A mysterious crater has appeared in Siberia and those aboard a helicopter flying over the Yamal Peninsula caught in on video.
First reported by the Siberian Times, the hole appears in Yamal, which means "end of the world," a part of the world rich with gas. A team of scientists was shortly dispatched to the scene and is expected to arrive Wednesday.
No one has been able to determine the giant hole's depth, though it is about 80 meters wide and is nearly a clean-cut circle. The top theories as of now are that a space-rock - or a meteorite - hit the Earth or that the hole came from a massive sinkhole, though nothing has been confirmed.
Experts were quick to squash any speculation that the hole came from an alien or a UFO from space, stating there is sure to be a scientific explanation. The hole lies about 30 km from a forest near Bovanenkovo, Yamal's largest gas field.
"We can definitely say that it is not a meteorite. No details yet," a spokesman from Yamal's branch of the Emergencies Ministry told the Times.
Anna Kurchatova, of the Sub-Arctic Scientific Research Centre, said the hole could be the result of an underground explosion caused by a mixture of water, salt and gas. She told the Times global warming has influenced permafrost melting and its subsurface mixing with sand and ice could create an effect like the popping of a cork.
Dr. Chris Fogwill, a polar scientist at the University of New South Wales, agreed with Kurchatova's theory that the hole is the result of a certain geological event.
"This is obviously a very extreme version of that, and if there's been any interaction with the gas in the area, that is a question that could only be answered by going there," Fogwill told the Sydney Morning Herald. "We're seeing much more activity in permafrost areas than we've seen in the historical past. A lot of this relates to this high degree of warming around these high arctic areas which are experiencing some of the highest rates of warming on earth."
