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" A 260-foot-wide hole appeared in the Yamal Peninsula of Siberia, and nobody knows why. Nobody knows how deep it is either, but\u2014judging from echoes\u2014it&amp;#039;s really, really deep. Scientists are on the scene as uncontested theories sweep the Internet. Conspiracists are abuzz with alien talk, while geologists everywhere are excited to finally have something to do. Unfortunately for speculative journalism, there&amp;#039;s only one leading cause for such a hole, and it has nothing to do with War of the Worlds. The mystery hole appeared near Yamal&amp;#039;s Bovanenkovo Field, a natural gas reservoir, and it&amp;#039;s surrounded by debris, a clear sign of explosion. The Siberian Times reports:  &amp;quot;Anna Kurchatova from Sub-Arctic Scientific Research Centre thinks the crater was formed by a water, salt and gas mixture igniting an underground explosion, the result of global warming. She postulates that gas accumulated in ice mixed with sand beneath the surface, and that this was mixed with salt - some 10,000 years ago this area was a sea.&amp;quot;   We can rule out many other causes. Sinkholes, such as the one pictured above, can be similar in magnitude but lack surrounding debris. Meteorite craters, pictured below, feature the explosion effect but lack the cavernous depths of Siberia&amp;#039;s new hole. Aliens \u2013 known for geological euphemisms in rural areas \u2013 are still suspects.  If the hole is a product of natural gas combustion, Yamal is fortunate the have merely exhausted a relatively small supply. In 1971, Soviet geologists flung a match into a natural gas cavern in Turkmenistan, and the &amp;quot;Door to Hell&amp;quot; burns brightly 43 years later today. This isn&amp;#039;t the first time a mysterious explosion plagued Siberia either. The Tunguska Event of 1908 felled 80 million trees in a radial pattern. According to NASA, a man sitting on his front porch 40 miles away from ground zero was &amp;quot;hurled from his chair.&amp;quot; Siberia&amp;#039;s Tunguska Event unleashed the energy of &amp;quot;185 Hiroshima bombs&amp;quot; but remains an unsolved mystery. An exploding meteor is the top candidate, but rural aliens with ambiguous intent are still suspects.  Aerial footage of Siberia&amp;#039;s latest mystery is all we have to judge this thing, at the moment. Until researchers return with causal certitude, happy speculating.       "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a29382/giant-icy-hole-russia/>