- The last crater amazed the world scientific community with an ideal its round shape
- The ice volcanoes, as well as the sufosis in Turkey, where it disappeared entirely water basin, are isolated phenomena, geophysicist Prof. Boyko Rangelov told “24 Chasa”.
Will Siberia disappear under the pressure of the 17 craters expanding every year, which like black holes swallow the surrounding wasteland? They are called rumbling ice volcanoes because, when they explode, they eject phenomenal amounts of ice and earth mass, leaving gaping chasms in their wake? And if until now they had rather bizarre shapes, resembling semicircles, fractals or arrows, this year’s case captivated attention with its ideal round shape, sinking deep into the bowels of the earth.
Scientists have been monitoring the seething eruptions of the Yamal and Gida islands in the Russian part of the Arctic since 2014, but it wasn’t until late September that researchers from the University of Cambridge came up with an interesting hypothesis explaining the strange anomaly, published in Geophysical Research Letters.
According to them, the reason is the rapid warming of the climate in the Russian North, which explosively releases methane frozen deep below the surface in the so-called permafrost zone.
However, the scientists in their study are adamant that with climate change, these explosive volcanoes will not spread across the entire polar cap, as the two islands represent a specific geological space.
They caught the attention of the world public in 2014, when a crater with a diameter of about 70 m was suddenly noticed in an area of permafrost.
After that, more and more appeared, with scientists until now working on the hypothesis that due to the rapid transition from cold and ice to unprecedented heat, the ground in the area cracks deeply and the natural gas reacts with spectacular “explosions”.
However, Cambridge researchers point out in their paper that the warming of permafrost regions is by no means a sufficient condition to cause such terrifying explosions. According to them, changes in climate led to sudden changes in pressure deep below the surface, which provoked the massive release of thunderous methane.
To arrive at this hypothesis, however, they go a long way by distrusting popular explanations. It all starts when they ask the question – what can cause such outbreaks?
There are two possible answers.
Either some chemical reaction takes place, ending in an effect similar to a dynamite explosion, or somewhere a process similar to that of inflating a bicycle tire begins. If one does not stop in time, it will explode, disintegrating into pieces.
And since they didn’t see anything anywhere that would provoke the desired chemical reaction, they began to look for what else could play the role of the pump. In the process of research, they found that this effect originates somewhere in the process of osmosis, or in the way liquids circulate to achieve an equalization of the concentration of substances in them.
When salt water is faced with some barrier, the liquid can pass through it, but not the salt, but if the pressure is increased, the situation suddenly changes. This is exactly how the freezing of clay soils works – as an osmotic barrier. And since their layer penetrates to a depth of 300 meters, the water, which is of high salinity and is no longer frozen, but in a liquid state, creates a powerful pressure and salinity. But that’s not all. According to the scientists, under this layer are crystallized solid particles of methane and water or methane hydrates, which can only be in a stable state at low temperatures and pressure. But if they rise, the reaction is explosive.
In order to unravel the strange phenomenon, the Skolkovo Institute managed to lower a drone into the abyss as soon as one of the craters appeared. Thanks to this, the Russian team found that a deep underground cavity filled with accumulated methane was formed.
“The so-called ice volcanism arises from permafrost, and Siberia is by no means the only place where we observe this phenomenon,” one of our most famous geophysicists worldwide, Prof. Boyko Rangelov, who works on dozens of international projects, told “24 Chasa” .
“Similar phenomena are observed more and more frequently in regions with permafrost – in Canada, in Scandinavia (where there are thicker accumulations of peat and sediments), in some regions of Mongolia. However, they are most intense in Siberia and in Canada.” , he explained.
When asked if there was an explanation for the ideal round shape, the professor explained that it is known from physics that it has a characteristic lowest energy when it is formed.
“There are many examples illustrating this – he added. – Ordinary volcanoes, even if they are located on giant fissures (as in Iceland, for example), erupt through circular craters. The most characteristic example of this is the story of the Paricutin volcano. In 1949 in the land of a private farmer suddenly begins to smoke. Before the eyes of the amazed owner, the earth begins to grow in height. His astonishment came from the assumption that he was watching the formation of a giant mole it opens with a whistling sound in a perfectly circular shape and starts spewing ash and dirt.The next day the volcano reaches a height of several tens of meters, and after a week it is over 500 meters high and lava begins to flow through its circular opening.
Such examples are most common on the bottom of the oceans and are therefore not as well known.” According to him, the very energetics of the process implies the least energy expenditure in a round-hole eruption.
“Any other shape would require a greater energy expenditure – explains Prof. Rangelov. – Of course, this applies to the ideal case, and such are rarely found in nature, which is why there are often observations of an elliptical or elongated shape, which is due of the strength properties and inhomogeneities in the earth’s crust that deform the energy flow. In powerful energy eruptions such as ordinary volcanoes, “ice” volcanism, and other similar processes, the pressure is high, which presupposes the almost ideal round shape of the vent.”
Weeks after the formation of the sensational crater in Siberia, media and scientists alarmed that an area has been established in Turkey where the earth is also falling like a black hole.
“In Turkey, it was reported about a hole that swallowed an entire pool of water and only by chance escaped without casualties – Professor Rangelov explained. – Often the mass media inform about collapsed cars, houses and other facilities for no apparent reason. In fact, there is a reason, but it is really invisible from the surface. The reason is called suffusion, and it is a known engineering-geological phenomenon. In sediments of different granulometric (i.e., composed of larger and smaller grains), when groundwater penetrates, it leaches (exports) the unfused smaller grains, leaving the larger and more tightly bound grains – the so-called “porous skeleton”. As the process progresses, the volume affected by sufosis grows grains do not withstand the pressure from above and collapse. Then at first glance the reason for the collapse is not clearly visible. If this happens in the conditions of flowing groundwater, they “wash” the destroyed skeleton and only an empty space is observed – most often a hole, in which cars, houses or other facilities have fallen. Similar phenomena are observed in the USA, China and many other places, but due to the relatively small volume of failures, they are not given serious attention.”
From this point of view, there is no mysticism in the frequent phenomena defined as “gates to hell”, they are not black holes and the Earth will definitely not disappear into them. The more funds are allocated to science, the more knowledge we will have about the blue planet and similar dangerous areas.