(ETH) – Scientists are scrambling to figure out what has caused a massive crater that is 100 feet deep and 20 meters wide to form in the Siberian tundra this summer after being spotted by a Russian TV crew that was flying over the region and spotted the monster hole.
This huge crater isn’t the first one to form as but is likely the ninth that has formed and spotted in the region since 2013. According to CNN, Initial theories were that the crater was a meteorite impact discovered near an oil and gas field in the Yamal Peninsula in northwest Siberia.
Others say, a UFO landing or the collapse of a secret underground military storage facility. While scientists now feel confident that the giant hole is connected to an explosive buildup of methane gas — which could be an unsettling result of warming temperatures in the region — there is still a lot the researchers don’t know.
Recent aerial footage of this recent crater reveals that is one of the largest that has appeared so far. “Right now, there is no single accepted theory on how these complex phenomena are formed,” said Evgeny Chuvilin, a lead research scientist at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology’s Center for Hydrocarbon Recovery, who recently visited the site of the newest crater to study its features.
“It is possible they have been forming for years, but it is hard to estimate the numbers. Since craters usually appear in uninhabited and largely pristine areas of the Arctic, there is often no one to see and report them,” Chuvilin said. “Even now, craters are mostly found by accident during routine, non-scientific helicopter flights or by reindeer herders and hunters.”
