There is one hell of a hole in western Siberia. It looks weird to people not deeply familiar with with what one may see while flying over Arctic permafrost. Media silliness has ensued. Here is a stunner of a story that disappoints immensely, considering it is from a sensationalist UK newspaper whose primary and rare, useful feature is its lavish display of instructive images with its stories:
- Daily Mail – by Travelmail Reporter (rewrite desk): Methane explosion? Meteorite crater? Scientists baffled by gigantic 262ft hole that has appeared at Siberia’s ‘End of The World.” The word UFO is in the subhead deck.
To get through the easy stuff first, one can tell somebody innumerate redid this story. Daily Mail says it is 262 feet across. Wow, who got a surveyor up there even before the scientific team heading for the site is already there? Turns out that the first outlet to report this puts it at 80 meters based on aerial photo estimation. And that is, according to the math, 262 feet. Nothing like a unit conversion to add two silly significant figures to something while a dimwitted editor thinks it makes sense. About 80 meters is a usefully fuzzy figure. No such thing as a fuzzy 262 feet, not in this sort of context.
- Siberian Times: Large crater appears at the ‘end of the world’ ; 80 meters wide, it guesses. Daily Mail did not do much rewrite of this account, to which it does give credit.
Whoa! In the course of writing this post, in from the Daily Mail came a calmer revision. Skip down to UPDATE!!! for more.
Many tabs ran with this story, and a few legitimate news outlets as well:
- USA Today – John Johnson: Giant crater found in Siberia near ‘end of world’ ; Good, here there is just one significant figure, so the diameter is rounded to 260 feet. The story laughs at UFO notions. But it still buys the idea that this thing is a big fat mystery.
- CBS – Mysterious creater in Siberia spawns wild Internet theories ; Which includes a dramatic video of a flyover. (YouTube version) It does look strange. Hard to tell if its dark bottom is a watertable or a vertical hole all the way to down to wherever.
One finds, soon enough, a story by somebody who called up an actual authority on Arctic terrain, something that any of the gullible or sensation-first reporters could have done as well (or just found the story below before writing WOO WOO MYSTERY!!) :
- Sydney Morning World – Colin Crosier, Simon Morris: Opinions divided over mysterious 80-metre wide crater in Northern Siberia: These two contacted an Australian polar scientist who shared with them his opinion that it is a particularly dramatic, collapsed pingo. That is, an intrusion of ice, somewhat like a monster ice heave, into and through the soil in permafrost terrain. Such things can melt or otherwise deflate in their centers. Here is a photo.
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Parks Canada photo
Hmm. There are tons of photos on the internet of pingos. The above sample is from Parks Canada , which runs an entire natural landmark to show them off. Follow that link to see plenty more.
To be sure, the thing in Siberia is fascinating, may not be a pingo. But just to look at pingos educates any lay mind enough to forestall the immediate assumption that methane explosion, alien mischief, mere meteor, or other violent and scary thing has occurred. Not that loss of permafrost is not scary, but at least it’s not abrupt.
As I wrote, one wonders. If the Mail’s art director had spotted coverage that raised the possibility of a pingo, would the paper have used a few pictures of such spoil-sport things?
UPDATE!!!: Ah, Daily Mail has run a calmer updated version, with a byline this time that is much better informed by geology, complete with diagram of a pingo:
- Daily Mail – Jonathan O’Callaghan : Mystery of the Russian abyss remains: Scientists still struggling to explain how enormous hole at the ‘end of the world’ formed ; Still, no photographs of pingos that if used would drain a lot of the strangeness from the event.
Late arrival: Looks more and more like ice. An account says the investigation team is there and sent back a stunning pic.
This from Gizmodo – James Baker: New video of mysterious giant Siberian hole filmed by investigation team ; My my. By the time this was filed, Mr. Baker should have been able to run down other coverage with the word ‘pingo’ in it. But no – still says it is a total mystery, and that explosion of methane is a leading hypothesis, which the story says deepens the mystery because all that ice visible in the picture is not shattered. No mystery, however, if the hole is in the top of a giant extrusion of ice that somehow collapsed into an internal void.
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