total collapse is preceded by depressions that can be tracked over time with synthetic aperture radar. There must be a way.

Re:Moving the country?

[onkelonkel]

"Better to disperse them back to subsistence farming; at least that's SOME living, rather than NO living."

This may not be true. I remember learning about England during the Industrial Revolution. Hordes of people flocking into the cities to work endless hours for low wages in dirty, dangerous mills. Somebody asked "If it was so horrible for the factory workers why did they all go there" The teacher made the point that as bad as the factories were, it was still better than farming. Farmers worked as many hours or more than the factory workers, and the conditions were often just as dangerous. On top of that weather, disease and pests could wipe out your crops and leave you with nothing and you would starve. In the mills, as long as you worked you could feed your family; on the farms you could work hard and still starve.

Re:Moving the country?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look up Picher, Oklahoma

Re:Moving the country?

[Cheeko]

But is there a way a government that can't properly feed 23% of its citizens and has 56% below the poverty line can afford?

source info

Re:Moving the country?

[Hatta]

Moving 2 million(or even a substantial fraction thereof), in a country with a GDP per capita of ~$2,700 could get ugly. Like "squalid children with big eyes huddled under sodden tarps in disease-infested refugee camps" ugly.

Moving 2 million people from the surface of the earth to 100m underground in less than 5 seconds would be pretty ugly too.

Re:Moving the country?

[Anonymous Coward]

They only moved the town on the Simpson's, not the entire country of Guatemala as proposed by MalHavoc.

Re:Moving the country?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Depends on where on the priorities list it falls, I suspect. In pretty much all societies, things happen according to how much people care, not by catering to the most miserable first, and working up from there.

Now, all that makes no difference if there isn't some relatively cheap way; but I have to imagine that detecting the difference between solid rock and unstable loose fill in the top hundred meters or so is probably about the easiest Reflection Seismology problem that you'll run into in the real world. Might have to bum some supercomputer time; but you'll be way behind the difficultly curve compared to the reflection seismology problems that the oil guys are doing all the time.

The second question, of course, is whether these unstable patches are fixable in some cheap way. Knowing which half of the capital you have to evacuate is only incrementally more helpful than knowing that you have to evacuate half the capital. If, on the other hand, it turns out that you can just drill a well(ie. basic water-well drilling tech, cheap and widely available) and then pump in some cement, that might actually be economically practical, compared to the alternatives.

Re:Moving the country?

[blair1q]

Well, think about it this way.

This is like an earthquake, only it's taking years, and we can see 99.99% of it coming, instead of minutes and we don't see it coming.

So, instead of wailing in the streets and digging for bodies and asking what could have been done, and making do with the meager resources we have left after all the buildings fell on all the people and food and tools, we do what actually can be done and make do with the relatively copious resources we still have because we can see it coming.

Prayer and luck are never options. They're a waste of time in lives that have a nonzero probability of ending sooner than they should.

Re:Moving the country?

[Anonymous Coward]

not to mention the redistribution of resources that will inevitably occur with a government-sponsored migration.

Re:Moving the country?

[Dogtanian]

I remember learning about England during the Industrial Revolution. [..] Somebody asked "If it was so horrible for the factory workers why did they all go there" The teacher made the point that as bad as the factories were, it was still better than farming.

It's not quite as simple as that. In the case of England during the Industrial Revolution, the inclosures act(s) effectively made it more difficult for people to earn a living on the land as they had done previously, and increasingly forced them to move into cities to undertake industrial work. The Marxist interpretation is that the government was effectively legislating people off the land and into the capitalist system.

I'm not saying that working on the land was an easy option by any means- only that saying that people left it entirely of their own free will is misleading.

Some may argue the same thing happens nowadays when people leave farming to take up city-based factory work in third world countries- there is an active external force/agenda (e.g. those international bodies wishing to force through capitalist/free-market reforms by tying aid or loans to them) coercing people into the industrial option by making the old way of doing things unworkable.

Re:Moving the country?

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't this hole get bigger and bigger the as rain erodes and potentially collapses the walls?

Probably, I have a feeling the near future is not a good time to be a resident of Guatemala City.

Re:Moving the country?

[Anonymous Coward]

UHHH, wouldn't it have just been so much easier, and significantly less expensive to re-enforce the mine shafts?

Re:Moving the country?

[MoellerPlesset2]

I dunno why, but I suddenly pictured a bunch of embarrassed Swedes whistling as they quietly move the town over a few hundred meters.

Well, it's not the first town we've moved! Malmberget and Grängesberg are a few others. And Falun (one of the world's largest copper mines from the 7th century until it closed in 1992) collapsed in 1687 resulting in a hole 1.5 km in diameter right next to the town. (Miraculously, nobody was injured because it occured during one of their few holidays).

Here's a pic I took in Grängesberg (the largest ore body in Sweden second only to Kiruna), whose old town center had to be evacuated in the 1970's. The farther wall of the building has fallen into the open pit (and in the background, one can glimpse the mine office and one of the main shaft elevators). The pit behind it is well over 100 meters deep. That mine was shut down in 1991, and even though it filled at rates of tens of thousands of cubic meters of water per month, it took 18 years to fill up after the pumps were switched off.

/Unabashed mine geek.

Re:Moving the country?

[Reziac]

That's all fine when you HAVE an industrial revolution and constant growth in factory work. But my understanding (based on what's happened in Mexico City over the past few decades) is that in today's 3rd world cities the "factory work" is 90% fantasy (a million other backcountry peasants took most of those jobs long before you got there, so they're actually tough to get), but once dislocated it's tough to go back to the farm, which by then someone else has likely taken possession of, and now you're stuck. Hence the growth of cardboard slums beyond anything we've ever seen before in history, and utter dependence on the dole or the charity of others.

How is that better than subsistence farming?

Re:Moving the country?

[TheBig1]

That's what I'm trying to tell you, kid... it's not here. It's been completely blown away.

Destroyed... by the Empire.

Re:Moving the country?

[osu-neko]

Unless you pay them. I'm reminded of how the city of Hibbing, Minnesota (pop. 20,000 at the time), up on the Mesabi Iron Range, was moved two miles south when they discovered a rich iron deposit under it. Of course, that was a bit of a smaller scale, but the idea works -- pay people enough, and they will move the entire city.

Re:Moving the country?

[ImABanker]

If memory serves, 19th century England had an interesting anomaly, in that during some period overall life expectancy declined, while life expectancy improved both for city-dwellers and non-city dwellers. The reason the overall statistic declined was the flood of the people to the city (where life expectancies were lower) had the effect of lowering the average.

Re:Moving the country?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not always true. Take a look at Indian cities for example. The slums exist because housing is expensive, but jobs are easily available. Most people in slums prefer living in the slums to going back to where they came from because the alternative, though often better from the housing point of view, is much worse in every other way. Incidentally, a city job does not mean factory work. What percentage is factory work will depend on the particular city. There are all sorts menial "service sector" jobs, which in some cities (Mumbai for example) constitute the bulk of the low end jobs.

Re:Moving the country?

[Reziac]

India has a growing economy. Central America does not, and has much of its natural wealth tied up in gov't corruption. That makes a huge difference.

Re:Moving the country?

[X0563511]

Ah, but there is a big difference between the UK and Guatamala (climatically). You (I hope!) don't have yearly freezing in Guatamala. It's also a Tropical/Temperate climate, so they see plenty of rainfall. As of 1993, 25% of the land is already pastures, with another 54% forest/woodlands ready to cultivate.

I'd wager it's a hell of a lot easier to survive off the land in Guatamala than in "England"

Re:Moving the country?

[jafac]

Yes; this is why I did not donate any money to the Haiti relief effort. As cold-hearted as that sounds (and *feels*) - these people were suffering long before the earthquake, and will be suffering long after, and donating our pocket change is not going to alter the fact that they're bent under the yoke of oppression in a self-sustaining kleptocracy. Well, maybe not self-sustaining. . . certainly propped up by their neighbors in the Dominican Republic, the US, and other regional influences.

The earthquake was a great opportunity for the American newsmedia to blink its eye open and shut quickly to show a view of the tremendous suffering these people have borne for generations. When a viable solution to this suffering is found, I'll happily contribute. Until then, I refuse to make token "feel-good" attempts that do little more than roll statistics on paper so some self-serving social scientist can smoke them, or pass the joint to a politician.

'k - Haiti's 15 minutes are up. Next disaster please. Next group of desperately starving and suffering masses of third world children who will never understand how they barely even qualify as pawns in someone else's chess game - played largely for idle amusement. Pfft! Guatamala doesn't even get their own 15 minutes. They must share with the US Gulf Coast as it suffers through another disaster - roughly man-made - as all of these, frankly, are.

Re:Moving the country?

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is that a hole in the ground doesn't sell weary well....

Re:Moving the country?

[cusco]

There are too many people to return to subsistence farming. Not only in Guatemala, but just about everywhere today. Sorry to burst your bubble.

In reality, the whole "back to the land" movement is based on the false premise that today's population is sustainable. It's not. Once the cheap oil runs out and the prices on artificial fertilizers and pesticides rise you're going to see several billion people starve to death and a couple billion more, weakened by hunger, die of simple diseases like TB and diarrhea. Don't even bother bringing up the silly "Well this demonstration organic farm produced almost as much per acre as an industrial farm" argument, because it's not replicable on large scales. The current situation allows organic farms to survive in nice, isolated pockets, protected from pests and diseases by miles of pesticides. Put 100 miles of organic farms next to each other and you'll see crop failures like there used to be in the 19th century. Sorry about that, but that's reality.

Re:Moving the country?

[DinDaddy]

Well!

Re:Moving the country?

[Securityemo]

I live in Kiruna. Yes, it's not that dramatic. It's not a hole to hell, just the ground setting really really badly due to the mining activity. There's already a large (and spectacular) example of this kind of deterioration in "malmberget" south of here. The city will be moved piece by piece, and the railways and highways will be rerouted. There's a *lot* of free space up here.

Re:Moving the country?

[jamesh]

They aren't thinking smart enough. We've got all this nuclear and other toxic waste that we don't know where to put, and they've got a great big hole under their city that will collapse unless they fill it with something. Surely there is a common solution to both our problems?

Re:Moving the country?

[element-o.p.]

I was in Guatemala (and Guatemala City) in January, so let me provide a little perspective on this. Guatemala is a country of contrasts -- downtown Guatemala City is very modern, and very nice, for the most part. It's industrialized, and most (U.S.) Americans wouldn't feel *that* out-of-place, other than the barbed-wire everywhere (don't be out alone after dark...) and the Spanish on all the signs. However, most of us in the U.S. or Europe have no concept of the degree of poverty that lives right next to the upper and middle class. There is an entire community of people living in the *dump* in Guatemala City; generations have spent their entire lives living in the city dump. There's a lower-middle class neighborhood right next to the airport that would be a slum in the U.S.; it certainly wasn't the nicest part of Guatemala City, but it wasn't exceptional. And the city isn't small, either. It might not be L.A., New York or Chicago, but you're talking about a non-trivial number of people.In other words, while moving the city might be the logical thing to do, you've got to understand that Guatemala is not a particularly prosperous country. Furthermore, Guatemala is pretty much filled with volcanoes. Sure, building a city of two million people on a porous ash field might not be particularly smart, but there isn't much else to build on there, except for the volcanoes themselves. As you can see, cinder-cone volcanoes (which I believe these are; geologists, please correct me if I'm wrong) have pretty steep sides; you aren't going to move the city there.

Having said that, there is precedent for moving the city. It wasn't Guatemala City, but the city of Antigua in Guatemala had to be moved...but it was a lot smaller than Guatemala City is today.

Re:Moving the country?

[element-o.p.]

...but the lack of ability to implement anything in terms of building code or infrastructure programs...

Understatement of the year. I was in San Pedro La Laguna, San Juan La Laguna and Guatemala City four months ago. The electrical wiring alone was enough to send shivers down my spine...and I'm not an electrician (IOW, the wiring was even worse than I, being a layman, would do). Having said that, I really, really enjoyed Guatemala, and hope I get to go back again.

Re:Moving the country?

[Iamthecheese]

or you're going to see billions of people having to pay more for the more expensive oil. hydrocarbons can be made as long as there is energy.

Re:Moving the country?

[laederkeps]

Nothing to see here, move along!

Re:Moving the country?

[roma12345]

"Better to disperse them back to subsistence farming; at least that's SOME living, rather than NO living." This may not be true. I remember learning about England during the Industrial Revolution. Hordes of people flocking into the cities to work endless hours for low wages in dirty, dangerous mills. Somebody asked "If it was so horrible for the factory workers why did they all go there" The teacher made the point that as bad as the factories were, it was still better than farming. Farmers worked as many hours or more than the factory workers, and the conditions were often just as dangerous. On top of that weather, disease and pests could wipe out your crops and leave you with nothing and you would starve. In the mills, as long as you worked you could feed your family; on the farms you could work hard and still starve.

Or go into the poorhouse!

Re:Moving the country?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Marxist interpretation is that the government was effectively legislating people off the land and into the capitalist system.

Yes, but to most credible historians, the "Marxist interpretation" is full of holes.

Like Guatemala, apparently.

Re:Moving the country?

[Anonymous Coward]

TL:DR

Ima Racist

Re:Moving the country?

[RichiH]

> Some may argue the same thing happens nowadays when people leave farming to take up city-based factory work in third world countries- there is an active external force/agenda (e.g. those international bodies wishing to force through capitalist/free-market reforms by tying aid or loans to them) coercing people into the industrial option by making the old way of doing things unworkable.

That's one interpretation, but one I do not subscribe to. Assuming that the modern livestyle with easy and save living is preferable over hard manual labour as your only option (an easy assumption to make, but probably not true for 100% of all people), the external force is the transistion to this new lifestyle. It is painfully obvious that supply and demand as well as available tools (tractors, seeds, water pumps, schoolbooks etc pp) undergo a massive change during this transition.

When weaving machines (the first computers, btw) became more sophisticated, a _lot_ of people lost their jobs. The external force, availability of new machines, made a whole profession useless over night. Yet, the overall population lived better due to higher quality and cheaper fabrics being available.

Re:Moving the country?

[RichiH]

The Wikipedia pic shows a mine which does not look natural. More like a man-made mine.

Why the wait?

[jDeepbeep]

He is just now making this information public? How long has he known about this? Why were the people not informed earlier? TFA states a similar (but smaller) hole opened back in 2007, not too far from this monster.

Re:Why the wait?

[Nadaka]

RTFA?

In 2007, a similar hole opened after a sewage pipe broke pipe just a few blocks from this weekend's disaster. Bonis was part of a team of geologists and engineers brought in to investigate and advise officials on what went wrong.

"Our recommendation was that this could happen again," he recalled. "When you have water flowing from storm water runoff, a sewage pipe, or any kind of strong flow, it eats away at the loose material. We don't know how long it has to go on before it collapses. But once it starts collapsing, God help us."

Re:Why the wait?

[maxume]

Perhaps it is just news to you?

Re:Why the wait?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think so, it was news to me too.

Re:Why the wait?

[smallcaps]

RFTA Read The F!#@ing Article or Run The F!#@ Away?

Hell hole after all?

[Anonymous Coward]

So ironically the funny sensationalists headlines of hell hole opening in Guatemala might not have been so far off.

Errr... yeah

[DavidR1991]

The article's title (Don't call it a sinkhole) is certainly on the money. I was shocked. If you haven't read/looked at the article, do. I was expecting, you know, a little crater thing or something. This is far, far beyond that. It is literally a massive cylindrical hole. It's amazing.

Re:Errr... yeah

[jgagnon]

I know I'd move away if given the chance. That thing is HUGE.

Re:Errr... yeah

[Random2]

The worst part is it's depth, so the land looks safe to build on; while in reality it is far more dangerous.

Re:Errr... yeah

[linguizic]

Yeah the picture of the piping feature is quite impressive, however the article actually sucks at explaining why these features happen in the first place. It's the equivalent of writing a story about the the Winter Park Sinkhole and merely stating that it's what happens when you build a town on top of limestone. Ironically, the article explains how sinkholes happen better than it does piping features.

Re:Errr... yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

It is literally a massive cylindrical hole.

Yeah, but why are we talking about your Mom's twat?

Re:Errr... yeah

[Tapewolf]

I've seen the picture before, but only by clicking on the one in the article to get a higher-res version do I finally think I understand what it is I'm seeing.

See, there was this darker bit at the bottom that you couldn't make out properly, I figured it was an artifact of the image, or a heap of black stuff at the bottom. When it first went around the office, people were saying 'Why can't you see the bits of the building at the bottom?'
Now that I can see it more clearly, it seems to me that the brown bit is the crust, and the black bit is a hole into a fuck-off big cavern, which could quite easily be as big as the rest of the picture, if not much of the town.

Re:Errr... yeah

[dpilot]

The picture looked to me as if the Mole Man attacked, and the FF were out of town. The walls looked practically vertical.

Re:Errr... yeah

[Pharmboy]

I agree the article suxors, and the image is insanely awesome. At first glance, by brain was saying "this is a photoshop'ed image, no such thing exists in nature". It is just too perfect a cylinder, which makes it all the more disturbing. My question is: where the hell is the material that is missing? Has no one dropped a camera down the hole yet? I don't think they are going to understand what is going on until they see the bottom of the hole. Is it a large chasm? Does the hole stay perfectly cylindrical all the way to the bottom? (that would be even more disturbing) While somewhat dangerous, it shouldn't be that hard to get a camera and lights down there, as it is "only" 100 feet deep. (if that makes sense)

Re:Errr... yeah

[Rogerborg]

Agreed. I skipped this when it went through the regular news cycle, but now that I finally look, wow, it's astonishing. I got vertigo just looking at it, and now it's giving me Lovecroftian wiggins thinking that the "solid" ground under us is just a fragile shell. Urgh.

Re:Errr... yeah

[Runaway1956]

It's that damned particle accelorator. They created a mini-black hole, and it escaped to Guatemala City. THAT's where all the material went!

Re:Errr... yeah

[ColdWetDog]

It's that damned particle accelorator. They created a mini-black hole, and it escaped to Guatemala City. THAT's where all the material went!

I would vote for this

Re:Errr... yeah

[Beardo the Bearded]

I thought the same thing: "looks `shopped".

Good question as to why nobody's dropped a camera down the hole yet.

Re:Errr... yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

It is fake.

Re:Errr... yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

That is correct. In essence you get to peek into a cavern of, as of yet, unknown size. However, you can safely bet that the cavern is huge.

I do think life should have a bit of thrill and adventure, but if I lived anywhere in a ten mile radius of that hole I'd run away!

Re:Errr... yeah

[jslater25]

That's a great idea, except that you likely don't realize that moving away would require you to lose a considerable sum of money. Who in their right mind would purchase your house?

Re:Errr... yeah

[perryizgr8]

and its so nearly perfect that your mind screams "PHOTOSHOP!!!!!!!".

Re:Errr... yeah

[jgagnon]

Satan is obviously pining for it. :p

Re:Errr... yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, even more interestingly, if you then take the highres image over to photo shoops and use the burn/dodge tool on the hole, it starts to look more and more like it indeed opens into a cavern...

Re:Errr... yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the same thing: "looks `shopped".

Good question as to why nobody's dropped a camera down the hole yet.

My theory is that most people in Guatemala are too poor to afford risking both a decent video camera and the crane/rigging equipment required to get a picture from a significant depth inside. Also they might be uneasy about the potentially unstable sides of the freaking huge hole in the ground and the certainly fatal drop if those walls collapsed. But that's just a guess...

Re:Errr... yeah

[MaWeiTao]

I'm guessing we're only seeing the photos from above because those are the ones that look more impressive. The authorities have already recovered bodies from this sinkhole, so obviously they've been down there.

Re:Errr... yeah

[Abstrackt]

That's a great idea, except that you likely don't realize that moving away would require you to lose a considerable sum of money. Who in their right mind would purchase your house?

If a big fucking hole opened and swallowed a building in the middle of my city the value of my house would be the last thing I worried about.

Re:Errr... yeah

[blair1q]

My question is, why do they say it's 100 feet deep, when it's apparent it opens into some sort of bottomless cavern below the 100 feet of dirt?

Re:Errr... yeah

[ArsonSmith]

They said the same thing about the goatse.cx guy. Nothing good came of that.

Re:Errr... yeah

[anglico]

Um, you could rappel out of a helicopter, granted I would like to have some food and a SatCom link JUST IN CASE I got stuck down there. I'm not a geologist so I have no idea what I might run into other than a bunch of dead bodies and debris, otherwise I think it would be fun as hell.

Re:Errr... yeah

[masterwit]

The article's title (Don't call it a sinkhole) is certainly on the money. I was shocked. If you haven't read/looked at the article, do. I was expecting, you know, a little crater thing or something. This is far, far beyond that. It is literally a massive cylindrical hole. It's amazing.

How can we be sure this was "created"? I remember distinctly from Alien vs. Predator that the amazing hole led to an amazingly scary pyramid!

Or how about a Crop Circle, maybe some Alien up there was having a bad day at the office and was thinking:

I'm not fucking around with my crop "circle" today!

I mean its basically irrefutable evidence...I searched Google and it came up with over 32,000 results for

"Guatemala sinkhole" aliens

Either 32,000 of us are idiots (which can't be true LOL), or aliens are coming. Don't say I didn't warn you all!

Re:Errr... yeah

[jimicus]

Assuming you own your house (with a mortgage) - how easy is it to hand the keys back to the mortgage company and declare yourself bankrupt to deal with any shortfall between the price the house sells for and your outstanding mortgage when you live in Guatemala?

How common is home ownership there anyway?

Re:Errr... yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you could rappel out of a helicopter, granted I would like to have some food and a SatCom link JUST IN CASE I got stuck down there.

Sure that's possible. However, I would imagine it is more problematic to on, a whim, charter a helicopter in Guatemala than it would be in the USA, Canada, or the EU; and in any case significantly more expensive than using a crane or rappelling gear from the side of the hole.

Look, I'm not saying that it wouldn't be interesting to have someone explore this new geological feature. Only that given the economic and logistical realities of where the event took place, it's completely understandable that no one has done so in the first several days after it formed!

Re:Errr... yeah

[quacking duck]

While somewhat dangerous, it shouldn't be that hard to get a camera and lights down there, as it is "only" 100 feet deep. (if that makes sense)

Correction: That's 100 *metres* deep. National geographic says it's about 30 storeys deep, which I assume to mean that's where the sides of the hole end and the "cavern" (for lack of a better term) begins.

Re:Errr... yeah

[Pharmboy]

I just checked again, the article linked says 60' wide and 100' deep. Your linked article backs up what you are saying. Either that sucker is getting deeper fast, or of the articles was written by someone at NASA who gets confused by all those "feet/meter" conversions.

Re:Errr... yeah

[Stormy Dragon]

So this city has a literal real estate bubble?

Re:Errr... yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

NG has it that it's "approximately 30-story-deep" although no one knows how that estimate was arrived at. They certainly didn't measure it. It's deep all right, but for the moment all we can say with certainty is "more than several stories". As for the blackness in the photographs, don't trust that too much. All the pictures I've seen on the net that show the black nothingness have either been taken by bad cameras or been shopped. For all we know it could equally well be subsurface water, or an image artefact that doesn't correspond to any real world discontinuity. Oh, and the images that are most popular are those that make it look deepest. There is a bit of trompe-l'oeil going on, although it's hard to say how much.

Re:Errr... yeah

[eugene ts wong]

Well, obviously, many people refused to move. Therefore, unfortunately, there is always demand for the home.

That being said, it seems rather foolish to stay there, even though you're going to die, just to avoid a financial hit.

That being said, he did write, "if given the chance".

Re:Errr... yeah

[eugene ts wong]

It would be an interesting discussion to see what would happen.

In Canada, I would imagine that the banks would try to pin the responsibility on the small guy, but how could the bank prove that there was even a house there? Perhaps civic records? If the civic records could prove it, then the small guy could tell the bank to take the house back.

Ultimately, I blame the bank for accepting the loan, but not the responsibility. The small guy can't know that a hole would appear. If the small guy could know, then the bank could know also, and thus, give better value for the loan.

Re:Errr... yeah

[eugene ts wong]

They'd do anything to compete with the US. It's frustrating.

Re:Errr... yeah

[jimicus]

I don't know how it works in other parts of the world, but in the UK a condition of pretty much all mortgages is you must have buildings insurance.

However, under normal circumstances buildings insurance is intended to rebuild your house where it previously stood - so it only covers the cost of rebuilding, not the value of the land on which the building stood. Quite what you're supposed to do if the land on which the building stood isn't there any more I don't know.

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[Pojut]

I think you are confusing it with this.

Division by Zero

[Drakkenmensch]

Don't do it.

Re:Division by Zero

[Dogtanian]

The problem is that a lot of this went on back during the 1980s when we didn't realise the environmental consequences of dividing by zero.

Countless programmers who forgot to include a check for the divisor being zero back then have spawned code which still remains in use today, causing continued damage throughout the world. They are to blame for all these environmental disasters... as are the Pet Shop Boys.

Flikr

[Anonymous Coward]

The full size version of that photo thats always on the front page of this story is on flikr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gobiernodeguatemala/4657053554/sizes/l/

Amazing, it looks like something out of a scifi movie. Did the death star missfire?

Re:Flikr

[Anonymous Coward]

Captain Nero was drilling to the Earth's core to deposit the red matter but the drill was sabotaged before he got any further than this.

Re:Flikr

[Blackdognight]

Has anyone seen any other pictures of this thing? I've only ever seen the official government one and the bottom looks photoshopped to me. Maybe to cover over the carnage or something? I'm not doubting its existence or severity, I'd just like to get another perspective to gage depth and whatnot.

Re:Flikr

[Anonymous Coward]

All stupid jokes aside, can anyone explain why the side walls of the sink hole are so perfectly vertical?

How could something caused by water escaping from a broken pipe result in a perfectly circular, perfectly vertical hole?

Something else is going on, but rather than talking about that, all the /.'ers ever do is spew stupid puns.

Re:Flikr

[Wiarumas]

I was thinking more along the lines of Empire Strikes Back - the asteroid with the space slug/worm. I imagine any second the Millennium Falcon to come flying out of it.

Re:Flikr

[Anonymous Coward]

No just a test fire.

Re:Flikr

[Anonymous Coward]

"That's no sinkhole ..."

Re:Flikr

[Locutus]

wow, they REALLY screwed up the drilling of that well in the Gulf of Mexico! They're letting all the 'stuff' out of the creamy filling of the planet and look what's happening. ;-) nice round hole if I don't say so myself.

LoB

Re:Flikr

[SnarfQuest]

Obviously photoshopped

Re:Flikr

[2obvious4u]

The scifi movie you are looking for is "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer".

Re:Flikr

[Troed]

There are videos on Youtube.

Re:Flikr

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a test fire.

Hmmm, a "feature"...right.

[Em Emalb]

"Feature" like Microsoft's "features"?

Holy hell, that's amazing. Just a giant almost perfect circular hole in the middle of the city. Amazing.

sinkhole

[Itninja]

...because "sinkholes" refer to areas where bedrock is solid but has been eaten away by groundwater..

I had no idea that 'sinkhole' had such a specific definition. I thought was just a hole where the ground has sinked.

Re:sinkhole

[Zamerick]

you mean, "sunk"?

Re:sinkhole

[Itninja]

Actually 'sinked' is more proper/correct, though I no it sounds weird. Kind of like the last line in To Kill a Mockingbird: "[Atticus] would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning"

Re:sinkhole

[MBGMorden]

Actually 'sinked' is more proper/correct, though I no it sounds weird.

You "no" it sounds weird?

Somehow I don't think I'll be taking advice on what's more proper/correct from you.

For what it's worth, a quick glance at Dictionary.com shows no results at all for sinked (and Firefox's spell checker just red-lined it when I typed it), while it clearly identifies sunk as the proper past tense of sink.

Re:sinkhole

[Itninja]

First of all...whoosh.
Secondly, I would recommend a real (e.g. physical), unabridged dictionary. However if you want you want to use an online dictionary I would recommend thefreedictionary.com as it is far more expansive on pronunciation.

The -ed in past tense verbs becomes more common in ares that have been speaking English for a longer period of time. For example, in the Southern US (where they have been speaking English for a long time), and in England (where English was invented) many verbs are in the -ed format: swimmed, runned, stinged, waked, sinked, etc. I think NPR did a bit about this a few years back.

Re:sinkhole

[Anonymous Coward]

The -ed in past tense verbs becomes more common in ares that have been speaking English for a longer period of time. For example, in the Southern US (where they have been speaking English for a long time)...

Yup. Them Southerners done best know how to talked.

Re:sinkhole

[AthanasiusKircher]

First of all...whoosh.

I don't get the joke here either. Are you claiming "sinked" is correct or not? Did you intend to say "no" instead of "know" or not? I think you need [sarcasm] tags.

Secondly, I would recommend a real (e.g. physical), unabridged dictionary. However if you want you want to use an online dictionary I would recommend thefreedictionary.com as it is far more expansive on pronunciation.

Actually, the best unabridged dictionary in the world is the Oxford English Dictionary, which is available online (for a subscription fee, though). It's better than the paper form of the OED, which isn't updated as frequently.

The -ed in past tense verbs becomes more common in ares that have been speaking English for a longer period of time. For example, in the Southern US (where they have been speaking English for a long time), and in England (where English was invented) many verbs are in the -ed format: swimmed, runned, stinged, waked, sinked, etc.

I'm going to have to call BS on this part. The OED is the standard authority of English in England. Under "sink" it lists:

Pa. tense sank, sunk. pa. pple. sunk, sunken.

The OED is notorious for being a bit permissive in such matters, being a fairly descriptive dictionary. If "sinked" were a common form, it would be listed as such. Furthermore, even in the historical list of forms, "sinked" comes up short:

pa. tense. {alpha}. sing. 1, 3-4 sanc, 5 sanck; 4-5 sanke, 4-5, 8- sank. pl. 5-7 sanke, 6 sancke, 9- sank. {beta}. sing. 1 sonc, 4 sonk. pl. 3-5 sonken, 5-6 sonke, 6 soncke, 6-7 soonke. {gamma}. pl. 1 suncon, 3 sunken, sunke, 5 sunkyn; also sing. 6 suncke, 6-7 sunke, sunck, 7- sunk. {delta}. 5 synked, 7 (9 dial.) sinked. pa. pple. {alpha}. 1 suncen, 3 i-sunken (Orm. sunnkenn), 3- sunken, 4 sunkin, -yn, 6 suncken; 4-7 sunke, 6-7 sunck(e, 7- sunk. {beta}. 4-5 sonken, 5 sonkyn; Sc. 5 sonkine, -yne, 6 sonkin; 4 i-sonke, 6 son(c)ke, soonke, 7 soonk. {gamma}. 9 sank, dial. sinken.

Here "sinked" is only listed as a relatively minor historical dialect form, hardly what is "proper/correct" as you claim. Moreover, it doesn't appear to be that historically important, and certainly not the most common "old" form.

Re:sinkhole

[Gulthek]

Hey now, you can't "whoosh" and argue at the same time. You either agree to pretend that your original post was a joke (whoosh) or you can continue to futilely argue.

Luckily I happen to work at an institution with a subscription to the OED. Let's look shall we?

c1250 Gen. & Ex. 3775 Alle he sunken e ere wi-in, Wi wifes, and childre, and hines-kin.

Yeah, that 1250 is the year the quote was written. This usage is also specifically referring to sunk into the earth.

All told, their examples for the word "sink" have 55 uses of the work sunk and 0 of the word sinked. Sinked is listed as an obscure, colloquial use though.

The argument for centuries has been between sank and sunk, sinked is right out.

http://www.grammarphobia.com/blogger-blog/2010/01/honey-i-sunk-boat.html

Re:sinkhole

[AthanasiusKircher]

Oh, by the way, I realized some might not be familiar with the number convention of archaic spellings in the OED. Basically, a number "1" means before the year 1100, other numbers mean the succeeding centuries -- 2 = 12th century (1100-1200), 3 = 13th century, etc.

So, "sinked" in this case is listed as "7 (9 dial.)", which means that it was common in the 17th century (1600-1700) era, and apparently was a dialect form in some regions in the 19th century. Not exactly a popular historical form.

Re:Sinkhole

[Anonymous Coward]

you aren't funny. you just stole that from http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1675240&cid=32458988

Re:sinkhole

[Itninja]

The whoosh was regarding the 'no'.
And I never said it was common. I only said it was 'proper/correct'.
And the OED is not, even remotely, the 'best' dictionary in the world. Just the most respected. Like calling Oxford or Harvard the 'best' schools. I would recommend a unabridged dictionary, which the OED is not.
But I doubt you would specifically find 'sinked' in any of them, anymore than you would find an -ing version of every noun. Just the way it's said/written in proper English conversation or correspondence.

Re:sinkhole

[mdda]

> "In England" : swimmed, runned, stinged, waked, sinked, etc.

Not the England where I'm from...

Re:sinkhole

[Anonymous Coward]

While we are at it 'more proper' is terrible English too.

Re:sinkhole

[gknoy]

Would you care to offer a better example of a dictionary? I was under the impression that for pretty much any scholar of the English language, the OED was pretty much the absolute definitive source.

Reading more ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_English_Dictionary#Criticisms ), it seems that the OED is criticized for putting more emphasis on written english than spoken. However, given that written records are all we have of what was proper (and, indeed, authors like Shakespeare used relatively common language in their writing), I'm not sure where you'd find a "better" dictionary than the OED for finding out what was "proper" in the history of the language.

Re:sinkhole

[gknoy]

Also (I wish I'd thought of this before posting), the common-ness of a spelling is orthogonal to its proper-ness. Hundreds of thousands of teens spell "wait" as "w8" and "your" as "ur" (while also abusing the same letters to mean "you are" and "you're"), but I doubt anyone would consider that a proper spelling of the word.

Now, if you want to say that some particular mangling of a word (like "runned" or "sinked") is used in some dialect, that's OK. The rest of the English-speaking world, though, tends to believe that they don't know how (or want) to speak proper English.

Re:sinkhole

[jbezorg]

Hey now, you can't "whoosh" and argue at the same time.

"Hedging an argument"?

Argue the point. If proven wrong, make the claim it was all a joke.

Re:sinkhole

[blair1q]

Obscure and colloquial count as use.

As dictionaries are meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive*, that's enough to make a use of "sinked" valid.

Albeit its validity is weak, since it's unlikely the rest of the statement in question was cast in the same colloquial idiom.

* - if you want to be told how to talk, get Strunk & White or any of a number of journalistic stylebooks. Or wait for Talk Like A Pirate Day. Arr.

Re:sinkhole

[MBGMorden]

And I never said it was common. I only said it was 'proper/correct'.

Ok, so it's not common, but even according to the dictionary you linked (thefreedictionary.com) it's not listed as a valid form of sink. Only in the OED (which you for some reason take issue with) does it appear to be listed as a rare archaic past tense. Certainly not "more proper".

I guess I must have missed the memo where we just say absolutely incorrect things with no comical value whatsoever and can just blurt out "whoosh" when called on it. I think you're trying to pull a Chewbacca defense on this one.

I can just see this going down soon:

Reporter: "Mr. President, you said that the bailouts were going to end the recession, and they haven't. What is your response to this?"
Obama: "Whoosh!"

Re:sinkhole

[AthanasiusKircher]

The whoosh was regarding the 'no'.

Since this post has been modded funny, I'm not sure when you're joking anymore.

And I never said it was common. I only said it was 'proper/correct'.

"Proper/correct" by whose standard? Apparently, since you appeal to "unabridged" dictionaries in your previous posts, those are the places to look. Yet such dictionaries don't list your form as correct. So how do we determine what is "proper/correct"? Do we just ask you?

And the OED is not, even remotely, the 'best' dictionary in the world. Just the most respected. Like calling Oxford or Harvard the 'best' schools. I would recommend a unabridged dictionary, which the OED is not.

The OED is an unabridged dictionary. "Unabridged" isn't in the title (as it is for some Webster dictionaries), but it is unabridged, according to the traditional meaning of the term "unabridged." It tries to track every variant of every meaning, spelling, etc. of every word that has existed in English since Old English. I don't know how it is possible to be more "unabridged" than that.

You do realize that the OED is actually 20 VOLUMES long, right? It's about as long and as big as an entire set of encyclopedias. It has its faults, and may not always be the "best" dictionary for all purposes, but it can certainly claim to be the most comprehensive (i.e., unabridged) dictionary of the English language.

But I doubt you would specifically find 'sinked' in any of them, anymore than you would find an -ing version of every noun. Just the way it's said/written in proper English conversation or correspondence.

"-ing" versions of verbs are called gerunds, and you'll find all of them listed in the OED. They often even have separate entries, with all the variant historical spellings and any specialized uses separate from the root verb. (As opposed to in Webster's Unabridged where they are generally just included in an entry as "-ING" for a primary word.) Nouns don't generally have an "-ing" form, so they wouldn't be in a dictionary.

Re:sinkhole

[roman_mir]

Sinked - clobbered to death with a kitchen sink.

Re:sinkhole

[cromar]

It is saddening that regionalism/classism is so prevalent among Slashdotters.

Re:sinkhole

[Itninja]

Don't ask me. It's called the 'Queen's English' for a reason ;)
But I see this thread is evolving into a (so far civil) flame war. So I am going to quietly back out of the room....
But real quick:

Nouns don't generally have an "-ing" form, so they wouldn't be in a dictionary.

Are you whooshing me now? The verbing of a noun is called, well, verbification (or conversion). It can be done with nearly any noun. Just a few examples that are likely listed in the OED.

Batting

Phoning

Emailing

Mousing

Inking

And a few that may not listed:

Incesting

Bookending

Tasing

incentivizing

That is all. As you were.

Re:sinkhole

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait. What? They had wi-fi in 1250?

Re:sinkhole

[Itninja]

Actually the people in the Southern US do speak with a more proper form of English. And they were recognized as such in the antebellum days. Just because post Civil War pop-culture has consistently depicted Southerners are dopes and idiots does not make it so.

Re:sinkhole

[Myopic]

Your trolling makes me laugh. How long do you think you can string people along believing that you actually think "sink" can turn into "sinked"? That's hilarious, and normally I would expect people to simply ignore such an obvious troll, but you seem to have pulled it off. Kudos.

Re:sinkhole

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure you lost, buddy. Your lame attempt to claim sarcasm for "no" has been clearly exposed as fraud, so just give it up.

Re:sinkhole

[AthanasiusKircher]

I'll back away as well; this will be my last contribution to the debate.

I'll just note that your claim a few posts up was that your form was used in places with a long history of speaking English... like England. There may be some problems with the OED, but it is pretty comprehensive, and it doesn't support that claim. About the Southern US, well, it may be an older dialect form (perhaps this is what's showing up as the 19th century dialect form in the OED), but I did live in the Southern US for a few years, and I didn't hear many verbs in the form you mention.

The verbing of a noun is called, well, verbification (or conversion). It can be done with nearly any noun.

Yes, you're talking about turning a noun into a verb, which you then add an "-ing" to (forming a present participle or gerund). But that's not an "-ing form of a noun." It's an "-ing" form of a verb that is derived/converted from a noun. You wouldn't generally have an "-ing" form of the noun if the root isn't also a verb. Want proof? Ask yourself how many such "-ing" forms depend on a specific verbal meaning that isn't the same as the original noun. "Batting" or "e-mailing" already have a primary action associated with the noun. But take other words:

benching, screening, dolling, booking, walling, pencilling, chairing, etc.

These ultimately come from nouns bench, screen, doll, book, wall, pencil, chair, etc., but not directly. Instead, there are verbs that have very specific meanings, which are related to the original nouns, but often have different connotations (and often require specific idioms -- "dolling up," "pencilling in," etc.).

In essence, these aren't "forms" of a noun. They are other words derived from a noun. What's the difference? In the former case, you're just using English syntax to make a word plural, change to a different tense, mood, etc. You can do it to any word of a particular grammatical class. In the latter case, you're actually making a new word that has to have a new meaning. For some words, it may be apparent to listeners or readers what you mean, because (like "e-mail" or "bat") there is a clear associated action.

For most words, though, it's not readily apparent to a listener what you mean if the verbal form doesn't already exist. What would "desking," "dooring," "knobbing," "drawering," "bookshelfing," etc. mean? (Just to verbify a bunch of objects I see when I look around the room from my desk.) Some of these are used as verbs, but the meaning is not readily apparent -- "knobbing," for example, has been used historically in some circumstances to refer to putting knobs onto something and in other ones to taking them off/out of something. Thus, it would be inaccurate to say that there is an "-ing" form of the noun "knob," because it has never become a standard verb.

Hence, I repeat my assertion that nouns don't generally have an "-ing" form. If you wish, I'll qualify that by saying -- except when they have already been turned into verbs.

Re:sinkhole

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the people in the Southern US do speak with a more proper form of English. And they were recognized as such in the antebellum days.

Funny that you italicized 'do', when you should have written 'did'. If you had done so, your entire argument would be cohesive. As it stands, you back your statement of 'do' with an argument that refers to the past and not the present.

Re:sinkhole

[Itninja]

Not dealing with reality in second sentence. Dealing with perception. The reality is present tense, the perception is past tense. Nonlinear thought is key in these difficult times.

Re:sinkhole

[FyreWyr]

Skipping right past whether something can be "more correct" or not--I'll meet those of you who wish to discuss it on the 'inflatable hover fort' at David Mitchell's Soap Box--I felt it might be useful to add to AthanasiusKircher's comment on "sinked" as a "relatively minor historical dialect form". I agree, with the caveat that it's still useful to know, as uncommon (or, dated) usage can still be prominent. In Iowa City, Iowa, the Old Capitol Building sports a plaque just to the right of the west entrance (about halfway down the page, the 1840's plaque is partially visible behind the rightmost pillar). The building is a popular place to study for UIA students, so one afternoon I also found myself there, thought it quaint that the plaque had such a "glaring" grammatical error, then corrected myself with a dictionary later. While trying to find a picture of the plaque--in vain--I discovered that it's not difficult to find other references to that "-ed" vs. "-t" construct from the time (everything from Masonic texts to new settler's constructions). Having been born several generations too late (and not grammar's bitch for the most part), I couldn't possibly comment on the dialect's influence...but they did put it on a rather important building for the time.

Still, I'm definitely not arguing for anything other than, e.g., swim/swam/swum. "Swimmed", to me, just sounds wrong--and in support of your BS call, it would appear the BBC agrees.

Re:sinkhole

[AthanasiusKircher]

Thanks for this note. It is interesting. I did try to do a little digging and find out more about the "-ed" forms in the Southern US, but didn't find anything quickly through online searches.

In any case, it wasn't so much that I was arguing that the "sinked" was never a common form anywhere, merely that it isn't considered common or proper today, and its historical importance was limited to perhaps a few specific periods and places. English in 1840 was still not as completely regularized as it is today, so it's not surprising that we might find variant spellings and forms in some regions.

Interestingly, "swim" would have been a better example for the GGP's case. The OED's historical forms for that:

Forms: pa. tense strong 1 swamm, 3-4 suam, (4 squam), 4-6 swame, 5-7 swamme, 1- swam; pl. 1 swummon, 2 swummen, 3 svommen, 3-5 swomme, 4 swumme; 1, 4-7 (9 dial.) swom, 4-7 swomme, 6-7 swumme, swome, (6 swoome, swume, swomm), 6-9 swum; weak 3 swymde, 5 swymyd, 6 swymmed, Sc. swoumit, 6-8 (9 dial.) swimmed, 7 swimed, 9 Sc. soomed. pa. pple. strong 1 ({asg}e)swummen, 4, 7 swommen, 6-7 swom(m)e, (7 swoome, swumme, swom, swimme), 6- swum; 7- (now incorrect) swam; weak 6 swymmed, Sc. swymmit, 6-7 (9 dial.) swimmed, 9 Sc. soomed, sweemed.

Note here that there are entire "strong" and "weak" categories over prolonged periods, suggesting that there was a common historical tendency to use "-ed" forms, as well as a strong form (i.e., a verb that doesn't follow the normal English pattern of "-ed" for past tense). "Sinked" on the other hand is clearly a historical aberration (though perhaps one that was common in some places during some periods), rather than the original historical form that the GGP claimed.

Re:sinkhole

[cromar]

The moderation on this comment pretty much proves my point.

I have a solution

[elrous0]

Just put giant parachutes on all the buildings.

Re:I have a solution

[Lord Ender]

Better: have everyone wear stunt harnesses at all times. If the ground below you collapses, you are left there dangling where the sidewalk used to be.

Centralia

[adeft]

Here in PA we have a town called Centralia that is over an active burning coal fire. I believe it has been burning for over 50 years. The town was considered unfit to live in and everyone was encouraged to move. There are still some stragglers remaining, I believe the population is about 5 people. You can still walk/drive through it, but at your own risk as sink holes are a huge issue. If you can ignore the rediculous pop-ups pictures of what a zombie apocalypse might look like here

Re:Centralia

[Selfbain]

I believe that town was the basis for the game Silent Hill too.

Re:Centralia

[Java Pimp]

Not the game but it was for the movie.

Re:Centralia

[dpilot]

When I was about 5 (almost 50 years ago) we were visiting relatives, and they took us to see where a coal mine had been buring underground for years. The ground was warm and slightly smelly, but that's about as far as I remember. Most of my memories of that are seeing family slides and hearing stories. The relatives were in the Altoona area, though.

Re:Centralia

[Anonymous Coward]

I went there with a friend at night. It was pretty cool, you would walk along highways that were abandoned, large cracks spewing smoke and steam. Looked much cooler at night than the link pictures suggest. The highways would just end in a section of brush.

Re:Centralia

[newdsfornerds]

It's amazing that nothing has been done about those underground coal fires. I know they are hard to extinguish, but we need to do what it takes. Some of the biggest coal fires are in China, IIRC. We are releasing all that CO2 and other pollutants into the atmosphere without so much as getting a single volt of electricity from it. What a disaster. BTW, I can't ignore your ridiculous spelling ;)

Re:Centralia

[thms]

While we are talking about unusual man-made geological features, Hell's Gate should not be omitted.

It is essentially a big crater in Uzbekistan where natural gas has been burning for decades. Back when it formed they ignited the gas. From a current perspective that still makes sense, as burning it in this case converts methane which has a several times larger warming potential than CO2. Underground coal of course is just the opposite and given they have been burning so long I assume it is beyond current tech to extinguish them other than the very costly way of dumping tons of concrete into the ground.

Re:Centralia

[sznupi]

Considering that concrete would add heat...

Re:Centralia

[adeft]

Yes, thanks PA public school education :)

Re:Centralia

[Dogtanian]

When I was about 5 (almost 50 years ago) we were visiting relatives, and they took us to see where a coal mine had been buring underground for years. The ground was warm

Has anyone ever taken advantage of something like this to save on heating bills?!

Call in the Fantastic Four

[RivenAleem]

It's the Rise of the Silver Surfer!!!

Re:Call in the Fantastic Four

[OldSoldier]

yea.. finally a reference!

Also Fringe would work.

I thought this sinkhole looked more structured than normal. I had thought there was an underground parking facility which sunk along with the building on top. That could explain the smooth, sheer and cylindrical walls, but I guess there's a more ominous explanation.

Interestingly the article says there's hope if they manage their water/sewers properly.

It's not a sinkhole

[GungaDan]

Goatse recently moved to Guatemala City.

Re:It's not a sinkhole

[couchslug]

Guatse?

Re:It's not a sinkhole

[rvw]

Goatse recently moved to Guatemala City.

Guatamala Opened Arse To Sink Everyone?

Re:It's not a sinkhole

[ACalcutt]

If you don't know what Goatse is you don't want to know

Re:It's not a sinkhole

[DragonWriter]

If you don't know what Goatse is you don't want to know

The first part of that sentence is superfluous, since if you do know what goatse is, you still don't want to know.

Any Stranger on a surfboard in the area?

[yogibaer]

Looks like the holes the silver surfer drilled in the last Fantastic Four Movie....

Hey wait, idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

Any chance a large amount of oil would fix things?

Re:Hey wait, idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

Any ideas or news on how they expect to fill that thing in?

Re:Hey wait, idea!

[sorak]

Any chance a large amount of oil would fix things?

No, but I'm unfamiliar with Guatemalan politics. Which party do we blame for this?

Re:Hey wait, idea!

[roman_mir]

Large amounts of oil can always fix things, just get the useless fish and water out of it first.

Re:Hey wait, idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the oil that leaked out, the pressure in the Earth dropped, and now the hole in Guatemala.

Re:Hey wait, idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't know either, but blame the R.O.U.S., I don't think they exist anyway.

I think this guy used to be a software dev manager

[bobdotorg]

That huge gaping hole that swallowed your neighbor? That's not a geological bug, it's a 'feature'.

The entrance...

[Midnight Thunder]

I think we have just found the entrance to middle earth. Does anyone see any dinosaurs or dragons down there?

Re:The entrance...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dunno, but I wish there were some intrepid spelunkers or some robots that would go in and check it out. Provided there is an actual bottom to it.

It could also be that somebody's greatly peeved that the sequel to The Incredibles hasn't been made yet.

Does no one else see... the Silver Surfer

[slowhand]

The Silver Surfer in all likelihood created this hole. Investigative journalism, where are you?

Easy solution, and I learned it on slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

As mentioned in comments here, volcanic ash makes for stronger concrete. All they need to do is pour a lot of concrete down there and mix it together. Slashdot and an AC save millions of lives again!

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[jgagnon]

El chupacabra meets goatse on the battlefield of genetic engineering?

Anyone remember the Prisoner miniseries remake?

[aristotle-dude]

There were all of those holes appearing in the alternate world.

Re:Anyone remember the Prisoner miniseries remake?

[MrTripps]

Heh. I watched that last night and thought the same thing. I think the writers took the term "plot hole" too literally.

this just in,

[Anonymous Coward]

breaking news, we've come to find out that all of central america and mexico are prehistoric land bridges made of volcanic ash.

Guess that solves the immigrant problem the US is having.

Well this is unusual

[imgod2u]

My ex made a /. headline!

Re:Well this is unusual

[Anonymous Coward]

Sinkhole, not stinkhole....

Re:Well this is unusual

[Anonymous Coward]

And if that works like mine ex-gf, all their country money will disappear through that sinkhole in less than one week...

Re:Well this is unusual

[Hurricane78]

What? Did she pop? Shouldn’t have gone with the cheap model IMHO... ;)

Re:Well this is unusual

[KublaKhan1797]

My ex made a /. headline!

What, kdawson is your ex?

Re:Well this is unusual

[roman_mir]

Ha ha! So now the joke is on you. Should have known better than dumping the ex, I bet it's painful right now to think of all the money and power and girls/boys the ex'll get as spoils of this little situation!

Sinkhole

[barnyjr]

My mother-in-law is in Guatemala?

do I grok this?

[Lord Ender]

It sounds like he's saying that the city is on top of a layer of volcanic material, which is on top of plain-old dirt. And the dirt is washing away underneath... which sounds like a massive freaking problem...

Re:I think this guy used to be a software dev mana

[gyrogeerloose]

That huge gaping hole that swallowed your neighbor? That's not a geological bug, it's a 'feature'.

Yeah, I figured there was a way to get a Microsoft joke out of this thing if we worked on it hard enough.

We have wormsign!

[zardozap]

The spice must flow. The spice is life.

All I see is...

[boneclinkz]

A means in ingress and egress for the Technodrome.

Stupid Question

[PhongUK]

But why is this hole almost perfectly circular? I was under the impression this wasn't man-made.

Re:Stupid Question

[andrea.sartori]

It wasn't. It's the Vogons probing the land. They apparently decided to turn Earth into a galactic outlet instead of destroying it.
(Which probably explains way many things happening on Earth lately BTW.)

Re:Stupid Question

[arkane1234]

The sun isn't man-made and it's circular...
circular != man-made
man-made usually equals circular, however.
I do agree though, when I saw the picture the first time I instantly thought, "PHOTOSHOPPED!" because it looked so out of place and video-game'ish.

Re:Stupid Question

[JustOK]

uh, spherical. The sun is spherical. It hasn't been a circle for decades.

Re:Stupid Question

[sourcerror]

uh, spherical. The sun is spherical. It hasn't been a circle for decades.

So it's circular from every point of view.

Re:Stupid Question

[JustOK]

not from the inside

Re:Stupid Question

[sourcerror]

... just like a black hole ...

Some good pictures

[InsprdInsnty]

Here's some interesting photos of the area http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/a_rough_week_for_guatemala.html

Re:Some good pictures

[ColdWetDog]

You know, Guatemala covers the geographic location of the ancient Mayan civilization.

It's getting pretty close to 2012.

Just sayin ...

I have an environment friendly solution!

[Phizzle]

Lets fill this thing with our corrupt career politicians and lawyers, I know the hole isn't big enough - but its a start!

Re:I have an environment friendly solution!

[Beerdood]

That won't work. If we've learned anything recently about solutions to catastrophes / disasters, then the correct solution is to plug up this hole with golf balls and tires.

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[thijsh]

I think you are confusing it with this... look at the photo, if any feature on the earth ever looked like a gate to hell it's this fiery pit. :-)

Eew

[Rallias Ubernerd]

Oh great. Here comes Al Gore comming to say that human kind has caused this. Thanks alot for noticing. I really love paying taxes.

Re:Eew

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL!111!!1111!! SO FUNNY! Idiot.

Re:Eew

[Rallias Ubernerd]

*tilts head* huh? I wouldn't doubt it if you were Al Gore. I was trying to make a joke.

Re:Eew

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't feed the trolls.

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[Anonymous Coward]

Turkmenistan? Wikipedia is making up country names now?

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[Pojut]

Ah, THAT'S the one I was looking for. Thank you :-)

Tourists love crazy shit like this

[HeckRuler]

Have you seen the pictures? It looks awesome. Sure it killed some kids, and that sucks, but usually interesting geological features are horribly inconvenient to get to. Here you can have a chalupa mid-ride down. Basement floor #30 would be a classy bar called Satan's hollow.

Re:Tourists love crazy shit like this

[0100010001010011]

If the 'ground' is bedrock. This would make for an interesting dwelling. You could build a 10 story building entirely underground.

Re:Tourists love crazy shit like this

[Anonymous Coward]

Basement floor #30 would be a classy bar called Satan's hollow.

I love you.

Re:Tourists love crazy shit like this

[John Hasler]

If the 'ground' is bedrock

Unfortunately, it's volcanic ash. . Not sturdy stuff.

This is Guatemala City!

[dorkinson]

A group of Iranian visitors inspecting the hole claimed that it was "madness", but they were quickly dealt with.

Re:This is Guatemala City!

[DaveOne]

THIS IS SPARTA!

Re:This is Guatemala City!

[sycorob]

I wish I could mod you up - this is the only reason I understood the joke.

(shakes head sadly)

Re:This is Guatemala City!

[Anonymous Coward]

Those Guatemalans should've just chucked stones at Mickey Rooney before he got that far.

Re:I think this guy used to be a software dev mana

[arkane1234]

Sorry my friend, but Microsoft sadly is not the only company who uses the term "feature".
They also aren't the only company who do coding...

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[datapharmer]

That just looks like a lame knockoff of Yellowstone.

Volcanic ash piping disaster missing from SimCity

[noidentity]

Learning about this "piping feature" that could happen almost anywhere in the city, I suddenly feel that my past SimCity experiences have been missing something. Having a hole open up randomly in a SimCity, swallowing buildings and power poles. Awesome! Be sure to give it a keyboard shortcut, because I want to use it a lot.

I live here and...

[Anonymous Coward]

the "sinkhole" happened because of the irresponsible leaders we have in the government. If you look at the picture of the sinkhole from above you'll see a that there's a sort of tunnel at the bottom, which forms part of the sewer system. underneath that factory that sinked there was a vertical cylindrical (not as big as the hole) acces tunnel to check on the massive sewer, which they didn't reinforce or took care of properly, the water started filtraring arround it and washing the way outwards to form the gigantic cylindrical hole, it's not likely to happen like that all over Guatemala, and your average sinkhole has the same probability as in any other city in the same circumstances, which is still high but heck, were are you safe these days...

Empathy?

[Mindcontrolled]

If anyone needs additional proof for last week's article about the dramatic loss of empathy among the latest generation - just read these comments.

Re:Empathy?

[Anonymous Coward]

But you have to admit, it's funny when it happens to poor people.

Re:Empathy?

[Anomalyst]

like anyone cares about someones dramatic loss of empathy.

Re:Empathy?

[Fumus]

A few people expressed their concern for the well-being of city residents. Also, nobody is said to have died in this event as per the June 1st article:

In downtown Guatemala City, the rains opened an enormous sinkhole 66 feet across and 100 feet deep on Saturday that swallowed a clothing factory and a city intersection. No one was reported killed in the large crater (pictured above).

Re:Empathy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Boo hoo, a bunch of people I never met and probably never will are living on top of a hollow dome that will probably collapse in the near future.

I'm sure the people living there feel so much safer now that I've expressed sorrow for their predicament.

Get over it.

Re:Empathy?

[Anonymous Coward]

It still ruined a lot of lives. Being dead is the worst of a wide range of terrible things.

But don't fret grandparent. Humans haven't fundamentally changed this generation. It is simply not 'cool' to show feelings for your fellow man, especially among a prodominantly male audience.

When I started here all there was was ash!

[RevWaldo]

All the other mayors said I was daft to build a city on top of ash, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em!

.

Re:When I started here all there was was ash!

[Anomalyst]

And she has HUGE tracts of piping features ... it just doesn't have the right ring (pipe ... ring, heh)

Re:When I started here all there was was ash!

[minchazo]

Yes, but the third capital http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigua_Guatemala has already fallen down. The fourth capital was supposed to stay up!

Re:When I started here all there was was ash!

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly, you don't know your ash from a hole in the ground.

Re:When I started here all there was was ash!

[turing_m]

Well played sir, well played.

insightful? lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd that posting a RTFA comment is now meritorious enough to get someone an insightful mod. :/

Welcome to the Hellmouth

[Anonymous Coward]

Not one Buffy reference yet? Shame on you /.!

Re:Welcome to the Hellmouth

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose that it's only the teenager contingent that fills the comments of every other slashdot story with pop-culture references. Buffy was too long ago to have any sizable fandom among the new generation of slashdot nerds.

Picture of the bottom

[Frederic54]

There is a couple of pictures of the "sinkhole" there, and especially one of the bottom, it seems there is a big cave

http://www.csmonitor.com/CSM-Photo-Galleries/In-Pictures/Guatemala-sinkhole/(photo)/2

Re:Picture of the bottom

[Scrameustache]

There is a couple of pictures of the "sinkhole" there, and especially one of the bottom, it seems there is a big cave

http://www.csmonitor.com/CSM-Photo-Galleries/In-Pictures/Guatemala-sinkhole/(photo)/2

THANK YOU, thank you, thank you!

I've been looking for a better view, and wondering where that big slice of earth went.

Re:Picture of the bottom

[sarge apone]

How do we know this is not an extreme measure to make sure people will not ignore the STOP sign?

Night World

[Shivetya]

old horror novel; basically a series that started with "The Keep"; where the bad guy opened all these bottomless holes around the world that were merely portals from another far nastier place.

When I first saw pictures of this hole it came to mind very fast.

excellent movie reference

[circletimessquare]

i was going to make a joke referencing "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer," an effort i will now abandoned, having been humbled by your superior effort

Combine!

[blurker]

Looks like that's where the Combine is going to put the new Citadel...

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[FreonTrip]

I'll be honest, that's a pretty mean thing to say about Penelope Cruz.

Where did the material go?

[MMORG]

What I want to know is, where did all the material go that used to be filling in the hole? I understand that groundwater can wash stuff away but that hole represents a ridiculous number of cubic meters of soil. Where is it now?

Re:Where did the material go?

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like it wasn't "soil" as we would normally think of, like topsoil....more like an airy layer of volcanic ash, fluffed up like a merengue or souffle, more air than solid matter. As a geology major, if I were looking it up, I'd search on 'volcanic tuff' or 'tufa'. I know nothing beyond what was in the summary, but unless these types of deposits undergo a lot of geological changes and become pretty solid because of heat/pressure, it's like a house of cards collapsing - the particles were stacked with mostly air between, and then the water washed them loose.

For remediation, if they're serious about saving lives, they could study the ground for void spaces using ground-penetrating radar (I'm imagining the small units not much bigger than a large lawnmower) pretty quickly, to find the shallower voids that have formed, and get people away from those spots/areas. Larger voids could be searched out by other methods. They should get staff working on control of drainage, and minimize water draining into the ground, ensuring that it drains away from the city. They could put out a grid of GPS sensors and monitor ground subsidence. Of course, who knows how much money and resources will actually be put towards such efforts.

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[jgagnon]

I was referring to the AC. :p

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[glavenoid]

I'm surprised that the fire pit was not renamed "Turkmenbashi" since the old leader, Saparmurat Niyazov named himself, and just about everything else in Turkmenistan "Turkmenbashi".

Worse than I thought?

[Rockoon]

Have you seen the pictures? It looks awesome.

More importantly, how the hell can the summary conclude that its worse than I thought? Fuck! I'm pretty sure that shit in the picture is god damned bad. Very god damned bad. Holy shit thats bad.

...and awesome, of course.

Re:Worse than I thought?

[HeckRuler]

Yeah, I think don't know what Guatemalans were thinking when built a city directly over the underdark. It's just asking for driders to make slaving runs.

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[gstoddart]

Turkmenistan? Wikipedia is making up country names now?

So must the CIA, the BBC, and even their own embassy and government. They've got their own TLD for crying out loud.

Seriously, listen to the news or something. Read a book. It's an actual country.

Locust Horde!

[s2jcpete]

Quick! everyone get to the Jacinto Plateau!

Stupid Headline

[AthleteMusicianNerd]

What if we thought it was 2 inches deep, and then found out it was 3 inches deep? Is that news?

Mapping underground features

[PPH]

I would be interested to see what sorts of technologies are available to map possible underground strata. IANAG (I Am Not A Geologist) but I'm assuming that what Bonis is concerned about is horizontal water flow that will scour out loose strata and undermine more ground.

I live in the Seattle area. We have recently undertaken some major infrastructure projects that involve horizontal boring. In spite of hundreds of millions in potential cost overruns, it appears that the only techniques employed have at times missed major underground features.

WTF, mods?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who modded this troll? Over-rated perhaps, but troll?

It's too bad that metamoderation is broken anymore because there have been a rash of horrible mods lately.

Re:WTF, mods?

[Itninja]

As the Borg Queen said (paraphrased): 'Small minded modding from small beings, trying to attack what they don't understand'
I kid, I kid ;)

From Guatemalan point of view

[denn1s]

I'm from Guatemala. This is actually the second (and smaller) sinkhole. The first one was located not too far away, http://conred.gob.gt/galeria/fotos/fotografias-de-incidentes-1969-2009/640x480Hundimiento%20Barrio%20San%20Antonio%20Zona%206%20102%202007.JPG/image_preview and happened last year. However, earth just doesn't open, first huge rumbling sounds begin, then, after a couple of weeks, earth opens. Also, we have already pinpointed possible new sinkhole locations, one which is barely 200mts from the last one. Now is just a matter of time to see if the government does something, which is unlikely.

Re:From Guatemalan point of view

[enjerth]

Now is just a matter of time to see if the government does something, which is unlikely.

What do you expect the government to do, declare the area condemned or defy gravity?

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[Forge]

Turkmenistan? Wikipedia is making up country names now?

Wikipedia may have made up Uzbekistan, but not Turkmenistan. That was made up by Burat or somebody.

Looks shopped to me

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell from seeing some of teh pixels and from seeing quite a few shops in my time.

Emergence Day

[Aqualung812]

That's not a sinkhole, that's a Emergence Hole. Someone better toss a grenade in there ASAP before the Locusts Horde starts streaming out!

Here's an Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Cant BP just fill it up with oil?

Looks like Guatemala City is

[kpainter]

going down the tube

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[Anonymous Coward]

Rotorua is pretty awesome, actually.

We're Talkin' Biblical Proportions

[NicknamesAreStupid]

This is amazing, and the implications are epic and nightmarish for anyone sleeping in that city. That said, then what the hell is at the bottom of that hole? The pictures do not tell the story. I gotta know. Anybody with a few hundred feet of rope and a wench want to drop me into it?

Re:We're Talkin' Biblical Proportions

[Abstrackt]

Anybody with a few hundred feet of rope and a wench want to drop me into it?

Dude, you only need like three feet of rope to secure a wench. Well, and a sturdy bed with posts.

Or perhaps you meant winch? ;)

Not a sinkhole!

[harddriveerror]

The aliens did it from outer-space with a "laser"

Insensitive clod

[lazyDog86]

Okay, I don't see anyone else 'fessing up here to rubbernecking, so I'm just going to have to say it. Sure it's really scary and all that, but that is one of the coolest pictures that I have seen in a long time

I mean this is seriously cool.

Re:I think this guy used to be a software dev mana

[Hurricane78]

Well, it can’t reach the “quality” of his previous amazing work on the Internet Explorer. ;)

what is 200mts?

[nuggz]

Did you mean 200m?

Economic Solution

[mhajicek]

Build a glass bottomed bridge over it and offer bungee jumping. Should attract some tourist money.

Pretty sure

[ThatsNotPudding]

the past tense of sank is iceberg.

Look on the bright side

[thewils]

At least they have somewhere handy to dump their garbage now.

Wait a minute...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are those Mynocks in that crater? That must mean Space Slug!

All right, Chewie, let's get out of here!

Stupid Guetalamans ...

[sourcerror]

think that the Internet is a series of tubes.

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[laejoh]

Naa, just a lame knockoff of goatse!

Photoshop

[Riddler Sensei]

Good God, when I first saw a picture of this on 4chan I thought it was a photoshop.

It's not a sinkhole, it's a "feature"?

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy has a future as an MS PR flak...

Goatse.cx

[mrops]

Thats how we do Goatse on a planetary scale.

BASE Jumping

[Anonymous Coward]

Greatest tourist attraction ever, they could rake in millions.

No need to move

[Anonymous Coward]

If people actually read TFA, or the summary would plagiarize (I mean, "cite") the correct parts of it, it would have included,

The Guatemala City metro area is home to nearly 3 million people. Not all of them live on the fill -- Bonis estimates around 1-1.5 million, with the rest perched on the valley walls -- but by mislabeling the feature a sinkhole, it distracts from a dangerous situation that could be mitigated, if not neutralized, by better handling of the city's runoff and waste water.

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[roman_mir]

Does the Barlog know that his home entrance has been revealed?

I love the difference from the US...

[rthille]

In all the photos, probably taken at least 12 hours later, if not days, not even an orange cone.
"This ain't no fucking Disneyland!"

Re:I love the difference from the US...

[John Hasler]

> In all the photos, probably taken at least 12 hours later, if not days, not
> even an orange cone.

Look at the first picture. The street is barricaded a block away.

Robotic Overlord Reference

[cosm]

Discover New's header banner says "Discovery News...Welcomes robotic overlords." in one of the dynamic text. Reference to us Slashdotter's flooding their hole (pun intended), or chance circular reference? (bad pun intended)

Oh Boy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I move into it??

Molepeople!

[Scrameustache]

Looks like the holes the silver surfer drilled in the last Fantastic Four Movie....

One thing I hate about hollywood is how they take one cool aspect of a villain and use it for another villain.

Re:Molepeople!

[cusco]

One thing I hate about Hollyweird is how they'll take a perfectly good story, such as the 'Iliad', pervert it completely, add unnecessary crap, and cut out all of the important parts. 'Troy' is an outstanding example of this, 'The 300' was even worse. I've never been much of a fan of comic books (couldn't afford them when I was younger, never got in the habit later), but I suspect that they probably do the same thing with that genre.

Re:Molepeople!

[Scrameustache]

One thing I hate about Hollyweird is how they'll take a perfectly good story, such as the 'Iliad', pervert it completely, add unnecessary crap, and cut out all of the important parts.

Also unpleasant.

'Troy' is an outstanding example of this

The highpoint of that movie was the Horse.
Oh, and they had a giant, that's always fun. And I can see where they were going with the atheist story of Troy, but that wasn't a good movie. It was very pretty, technically flawless; but like you said, they fucked it up at the story level.

They need to do seismic mapping

[Animats]

They need to do some underground mapping and find other voids. That's routinely done for oil exploration, by using a "thumper truck" to pound on the ground while arrays of microphones listen. Suitable number-crunching yields an 3D underground map. Then they'll at least know where future problems are expected. That's not too expensive.

Fixing the problem is tougher. Drilling holes into voids and pumping in cement might work, but that's expensive, and it's going to divert water flows to some other area.

Re:They need to do seismic mapping

[John Hasler]

They may be trying, but I suspect that volcanic ash is not a real good medium for the propagation of sound.

Re:OED Not Unabridged?

[Phrogman]

What the fuck? What drugs are you on dude? The Oxford English Dictionary is the most complete dictionary of the English language available, bar none.

Available in a mere 20 volume set:
http://www.amazon.com/Oxford-English-Dictionary-Vols-1-20/dp/0198611862

Yes, there are abridged versions, but to quote the above:
"The Oxford English Dictionary has long been considered the ultimate reference work in English lexicography"

From the OED website:
"The Oxford English Dictionary is the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past. It traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of international English language sources, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery book"

I don't know how you could possibly claim that there is a better or more complete dictionary of the English language. It might not be the best option for speakers of the American dialects of English because they use unusual spelling conventions, but it is the most complete dictionary possible. And it is available in an Unabridged form as the Amazon link shows.

The $995 US cost might be a barrier for the average user, I admit. I myself only have the 2 volume abridged version, which is more than enough for every day use of course.

As for your post, I suspect "sinked" is merely a dialectally accepted version in your area. "Sunk" is the generally accepted version for standard English I am sure. Its like "waked" versus "woke" etc. There are some dialects of English that have lost the old Anglo-Saxon irregular past tense formations, and have applied the regular formations instead. I myself would never say "sinked". That doesn't make it incorrect, just not the standardly accepted version for English.

#DIV/0! error

[PowerEdge]

When I see that picture, I am imagining a Guatemalan who just divided by zero and jumps into the hole exclaiming in their best Buzz Light-year voice: "To infinity and beyooooond!!!"

I have a brillant plan!

[lupinstel]

Why don't we stuff the hole with golf balls and cut up rubber tires?

Re:I have a brillant plan!

[John Hasler]

Got some 20' golf balls and 200' tires handy?

It was a subtle joke...

[Anonymous Coward]

kind of a gUatamala thing...

Soil Piping

[TheSync]

Wikipedia sez: Soil piping is a particular form of soil erosion that occurs below the soil surface. It is associated with levee and dam failure, as well as sink hole formation. Turbulent flow removes soil starting from the mouth of the seep flow and subsoil erosion advances upgradient.

Re:I think this guy used to be a software dev mana

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't be more right. I've been trying to get rid of that neighbor for years!

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[Maxo-Texas]

That is both very funny, well related, and yet more disgusting that I really want to process.

Portable Hole

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, so that's where I dropped my portable hole..

Put a tarp over it

[fyoder]

Cover it with a giant tarp with channel to sewer for runoff. Sounds simplistic, but I actually read the fine article, and the problem appears to be that much of the city is built over a valley filled in with volcanic pumice prone to erode when exposed to water.

but by mislabeling the feature a sinkhole, it distracts from a dangerous situation that could be mitigated, if not neutralized, by better handling of the city's runoff and waste water.

Leaving it totally open and exposed to the elements like that doesn't seem wise.

Re:Put a tarp over it

[John Hasler]

The amount of water from rain falling in the hole will be negligible compared to the flow in the underground "pipe" that caused it.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[roman_mir]

He was getting too much spam on the Balrog account, it's a feature, not a bug.

Re:Errr... yeah - a cavern

[Anonymous Coward]

The article also says that the circular shape of the hole indicates that there may be a cavern system under the city. Bad news may be an understatement..

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[Ex-MislTech]

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/tx.html

Turkmenistan is the named used in the english speaking world.

The country was a former province of the USSR.

Good odds it will be again at some point.

Predators have begun the hunt against Aliens.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just hope the queen doesn't crawl up to the surface...

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[Ex-MislTech]

Balrog...

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

You have received a nerd demotion point because all
nerds have watched LOTR, and can quote Gandalf from memory !

LOL

Not the first time

[gwolf]

Adding insult to injury... This is not the first time it happens.

The capital of Guatemala was originally founded near Iximché, an ancient Mayan settlement. It was soon abandoned IIRC due to native raids.

In 1527, the capital was re-founded at Almolonga (although already named Guatemala). It had to be abandoned in 1541 due to a terrible flood (after which the nearby Water Volcano got its name). That site is now known as "Ciudad Vieja" (Ancient City).

In 1543, the new capital of Guatemala was founded few kilometers from there, named "Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala". In 1773, earthquakes damaged the city so bad it had to be abandoned as well. It is now known as "Antigua Guatemala".

In 1776, a new city was built, called Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción. It is today the capital of Guatemala.

So... well, more holes in the ground will not scare them too much.

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[roman_mir]

demotion rejected: He was getting too much spam on the Balrog account, it's a feature, not a bug.

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[wish bot]

Watched? What about 'read'. Someone else is going to loose their nerd card too....

Wheres everyone's sense of adventure!

[UK Boz]

Has anyone been down it yet? any pictures of whats at the bottom? looks like you could easily rope down or even take a helicopter...

I wonder...

[PhasmatisApparatus]

... how long it'll be before a movie is made?

I give it about ten weeks.

Ah, Roto-Vegas :)

[dafing]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotorua As long as you can put up with the smell! (sorry if you are a local and tired of the same jokes!)

So when's E-day? Re:Errr... yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen the picture before, but only by clicking on the one in the article to get a higher-res version do I finally think I understand what it is I'm seeing.

See, there was this darker bit at the bottom that you couldn't make out properly, I figured it was an artifact of the image, or a heap of black stuff at the bottom. When it first went around the office, people were saying 'Why can't you see the bits of the building at the bottom?'

Now that I can see it more clearly, it seems to me that the brown bit is the crust, and the black bit is a hole into a fuck-off big cavern, which could quite easily be as big as the rest of the picture, if not much of the town.

I've seen her. The queen's cuter than in the game. One of those: "Wow, I can't believe she's not a model!" Dentist's assistant types. One of those BROODING sexual predatory "Ripped my torso to pieces sarge, had to go as far as the eat sh*t and die thing to pacify the b*tch!" but sexually repressed by society in such a way that she has to do her thing in secrecy. That's why she lives underground.

SMAC

[Anonymous Coward]

Is anybody else channeling SMAC boreholes?

there's something about

[shnull]

human stupidity and infinity and deathwishes i will never understand but that mental dude was right, most humans ARE born with a craving for eternal rest