What is a hole in the ground called? The largest "holes" on Earth
At the end of July in the Nizhny Novgorod region, in the Shatkovsky district, near the village of Neledino, a huge karst sinkhole formed. The depth of the hole is 50 meters, and its diameter is 32 meters. Fortunately, the ground collapsed in the middle of the field, so no one was hurt.
The Neledino sinkhole, although impressive, is not the largest in the world. We tell you about other giant holes.
Karst sinkhole in Guatemala
One of the most famous and terrible holes on the planet, 150 meters deep and 20 meters in diameter, was formed in 2011 in the capital of Guatemala as a result of soil erosion by rain and groundwater. During the formation of the sinkhole, several people died, a dozen houses were destroyed, including an entire garment factory that collapsed into the pit. According to local residents, several months before the tragedy, soil movements were felt in this place, and a rumble was heard from underground.
Kimberlite pipe "Mir" (Mir diamond pipe)
One of the largest holes in the Earth is located in the city of Mirny in Yakutia.
The Mir kimberlite pipe is a quarry 525 meters deep and 1.2 kilometers in diameter. It is one of the world's largest diamond quarries.
Diavik Quarry
The youngest diamond quarry is located on the island of Las de Gras, 220 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle, off the coast of Canada. Just because of its location, this hole is unique. In the future, they plan to deepen and expand the quarry.
Drain hole in Monticello Dam reservoir
A huge sinkhole in the ground, which is the largest spillway in the world, is located in Northern California, USA. Built 55 years ago, the drain looks like a giant concrete pipe. Its depth is 21 meters. The funnel has the shape of a cone. The diameter at the top reaches almost 22 meters, and at the bottom it narrows to 9 meters. It comes out 200 meters from the other side of the dam, removing excess water from the reservoir.
The creations of nature always fascinate, especially if they are objects of gigantic proportions. There are huge holes in the earth's crust of simply incredible size. However, their authorship does not always belong to nature; a large man-made hole can also cause a shock to others.
Quarry in Yakutia
Scientists cannot give an exact answer about the nature of the origin of most giant natural holes. The spectacle is as impressive as it is dangerous. The abyss can open up almost anywhere, swallowing up houses, cars, and people. Here are the most famous holes of various origins.
Yakutia has one of the largest quarries on the planet. Its dimensions are more than 0.5 km in depth and almost one and a half kilometers in diameter. The quarry was given a name - the Mir kimberlite pipe. It was opened in the 50s of the twentieth century and worked until 2001. All this time, kimberlite ore, which is rich in diamonds, was mined here using an open-pit method. Today, it is unprofitable to extract the remaining ore reserves using open-pit methods, so underground mines have been built. Large holes in the ground can be created by human hands.
Other man-made holes
The largest man-made quarry on the planet is the Kennecott Bingham Canyon Mine. It is located in Utah. In the quarry, mining is carried out in an open way. The width of the mine is almost 8 km, and the depth reaches four kilometers. The quarry was opened in 1863, mining continues today, so its size is constantly increasing.
In Canada, there is a quarry on the islands where diamonds are mined. It's called Diavik. All the necessary infrastructure, and even an airport, grew around it.
The largest quarry, which was created by man without the use of special equipment, is located in South Africa. The big hole was once a diamond mining site. The parameters of this mine along the perimeter are about 1.5 km, and in width - more than 460 meters. Now this mine is a means of attracting tourists to the city. The giant hole, called the Big Hole, amazes with its dimensions.
Local Attractions
There are Dam's in northern California. In the reservoir of the dam there is a funnel through which water is drained. The depth of the funnel is more than 21 meters, its upper part in diameter is 21 meters, and the lower part is 8.5 meters. Through such a giant drain they release from the reservoir excess water supply. A large hole can easily become a local landmark. People love to visit places that are terrifying in their scale.
In Guatemala, a huge formation was formed, provoked by heavy rains and rising groundwater levels. According to eyewitnesses, a few days before the formation of the crater, local residents heard a rumble from underground and felt shifts in the soil. As a result of the tragedy, people died and more than ten houses were destroyed.
The Great Blue Hole is located in Lighthouse Reef Atoll. In fact, this is a karst depression up to 120 meters deep and more than 300 meters across. The discoverer of this funnel was the famous scientist Jacques-Yves Cousteau. The nature of the formation of a blue hole has been scientifically explained. During the Ice Age, this relief looked like a system of limestone caves. Over time, when the sea level rose significantly, the caves were flooded, and its vaults, consisting of porous limestone, collapsed. The Blue Hole is one of the top ten places for scuba diving.
Holes of unknown origin
Holes in the ground appear both in desert areas and in areas that are densely populated by people. Unfortunately, the appearance of such faults often leads to tragic casualties. Here are some of these cases of holes appearing in the ground:
- In 2010, a huge round sinkhole appeared in Guatemala, destroying a garment factory. The reason for the appearance of such a fault was storm rains. Of course, the Great Blue Hole is larger in scale, but these formations also cause horror among the local population.
- In New Zealand, the abyss opened up to a depth of fifteen and a width of fifty meters. The house fell into the hole, along with the family in it. Miraculously, no casualties were avoided. The cause was the collapse
Funnels on the territory of the Middle Kingdom
In 2010, a large hole opened up right in the middle of a road in China. Due to soil shifts, the hospital was destroyed some time later.
In 2012, also in China, a hole appeared on the road, into which a large truck fell. The driver managed to avoid falling into the abyss due to the fact that the cabin remained on the surface, and only the trailer was hanging in the hole.
In 2013, a large hole up to 20 meters across appeared in a Chinese rice plantation in Huan Province. In less than six months, about twenty such sinkholes appeared in this area. It turned out that industrial activity in the area had disrupted the groundwater balance, which led to the formation of holes.
Huge holes in the ground can be a beautiful sight if found in the wild. Such places often become tourist attractions. But holes caused by human activity can be extremely dangerous. Therefore, when carrying out his industrial activities, a person must always think about the consequences to which it may lead.
Kimberlite pipe "Big Hole" (South Africa). The largest one dug by hand is 1097 meters deep. More than 22 million tons of rock were moved to the surface. and 3 tons of diamonds were mined. Development was completed in 1914.
Kennecott Quarry. Utah. The largest active open-pit mine in the world, copper mining began in 1863 and is still ongoing. Approximately a kilometer deep and 3.5 wide.
Diavik Quarry, Canada. Diamonds are mined. The quarry is located on the islands and has its own infrastructure with an airport capable of receiving passenger Boeings.
Great Blue Hole, Belize. Width 400 meters, depth 145 - 160 meters. A point of attraction for professional divers from all over the world.
Drain hole in the Monticello Dam reservoir. Serves to discharge excess water in the reservoir reservoir. A kind of safety valve.
Karst sinkhole in Guatemala. Caused by groundwater and rain. During the formation of the sinkhole, several people died and a dozen houses were destroyed.
The recent discovery of a third hole in Siberia has puzzled many scientists, excited conspiracy theorists, and given ordinary people a new look at the stability of the earth beneath our feet. The surface of the Earth is riddled with holes: some under water, some on the ground, and some generally look like doors to the other world.
Holes in Siberia
Hole in the ground Yamal funnel Giant Hole in the ground Yamal Russia
Just recently, three strange holes were found in Siberia. The first, 50-100 meters in diameter, was discovered at the bottom of the lake. The second hole, a few kilometers from the first, was only 15 meters wide. The third hole, accidentally found by the reindeer herders, turned out to be an almost perfect cone-shaped hole about 4 meters wide and 60-100 meters deep.
The ring of debris and dirt around each hole indicates that the massive holes were made by forces that came from within the Earth and burst forth. Of course, interesting theories were born. Some believe that the appearance of the holes is associated with gas development in this region, but the holes are so far from the gas pipelines that scientists have rejected the idea. Other theories include stray missiles, pranksters and, of course, extraterrestrial invasion.
The real reason may be more mundane, but no less strange. One working theory about the holes is that they are a kind of reverse funnel. In this case, the holes were caused by underground destruction caused by thawing permafrost. They then filled with natural gas, and when the pressure became too great, dirt and debris burst into the air instead of falling underground.
According to local residents, the holes are far from new, and scientists, in principle, admit this possibility, looking at the vegetation around them - they could have been there for several years. The second hole discovered is lovingly referred to as the "end of the world" and was allegedly observed by local residents back in September 2013. Witness accounts vary: some say they saw something falling from the sky, others say there was an explosion on the ground.
Kola superdeep well
Not all holes in the Earth's crust formed from natural or unknown causes. From 1970 to 1994, Russian geologists dug the biggest hole on Earth imaginable in the name of science. The result was the Kola superdeep well, which eventually reached a depth of 12 kilometers.
Along the way, scientists discovered a number of interesting things. Digging a tunnel through stone is like digging through history. Scientists have found the remains of life that existed on the surface two billion years ago. At an impressive depth of 6,700 meters, biologists discovered tiny plankton fossils. While it was expected that many different types of rock would be found on the way down, it is incredible how the fragile organic matter was preserved under enormous pressure for thousands of years.
Drilling through untouched rock proved difficult. Stone samples pulled out from an area of high pressure and temperature became deformed after being exposed to the outside. The pressure and temperature also rose much higher than expected. By the time it reached 10,000 meters, the temperature had soared to 180 degrees Celsius.
Unfortunately, drilling stopped when it became impossible to combat the heat. The hole is still there, near the town of Zapolyarny, but covered with a metal cover.
The German continental deep drilling program and the pulse of the Earth
What Does It Sound Like 6 Miles Under the Earth's Surface
In 1994, drilling of a German ultra-deep well, originally conceived as one of the most ambitious geophysical projects, was stopped. The goal of the project is to allow scientists to study effects such as the effects of pressure on rocks, the presence of anomalies in the Earth's crust, the structure of the crust and how it was subjected to heat and pressure. The $350 million project left Windischeschenbach with a hole 9,100 meters deep and a temperature of 265 degrees Celsius.
Among the various scientific experiments, there was one unusual one: the Dutch artist Lotte Geeven wanted to know what the planet sounds like. Although scientists told her that the planet was silent, Geeven insisted on her own. She lowered the geophone into the hole to record ultrasonic waves beyond the hearing capabilities of the human ear. After converting the data on the computer into frequencies that can be heard, Lotte heard the sounds of the Earth. It was like the sound of a thunderstorm in the distance, like a terrifying heartbeat.
Dead Sea sinkholes
No one knows exactly how many holes have appeared around the Dead Sea, but it is believed that about 2,500 have appeared since 1970, and about 1,000 in the last 15 years alone. Like the holes in Siberia, these holes are signs of environmental change.
The Dead Sea is fed by the Jordan River, and every year less and less water flows into it. The sea itself is now three times smaller than it was in the 1960s, and the drainage of the reservoir has caused sinkholes, along with the demise of the resorts and hotels that once flourished along the shores. When the salt water of the sea seeps through the earth, it is met by fresh water. When this fresh water penetrates the salty soil, most of the salt dissolves. The earth weakens and begins to collapse.
The Dead Sea has always been in a state of change. It once connected with the Sea of Galilee, but this connection dried up about 18 thousand years ago. Nowadays, change is more often driven by people's actions. Water that once flowed into the sea in a state of delicate equilibrium is now being diverted throughout Jordan and Syria, with the sea receiving only 10 percent of the water it needs to sustain it.
At one time, this sea was a very popular place for those who made religious pilgrimages or wanted to be healed in the mystical waters of the sea. Now you can more often see signs warning about the danger of spontaneously occurring sinkholes. But on the bright side, if you get swallowed by a sinkhole, it will be named after you.
Dean's Blue Hole
The deepest blue hole (as holes located underwater are called) is Dean's Blue Hole in the Bahamas. At 202 meters deep, this blue hole is almost twice as deep as other blue holes, making it a favorite spot for professional divers.
In 2010, William Trubridge set a record for diving 101 meters into the hole without external oxygen or other equipment. A Brooklyn diver died trying to break this record in 2013 after being underwater for more than three and a half minutes, surfacing and then losing consciousness. Every year, more than 30 divers meet at this blue hole to compete in various competitions as part of the Vertical Blue event.
Although the hole attracts adventurers from all over the world, those who live near Dean's Blue Hole try to stay away from it. According to legend, this hole was dug by the devil, and he is still there, snatching people who dare to dive.
Randomly appearing holes in Mount Baldy
In 2013, a six-year-old boy was exploring the sand dunes of Mount Baldy in Indiana Dunes National Park when he was swallowed by a sinkhole that suddenly appeared below him. The boy was rescued after a three-hour ordeal in which he was buried under three meters of sand. Since then, other sinkholes have appeared.
Geologists cannot explain the phenomena of Mount Baldy. Since the landscape is sand, which does not create air pockets, none of the conditions necessary for the formation of sinkholes are met. When a sinkhole appears, it fills with sand throughout the day. The use of underground radar did not reveal any evidence.
A year after the first sinkhole, they not only continued to appear, but began to appear with such frequency that the park was closed. In an attempt to stabilize the sand dunes, experts have planted grasses in the hope that their root systems will stop erosion and land shifting. Some scientists believe that the sand dunes' instability may have something to do with their storied history, which includes, among others, the story of supplying vast quantities of sand to create Mason jars.
Devil's Funnel
The Devil's Sinkhole is a massive underground chamber located in Edwards, Texas. The 15 meter wide hole leads to a 106 meter deep cavern that now plays a unique ecological role, being home to one of the largest known colonies of Mexican free-tailed bats. Visitors, who of course cannot enter the cave, can see more than three million bats flying out of it every night during the summer months.
The history of the sinkhole is shrouded in mystery. The cave was raided by treasure hunters and artifact hunters before it became a protected site. Arrowheads and darts found there date back to 4000-2500 BC. e. Later, this sinkhole served as a shelter for cowboys who rode to the West on horseback, as well as for people of a darker kind of employment. Much of the sinkhole's history was destroyed when ammonia fertilizer manufacturers began harvesting mouse guano from the cave.
The Sawmill Sink
The so-called Sawmill Sink is another blue hole in the Bahamas, which, however, has much more scientific significance than just attracting extreme athletes. This blue hole was the site of an archaeological excavation that changed scientific understanding of what the landscape was like 1,000 years ago.
The Sawmill Sinkhole is unique in that it was once dry, and when the water began to rise, it began to fill, slowly hiding the bones that were there. Fossils found there include the remains of a giant turtle that was never expected to be found there, as well as birds, seeds and plants that retained their green color.
Perhaps the most intriguing find was the remains of giant crocodiles, which were believed to have been destroyed by the people living at the time. The blue hole also contained the remains of one of the oldest known inhabitants of the Bahamas, estimated to be around 1,050 years old.
The island itself is inhospitable, mostly consisting of mud, so it is generally impossible to reach the black hole of Andros without a helicopter and special equipment. It was first explored by scientist and diver Steffi Schwabe. She was the first to cross the curdled ink layer of bacteria. At the bottom there was a layer of clear water and another purple layer that looked like jelly.
The strange layers of water have very high levels of toxic hydrogen sulfide. They also contain bacteria that not only thrive between water levels, but have maintained water conditions for the last 3.5 billion years.
Son Doong Cave
While technically a cave system, Shondong is also accessible through several large openings on the Earth's surface. It was first found in 2009 after one of the holes was discovered by a local farmer. The cave system was so thoroughly buried in the jungle that it was pure luck that anyone found it at all. When members of the British Caving Association entered the hole, they discovered something completely indescribable.
The cave was declared to be the largest in the world and was extremely difficult to explore. It appeared somewhere between two and five million years ago, carved into limestone by an underground river. In some places, erosion reached so close to the surface that parts of the cave roof collapsed, creating even more holes. These holes let in enough sunlight for the jungle to begin to grow in the cave. In addition, the cave has a 60-meter calcite wall, an underground river and waterfalls, as well as stalagmites and stalactites that have grown up to 80 meters in length.
This cave jungle is also home to an impressive array of wildlife, including poisonous centipedes and whitefish. Some large chambers can fit entire neighborhoods along with skyscrapers; Bamboo forests and giant pearls can be found there. The very fact that an entire lost world was discovered only in 2009 reminds us, the inhabitants of Earth, that the planet is far from being fully explored.
The kimberlite pipe is the largest diamond quarry located in Yakutia. One fourth of all diamonds in the world are mined here.
The Mir quarry is one of the deepest on our planet.
The dimensions of the quarry in its upper diameter are 1200 m, the lower - 50 m. The depth of the Kimberlite pipe is 515m.
No helicopters fly over the quarry: this funnel is capable of sucking even aircraft from space into itself.
There is a legend in the national Yakut folklore that one day God got frostbite on his hand while flying over Yakutia in the very cold. From his frozen hands he dropped a bag of gifts, which scattered across the mountains, tundra and river valleys.
In 2001, diamond mining at the Kimberlite pipe was stopped - the Mir quarry became very deep and dangerous for workers. Now the Kimberlite Pipe is a local landmark. There are observation decks and a memorial sign here.
The last explosion over the quarry occurred in 2001. 41 thousand explosives and 100 thousand tons of diamond ore - these are the results of the final extraction.
“We lit a pipe of peace. “The tobacco is excellent,” this is how Soviet geologists reported to Moscow in 1955 in a secret radiogram about the discovery of the richest diamondiferous kimberlite pipe “Mir”. “We didn’t have a special code for this case,” recalled the head of the geological party, Yuri Khabardin. - And we composed the text in such a way that it was clear what we found - we “lit a pipe” and gave it a name - “Peace”. The phrase “excellent tobacco” spoke of the rich diamond content.”
This was a find of extreme importance. It was believed that the use of diamond tools doubled the economic potential of the state, and the USSR had been in need of industrial diamonds since the 1930s, after industrialization began in the country.
In February 1957, the first convoys began to arrive in the village of Mirny, which arose near the field. To get here, they had to overcome 2800 km of off-road terrain. The deserted region of Yakutia began to quickly become populated. Soon the first bucket of ore was mined from the Mir pipe, and already in the early 1960s, more than $1 billion worth of diamonds were mined in the USSR annually. The village of Mirny became the center of the Soviet diamond mining industry. Now it is a city with a population of 40 thousand people.
It is generally accepted that diamonds crystallized under enormous pressure deep in the bowels of the Earth - in the mantle, and were subsequently brought to the surface from a depth of 150–600 km. Kimberlite pipes are the channels left behind from such an outburst (kimberlite is the complex igneous rock that fills these channels). True, there are hypotheses suggesting that diamonds were not formed in the depths of the Earth, but at the moment they were released to the surface as a kind of “soot” from burning methane. But no matter what diamonds are - “methane soot” or “graphite stamping” - the enormous profitability of their extraction forces a person to dig into the depths of the earth, leaving traces comparable only to the result of the fall of a giant meteorite.
Kimberlite channels really resemble either a gigantic smoking pipe with a straight stem, or a giant martini glass - a cone on a thin stem that goes to great depths. Today, the outer diameter of the Mir mine pit is 1,200 m. Recently, huge trucks “wound” along a spiral road 8 km from the bottom to the surface, removing precious ore from a hole half a kilometer deep. Now open-pit mining has been stopped, and the mine is being mothballed for preparation of underground mining of deeper horizons - since it has been explored that the depth of diamonds in Mir exceeds a kilometer.
This is the largest diamond mining quarry on the planet, where the most complex problems of draining mineralized groundwater, so-called brines, typical of all Yakut deposits, have been successfully solved. The waters arrive at a speed of 3.5 thousand cubic meters per day, and would inevitably flood the mine if not for unique drainage technologies.
