“Russian officials are dispatching a scientific team to investigate the hole, which is located in a Siberian region known as ‘the end of the world’.”
The first images of a 260-foot crater were thought to be a hoax, but live helicopter footage confirmed the anomalous reality of what looks like an impact crater from a meteor-strike. Russian officials are dispatching a scientific team to investigate the hole, which is located in a Siberian region known as “the end of the world,” in Yamal peninsula. The experts—from the Center for the Study of the Arctic and the Cryosphere Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences will gather samples. Details this early are scant. “We can definitely say that it is not a meteorite,” said an official from Russia’s Emergencies Ministry to The Siberian Times. “No details yet.” Although Siberia was the site in 1908 of the famous Tunguska explosion, scientists are theorizing against the new crater’s origin as meteoric or even asteroidal.
Their likliest guess is that the hole resulted from a natural phenomenon: a "pingo," or hydrolaccolith. These happen when ice is heaved up from underground. The case in question, though, may have further origins in climate change causing an ice-melt, leaving a crater where once stretched earth-covered frost.
(Sourced from Eric Pfeiffer's The Sideshow .)
