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New 50-metre deep crater opens up in Arctic tundra
- mehrdadn 6y agoHow/why is it such an incredibly "clean" and round hole?
- titzer 6y agoWhy are bubbles round?
- thaumasiotes 6y agoBubbles are round because of air pressure. But that doesn't really apply to large holes in the ground. The ground is a lot more difficult to move than a thin soap film is. Most caves aren't round. Most mountains aren't round, and when they are, it's for different reasons.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- GarrisonPrime 6y agoThe holes in the ground appear to have been caused by air pressure (expanding methane gas), so perhaps the bubble analogy is apt.
- tejtm 6y agotundra is peat peat of made of decaying moss moss is permeable like a sponge sponges can hold stuff stuff can change state with changes in temp/pressure stuff in a new state can occupy increased volume increased volume can cause increased pressure increasing pressure increases temperature changing the state of more stuff ... (wavefront) path of least resistance contains most square inches with least circumference
- nitrogen 6y agoHN's formatting engine requires two newlines between paragraphs. That way you can separate points and make them more readable (punctuation also helps).
- gostsamo 6y agoCaves are not created due to gas pressure neither are mountains. The former are the result of water flowing and solving weak rock, while mountains are the front of colliding tectonic plates. In this case you have gas and mud.
- userbinator 6y agoA sphere has the lowest ratio of surface area to volume.
- hu3 6y agoThe article hints that it's formed from gas pressure: > The craters appear because ‘gas-saturated cavities are formed in the permafrost… > "In a literal sense, a void space filled with gas with high pressure. The covering layer distends, the thickness of which is 5-10 metres approximately." > Explosions have happened in swelling pingos, or mounds in the tundra which erupts when the gas builds up under a thick cap of ice.
- GarrisonPrime 6y agoPerhaps because it's caused by an eruption of methane gas. Perhaps the bubble analogy is apt.
- tzs 6y agoIt might be similar to the reason sinkholes are usually round [1]. [1] https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-are-sinkholes-round-1614203510 https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-are-sinkholes-round-1614203510
- pottertheotter 6y agoInteresting. Relevant quote from that link: "When a void occurs in sediment that has a certain amount of cohesion ('stickiness' among sediment grains), the most stable configuration of the roof of the void is a dome, like the dome of the U.S. Capitol building. If that dome collapses, the vertical sides may remain upright, and the open hole will be circular."
- 1MachineElf 6y agoReminds me of Siberia's "Doorway to the Underwolrd" (Batagaika crater). So am I understanding correctly that this is basically a popped methane bubble that had formed inside the permafrost? I wonder what the greenhouse gas impact of this was.
- eloff 6y agoBasically nothing. It seems like a lot of methane, but on a global scale it's a drop in the bucket. However, it's a sign of melting permafrost on a wide scale that is releasing methane, and that does have an impact which will get more pronounced. Because methane is more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2, there's a risk of a runaway feedback cycle melting more permafrost and releasing more greenhouse gases. And that's not thinking about the colossal amounts of frozen methane on the sea floor which is quite sensitive to temperature changes. We're playing with fire here, sorta literally.
- gvjddbnvdrbv 6y agoIt's indicative of the change. Between the methane from permafrost and gas hydrates we are looking at having a bad time for a long time here on Earth.
- neuronic 6y agoIt might be dismissed as hyperbole but we are looking at extinction and not just a "bad time". Granted, it will take quite some time, generations even, to reach that severity but we are well on the trajectory to get there. It's horrifying to think about the escalating crises of global ecosystems. In a world, where too many people can't even be bothered to wear a mask during an ongoing pandemic I have zero confidence in preventing an extinction level disaster where the truly severe consequences aren't felt for another 2 generations. Some people just do not care if it doesn't directly affect them right this very second. It's sociopathy on another scale.
- Ixiaus 6y ago
- drdrey 6y agoI find it amazing that there's something called "The Siberian Times" and that it's in English.
- dzink 6y agoThe past year sprouted a lot of the+"location"+times.com in Eastern Europe and many of them had pro-Russia and anti-local government content, especially when the local governments were supported by the EU.
- devindotcom 6y agoSiberian Times has been around for a while though.
- dang 6y agoIt's not bad actually: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=points%3E30%20siberiantimes.com&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- kebman 6y agoMost of it is made for diplomatic interest groups to attract foreign investors.
- 082349872349872 6y agoSo I've been desultorily following https://www.youtube.com/c/Murzilki/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/Murzilki/videos for overview, https://www.aif.ru https://www.aif.ru for depth, and https://ria.ru https://ria.ru for the official line. Any russophones have better suggestions?
- jetzzz 6y agoFYI aif is owned by government of Moscow. If you want more independent Russian media here are some of them: https://meduza.io/ https://meduza.io/ - also has an English version. https://theins.ru/ https://theins.ru/ - these are the ones who deanonymized Salisbury poisoners. https://zona.media/ https://zona.media/ - focuses on the judicial, law enforcement and penal system. A lot of very dark and depressing news. https://www.proekt.media/ https://www.proekt.media/ - rare but deep investigations.
- p1necone 6y agoI hold out hope that eventually there will be widespread buy in to combating climate change before it's too late. But it seems that we need obvious impending doom for everyone before people stop voting for right wing politicians.
- rconti 6y agoI think our experience with Covid-19 has revealed any such hope to be 100% unwarranted. At least in the US, "that's China, it won't happen here", "that's Italy, it won't happen here", "that's New York, it won't happen here", "that's California, it won't happen here" attitude.. and it even circled back on itself, when it did happen in many "heres" and the attitude became "it won't happen again". I'm not speaking of those who weigh the consequences of lockdowns or debate the viral reproductivity. I mean the people who outright deny what is happening right in front of their faces. Those who have easy access to good information, and ignore it in order to seek out bad information. There's just no way something such as climate change, which is much more abstract, will get that kind of buy in from this kind of populace. Even if you got everyone to agree on it, we'd hear the familiar debate; "we shouldn't be forced to cut our emissions until country Y does it first". And conversely, "why does our poor country have to suffer from these restrictive limits when the rich world profited off their pollution for decades?"
- evan_ 6y agoNot to mention a huge percentage of people simply saying “it’s not happening” despite all evidence
- PakG1 6y agoThese people are the really weird ones to me. They think they are more experts than the people who have studied this stuff for years. I don't understand the arrogance.
- evan_ 6y agoThey attribute it to malice, not ignorance. The people I see speaking about this believe either there is no virus, or it’s overblown- and most or all of the deaths are either misattributed car accidents and natural cause deaths, or made up from whole cloth. Doctors and hospitals are supposedly being compensated to falsely report deaths as having been caused by COVID. Obviously there are not large numbers of misattributed deaths or hospital conspiracies. This mirrors the theory held by basically the same people that climate change is just something used to push a political agenda and that scientists fake the data for grant money.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- prepend 6y agoThis is the most elaborate marketing project I’ve seen yet for December’s Dune movie release.
- switch11 6y agoOh I was hoping it was Alien vs Predator
- pauljurczak 6y agoMother Earth is farting!
- dang 6y agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've been doing it repeatedly, and we're trying for something different here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- juank334 6y agoYeah I’m going home
- nsandell123 6y agoGlobal warming at it again
- cranekam 6y agoMove along, nothing to see here. How many more scary warning signs will we need to see before taking climate change seriously?
- cameldrv 6y agoI don't think this is the warning sign. This is the consequence happening.
- cranekam 6y agoWell, so much the worse then. This stuff is happening right in front of us and we’re still doing ~nothing about it.
- konjin 6y agoIt's worse than nothing. Even the people who supposedly take this seriously don't understand how much trouble we are in. When I've talk to people who 'believe' in climate change they still think that it's the increase in CO2 emissions that's the problem, not that CO2 emissions exist. The atmosphere is like a clogged toilet, you can do your business it in only two or three times before you end up with a mess everywhere. And even if you only use it once going into the bathroom will be unpleasant. Right now it's like a family of 5 is arguing at breakfast if they can use it whenever they feel like it, or only once a day. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills listening to people argue if we should limit our emissions to 90s level by 2050. We should be at zero now, and working on CO2 extraction from the atmosphere if we want to have a planet that can sustain industrial civilization in a century. Playing around with renewables and batteries completely misses the point. We need fission power plants yesterday and going full steam ahead on hot fusion plants today. Even if we build nothing but Chernobyl style plants and one blows up every two weeks, we will still kill fewer people in the long term than if we continue the way we are now, and that's with the rosiest renewable power projections that ignore things like base load.
- devindotcom 6y agoI remember writing these up for NBC when a new set appeared in 2014. Those articles did traffic like you wouldn't believe, and the Siberian Times was on it back then too. I believe the conclusion from experts at the time was that it was natural gas trapped in the permafrost being released by global warming.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- maCDzP 6y agoIs the surface of the earth boiling or getting blisters? Either way. Creepy.
- crispyporkbites 6y agoGiven that the surface is neither turning to gas nor a piece of skin, the answer to your question is a resounding No.
- briga 6y agoEvents similar to this are fairly common in the Earth's crust. This definitely isn't the first time that some noxious fumes rose up from the Earth's interior. I bet this is how a lot of lakes in the northern hemisphere were formed
- gostsamo 6y agoNope, glaciers. Baikal is an exception, because it is formed in the rift of two tectonic plates. The current crater is possible because the tundra is lots of frozen mud with gas in it. Gets warm, bubbles form, gas goes out. Edit: The gas is the result of biomass decaying. The cold had stopped the process for thousands of years but when the environment gets warmer, the bacteria activates and resumes the process.
- Roritharr 6y agoI hope this is not the first sign of the clathrate gun going off. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
- neuronic 6y agoAh, the clathrate gun. It's the mercy bullet in terms of climate catastrophe. Sort of Earth ecosystem just ripping the band aid off.
- Bombthecat 6y agoIt's just a feedback loop. Nothing terrible.
- zrail 6y agoThe Clathrate Gun hypothesis is not plausible. Recent research basically disproves it.
- tekstar 6y agoLink?
- zrail 6y agoThe “Current Outlook” section of the Wikipedia article gives a reasonable overview of the literature. This reddit thread has additional links: https://www.reddit.com/r/climatechange/comments/fv5oyh/has_the_clathrate_gun_hypothesis_been_debunked/ https://www.reddit.com/r/climatechange/comments/fv5oyh/has_t...
- specialist 6y agoThank you. Will read. It'd be nice if its wikipedia page was updated to reflect this best available science. (Quickly scanning its /Talk: page, I can't make heads or tails of its current status. Sorry.)
- bamboozled 6y agoGood thing things we are all totally focused on COVID-19 and the election I guess ?
- neuronic 6y agoOne doesn't dampen the impact of the other.
- abootstrapper 6y agoFocusing on the election is focusing on climate change.
- takeda 6y agoIt's not like the current ruling party would change anything accounting for this news even if we didn't have covid or election.
- Udik 6y agoThe entire Yamal peninsula is densely dotted with round ponds and lakes, some even kilometres wide. Is this the same mechanism that has shaped the entire landscape? https://www.google.com/maps/place/Yamal+Peninsula/@69.5598217,70.6358768,38983m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x449055f4f8dea577:0x8ae223c41688bebf!8m2!3d70!4d69.9999999 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Yamal+Peninsula/@69.559821...
- season2episode3 6y agoA lot of these appear to be kettle lakes made by the melting of dead ice blocks https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettle_(landform) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettle_(landform)
- zeristor 6y agoDoes this happen in the rest of the Arctic tundra too? Northern Canada, Alaska, and the rest of Siberia? Or has it just been missed?
- zeristor 6y agoOne of the pictures in the article shows the ground swelling outwards, presumably before it bursts. Could these be detected by Remote Sensing images from satellites, assuming they would be taking pictures of the tundra at high enough resolution and frequency.
- gregjw 6y agoIt begins
- Xophmeister 6y agoSo do these things explode — they’re just in the middle of nowhere, so no one notices — or does the “roof” of the bubble just collapse? If they exploded, there would presumably be significant seismic activity and you’d probably expect to see debris around the crater, but they’re very clean.
- ceejayoz 6y agoThe subtitle of the article: > Blocks of soil and ice thrown hundreds of metres from epicentre of the funnel at the Yamal peninsula.
- divbzero 6y agoThe surface of the swelling pingo before the methane bubble pops looks like a giant loaf of freshly baked bread.