Mysterious crater in Siberia caused by methane-related release?

[Adam Griffin]

I'll cite two articles - one is Daily Kos, so take that with a grain of salt.

Initial reports believed that the crater was caused by a methane explosion as a result of permafrost melt. The first team on the ground says that there appears to be no evidence of explosive forces, and rather, this may have been caused by sheer pressure. There are many oddly-shaped lakes in the region that were formed many thousands of years ago; some believe that this process may be how they were initially formed.

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Source 1
Source 2

[dead0man]

That's weird!

[Joe Republic]

[Joe Republic]

Also, inb4 fart joke

[badgate]

It's kind of beautiful.

[DemPGH]

Fascinating. The effect would be like a cork popping off a champagne bottle. Rising temperatures caused outgassing in the Earth, basically.

But it's fun to kind of work a champagne cork loose and then let the pressure blow the cork out and bounce it off the ceiling! If you have company, make sure you tell them you're about to do it, lol.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

the illuminati

[dead0man]

Science has taken a look....science is still confused.

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[Adam Griffin]

Some more answers...and questions?

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[Napoleon]

ALIENS?

[AlternateSteve90]

To be honest with you.....no. It's extraordinarily unlikely to say the least.....and probably even implausible.

Here's the biggest problem: methane *kills* plants. Okay? It doesn't just harm them, it kills them, and also kills animal(and human!) life as well. Had this been a methane release, not only would every plant and animal immediately surrounding the crater die, but, in that one case, so would the reindeer herders unfortunate enough to have been so close to the event.  This release of methane would also have been detected quite soon afterwards(along with any possible explosions). And yet these holes have only now been discovered; otherwise, this would have been news when it first happened.

To be truthful, some pingos do, in fact, form via explosive pressure. But; some pingos also form due to cave ins of piled on material, such as dirt or snow.

AGW is a real concern, no doubt, but we honestly can't afford to keep jumping at every little thing we see just because it *sounds* like it could be the next big thing in doomsday(as some have).  It's a significant part of the reason why so many people are still unwilling to jump off the fence.

[DemPGH]

This is interesting:

http://www.nature.com/news/mysterious-siberian-crater-attributed-to-methane-1.15649

It's clearly some kind of outgassing with methane the likeliest explanation because of all the debris and dirt that aerial photos show around the hole(s). You'd need a vast amount of methane to cause environmental damage, so it's possible that a small hydrate caused this.

[AlternateSteve90]

Andrew Revkin, of the NYTimes' excellent DotEarth blog, had a chat with Dr. Marina Leibman, a Russian permafrost researcher with as much as 40 years' worth of experience in her field, a couple of weeks ago.

Here's the URL, btw:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5fK3TT2GAQ