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This was just breaking in the news. In Siberia Russia, they've found a giant circular hole up to 100 yards across that has opened up in the wilderness. But unlike a sinkhole, its apparently formed from an explosion where debris was strewn upward and outward. Was it a meteorite or underground gas explosion, or was something stored there and it detonated. And some sharp eyed viewers have noted that it looks like two perfect circles overlapping each other, like two drill holes from a giant auger.
It's possible that it's just from a collapse leaving an opening to an underground cavern. It'll be interesting to get a better idea when it can be directly inspected. As far as I know, all that's known about it is from the video taken from a plane that spotted it.
The sinkhole theory has mostly been discounted with the debris scattered around the rim of the hole. The possibility of it being an impact crater from a meteorite or missile is there, it does seem unlikely that it would impact over a cavern below.
Natural gas that filled up a cavern and then exploded might be the best explanation or that something stored there detonated.
The sinkhole theory has mostly been discounted with the debris scattered around the rim of the hole. The possibility of it being an impact crater from a meteorite or missile is there, it does seem unlikely that it would impact over a cavern below.
Natural gas that filled up a cavern and then exploded might be the best explanation or that something stored there detonated.
I'm not so sure a gas explosion, especially from natural gas, is a feasible likelihood. The reason is that the gas under pressure in a sizable cavern would likely find a wide and uneven range to escape from underground. The hole itself would probably be much more uneven.
I can see your point though that gas under pressure could push debris out forming the rim. The rim itself is a bit uneven. The problem is that the dark walls can't be clearly seen. From the video, it looks like the walls are reasonably smooth, but again, that's because its all shadowed. We can't clearly see what the walls actually look like. To me, it looks like there's debris at the bottom of the pit but it's hard to say how much. Another problem is that we can't really get much scale as to exactly how large that hole is. The surrounding landscape is too blurred to tell if we're looking at trees below or just scrub brush.
I've seen a similar hole, although much, much smaller in size, of a lava flow tube in Central Oregon. A place called Wind Cave. I would think a collapsing ceiling of a cave forming a hole that size, could potentially push out some debris, maybe enough to form a rim. There's likely be a difference in pressure as the main body of surface material dropped with some debris being forced up and out of the hole. That would really depend on whether the collapse was sudden or gradual. The cave in Central Oregon also had a good sized opening at the mouth of the cave. If the cave of the hole in the video was completely enclosed, there'd be no exit for air to escape other than right out of the hole, pushing debris out. It'll be interesting to see what the ground teams find out.
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