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Giant Crater Appears In Northern Siberia

New submitter DavidMZ writes: The Siberian Times reports on a large crater of unknown origin that has appeared in the Yamal Peninsula in northern Siberia. The Russian government has dispatched a group of scientists to investigate the 80-meter-wide crater. Anna Kurchatova from Siberia's Sub-Arctic Scientific Research Center believes the crater was a result of an explosion when a mixture of water, salt, and natural gas exploded underground. The Yamai Peninsula is known to hold Russia's biggest natural gas reserve."

3 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. black hole caused by a black hole by shitner · · Score: 1, Insightful

    scary thought, but what if it is an entry point of a miniature black hole?

  2. Re:Wasn't that a movie? by parkinglot777 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    what I find more surprising is that someone was able to discover such a small crater. 80m isn't big relative to how big Siberia is.

    True that it is not that big. But would you consider monitoring area + taking images from satellite(s) as the reason? Why would they monitor the whole area? I don't know. But images from satellite nowadays are much much higher resolution (compared to 15~20 years ago when I was using them on my study) and could easily be analysed using a computer software. So any changes in the area would alert those who are monitoring.

  3. Re:nothing new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But those holes were rather small....

    Though the holes were rather small, they still had to count them all.