A hole in the ground is just a hole in the ground … unless it’s a mysterious Siberian crater, 165 feet deep, and has something about it that Siberia’s leading crater expert tells The Siberian Times:

“This object is unique. It holds a lot of additional scientific information, which I am not yet ready to disclose.”

Huge craters that seem to appear overnight with no advance warning or visible explanation have been plaguing Siberia for the past few years. Yamal (the name means End of the Earth) Peninsula in northern Russia is where the first ones were found starting in 2014. Rumors of giant sandworms, alien spaceships, secret government weapons, hungry reindeer (really!) and other strange theories were considered before scientists like Vasily Bogoyavlensky of the Russian Oil and Gas Research Institute in Moscow settled on hydrolaccoliths or pingos, which are mounds of frozen water, soil and methane gas which build up pressure as climate change warms the permafrost until they explode and collapse. Well, that’s the accepted theory.

Craters belong on the Moon, not in Siberia

“Through the cracks, natural gas got into the melting ice core, filled it and the pingo erupted. It was also heated by a stream of warmth coming from the bowels of the earth through the cracks … It’s a very interesting process, which we have never observed before.”

Bogoyavlensky was baffled in 2014 when he inspected his first crater, but methane was always a possibility for him. While most scientists blamed the pingo explosions and collapse on the heat of climate change, one in 2016 generated this unusual theory from Vladimir Melnikov – the Head of the Faculty “Earth’s Cryosphere” at the Tyumen State Oil and Gas University.

“There was a grass and lichen cover on the Yamal Peninsula. But with increasing number of reindeer, the [vegetation] gets overgrazed. The reindeer are eating too much. No moss, no cover to reflect [sunshine] from the soil surface.”

Who points the finger at reindeer … other than other reindeer playing games? Another strange incident occurred in 2015, when an expedition was sent to inspect a crater containing what appeared to be a metallic object, possibly a spaceship.

“At this moment their call ended, and we could not reach them again. When we sent a back-up helicopter to the site there was no sign of the three-man team. They have vanished. The crater was empty.”

That story seemed to disappear too.

Where did they go?

While many are pushing the climate-change-melting-permafrost-triggering-pingos-making-craters explanation, some are blaming overly aggressive natural gas mining by Russian companies. Could that be what Bogoyavlensky is not yet ready (or perhaps afraid to) disclose?

“In a number of areas, pingos – as we see both from satellite data and with our own eyes during helicopter inspections – literally prop up gas pipes. In some places they jack up the gas pipes… they seem to begin to slightly bend these pipes.”

It’s not clear how close this latest crater is to the nearest city or village (photos here), but many have been close. They also seem to grow over time as sides collapse and the crater fills with water. The scariest aspect is that they’re generally big, deep, unannounced … and happening more frequently every year.

Giant new 50-metre deep 'crater' opens up in Arctic tundra

By Anna Liesowska

Blocks of soil and ice thrown hundreds of metres from epicentre of the funnel at the Yamal peninsula.

The new funnel filmed from air by the team of Yamal-based TV station.

Picture from July 2020 by Vesti Yamal

The recently-formed new hole or funnel is the latest to be seen in northern Siberia since the phenomenon was first registered in 2014.

It was initially spotted by chance from the air by a Vesti Yamal TV crew en route from an unrelated assignment. 

A group of scientists then made an expedition to examine the large cylindrical crater which has a depth of up to 50 metres.

Such funnels are believed to be caused by the build up of methane gas in pockets of thawing permafrost under the surface.

Pictures of B1, the very first funnel seen in summer 2014 on the Yamal peninsula, and a map of the first four funnels in both Yamal and Taymyr peninsula.

Pictures: Vasily Bogoyavlensky

Scientist Dr Evgeny Chuvilin, a leading researcher at Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, said: ‘What we saw today is striking in its size and grandeur. 

'These are the colossal forces of nature that create such objects.’

The 'crater' - these holes are called hydrolaccoliths or bulgunnyakhs by scientists - is given the number 17, and is seen as the most impressive of the large holes to suddenly appear in recent years as the permafrost thaws. 

Professor Vasily Bogoyavlensky, of the Russian Oil and Gas Research Institute in Moscow, told Vesti Yamal: 'This object is unique. It carries a lot of additional scientific information, which I am not yet ready to disclose. 

'This is a subject for scientific publications. We have to analyse all this, and build three-dimensional models.’

A new funnel was noticed by chance by a crew of Vesti Yamal TV as they were flying from an unrelated assignment.

Pictures from July 2020 by Vesti Yamal

The craters appear because ‘gas-saturated cavities are formed in the permafrost…

’In a literal sense, a void space filled with gas with high pressure. The covering layer distends, the thickness of which is 5-10 metres approximately.

Explosions have happened in swelling pingos, or mounds in the tundra which erupts when the gas builds up under a thick cap of ice. 

Bogoyavlensky has previously claimed that human activities, like drilling for gas from the vast Yamal reserves could be a factor in the eruptions. 

He is concerned at the risk of ecological disasters if pingos build up close to a gas pipelines, production facilities or residential areas. 

‘In a number of areas, pingos - as we see both from satellite data and with our own eyes during helicopter inspections - literally prop up gas pipes,’ he said previously.

‘Crater’ sounds too boring, ‘pingo’ sounds too cute and ‘hydrolaccolith’ sounds too scientific. Climate-change-induced methane explosion hole sounds like the real (not to mention scary and depressing) cause, but as long as drilling goes on and scientists are suspicious and hesitant to speak … these Siberian craters will continue to be mysterious.

There’s one thing you can say for sure about the Men in Black: they’re very weird. Witnesses to the M.I.B. describe them as looking pale and gaunt. Their skin sometimes appears plastic-like, and completely free of lines. Sometimes they wear wigs. On other occasions they sport large, wrap-around sunglasses. And, perhaps strangest of all, they seem to not understand what food is. If it is offered to them, they simply stare at it. There’s another aspect to the M.I.B. weirdness. It’s the matter of their vehicles. They are just as weird as the M.I.B. themselves. I guess it’s something we should expect. With that said, let’s now take a look at some of the stranger, car-based cases that have a tie to the Men in Black. We’ll begin with a friend of mine, Tracie Austin, author and radio-host. Like me, Tracie is originally from the U.K., but now lives in the United States. She told me of a very strange experience she had late one night back in the U.K. in the 1990s.

As she drove along the road, Tracie said: “…I noticed there was an old, black Lincoln car coming towards us in the opposite direction. Although it was old, it looked new, but it was an old style, and it was totally out of place. And, coming from England, in Cheshire, that’s just not the kind of car you see: an American Lincoln. That’s what I thought: what’s an American car doing here? As the car approached us – coming the other way – I tried to see who the driver was, but I couldn’t see anybody. I’m not saying the car was driving itself, but I just couldn’t make out anyone. No-one. I could see it had really shiny bumpers and there was no [license] plate, at all. And I noticed that with every car behind that Lincoln, it was like it was the leader of the pack. I could see the drivers of the cars behind were all kind of ‘switched off.’ It looked like an automatic mode. Like they were in a daze. It was very, very odd.  We got down the road and my friend said: ‘Did you see the way that vehicle was moving?’ I said, ‘No, what do you mean?’  He said: ‘The wheels were going around, but they weren’t touching the ground.’ It was just like it was hovering, but not high, or I would have known. I was too busy trying to see the driver. I just said: ‘Oh, my God.'” Moving on to another case…

Nick Redfern and a sinister (but cool) car…

As bizarre as it might sound, there are a number of reports on record of black cars (A) entering and exiting UFOs late at night; and (B) of apparent aliens exiting UFOs and getting in cars. Yep, I know: it’s really weird. Back in 2009, longtime Ufologist Tim Beckley shared just such a story with me. Tim said: “I remember one incident where I was lecturing and a gentleman – a professor at the college where I was lecturing – came up to me  and told this story about how he was driving outside of a town in Michigan. It was rather late at night,  and he saw these lights in the woods. He pulled over, and there was no other traffic coming in either direction, but there was already another car parked at the edge of the road.” Tim continued: “He described seeing some sort of ship in the distance – a UFO. A group of human-like aliens got out of the UFO, walked to the car – which was a Cadillac, or something like that. He watched them and could see they looked human. They just got in the car and drove off. But then, a couple of weeks later, he sees one of the same guys in a supermarket. These reports sound farfetched, but there’s so many of them of what seem to be aliens being able to move among us.”

Dr. Josef Allen Hynek was provided with the details of a fantastically-strange MIB encounter, that occurred in a small Minnesota town in late 1975, and that falls firmly into just such a category. Ironically, no UFO was seen on this particular occasion, but the chief witness was harassed by the driver of a large, black Cadillac on a particular stretch of highway, and who nearly forced the man into an adjacent ditch. The irate man quickly righted his vehicle and headed off in hot-pursuit, only to see the black Cadillac lift into the air and, quite literally, disappear in the blink of any eye!

For Robert Easley, a resident of Defiance, Ohio, the weirdness began in the early hours of July 11, 1967. He was woken up by the sound of his phone ringing. Easley quickly answered it – perhaps fearing it was someone with bad news. It was actually a woman who wanted to report a sighting of two UFOs over the town – a sighting that was still going on. Easley jumped into his car and sped off into the night. It turns out that Easley was shadowed all the way by a black Cadillac, very often the preferred mode of transport for the MIB. The car had no license plates, which is typical, too. As for the driver, who kept very close to Easley’s vehicle, his upper body and head were silhouetted and dark. That was not good news. The MIB soon vanished, however, taking another road and leaving Easley worried and slightly paranoid. On the night of July 15, the MIB returned, yet again in his black Cadillac, following Easley for a number of nail-biting miles. Tim Beckley tells the story of what happened next: “When [Easley] pulled into his driveway, the unknown car sped off. Later that evening as he sat talking with his girlfriend on the front porch, the car came down the road and stopped right in front of the house, as soon as the topic of UFOs entered their conversation. Easley could feel the man looking at them. When they got off the subject the car left, but when they got back on it about an hour later, the same car came back again. It was as if the driver could hear what they were saying or read their minds.”

If you thought it was strange that the huge Arecibo Observatory telescope in Puerto Rico was damaged and shut down by a single cable accident, you’re not alone. If you were suspicious about the asteroid that passed by Earth recently so close that it set a record yet no one seemed to have seen in coming, you’re not alone either. If you think those two event might be related, you’re part of a growing group that wonders if the telescope was sabotaged to prevent it from detecting that the asteroid was actually a UFO. Was it?

“One of the auxiliary cables that helps support a metal platform in place above the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, broke on Monday (Aug. 10) causing a 100-foot-long gash on the telescope’s reflector dish. Operations at the UCF-managed observatory are stopped until repairs can be made.”

The University of Central Florida (UCF) manages the massive telescope (second in size only to China’s newly-opened Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST)), which has survived hurricanes (including Maria in 2017), tropical storms and earthquakes since it went operational in 1963. The single 3-inch-diameter cable causing the shutdown was said to have snapped for no apparent reason – on a telescope that is constantly monitored and maintained and has never had an accident of this kind, even during high storm winds. Suspicious yet?

The Arecibo Observatory

“The asteroid approached undetected from the direction of the sun. We didn’t see it coming. [Sunday’s] close approach is [the] closest on record. If you discount a few known asteroids that have actually impacted our planet.”

Paul Chodas, who is the director of NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, didn’t see asteroid ZTF0DxQ or 2020 QG coming on August 16th. The Palomar Observatory in California, didn’t detect it until around six hours after it passed by. NASA’s announcement used the excuse that the SUV-sized asteroid was “tiny.” Suspicious yet?

“The Arecibo radio telescope was knocked out of commission just a few days before, lands the possibility that this was a coordinated effort, so they could not see that this asteroid coming in, or what it actually was, a cigar-shaped UFO.”

Podcaster Daniel Liszt, aka Dark Journalist, brings the two suspicious events together and wonders if ZTF0DxQ was actually an SUV-sized UFO. His YouTube video generated many responses agree with him, as did a similar shorter video by UFO Sightings Hotspot.

With 2020 being such a strange year and the Pentagon and the mainstream media being more open than ever about UFOs, it’s no surprise that the options were considered, the connections were made and people were suspicious. But … is it really possible?

2020 QG detected by NASA’s Zwicky Transient Facility (or was it something else?)

Let’s start with the cable. Who would sabotage a valuable telescope just to keep it from seeing a single unusual space object? Why only this one? Could it really have been the only telescope in the world that could see ZTF0DxQ – whatever it was? While it was the closest, ZTF0DxQ was one of many asteroids that have flown by without NASA or anyone else seeing them. Was this one so unusual that it had to be kept hidden from the public? If any amateur astronomers (who have been observing a lot more events lately since the pandemic shutdown) recorded it, should they keep it to themselves? To get fully conspiratorial, could this be a coordinated smokescreen to distract the public’s attention from something else? After all, this IS 2020!

What do you think? At this point, a connection between Arecibo and ZTF0DxQ seems creative but coincidental, not conspiratorial. However, all that could change if more information is uncovered.

Wormholes – we love them in science fiction novels and movies, and we wish they existed more than just about anything else created by the fertile minds of the Bradburys and the Roddenberrys. Wormholes are especially enticing and frustrating because they offer such a nice clean way of traversing space and time while being impossible under the General Theory of Relativity. Or are they? Two physicists have proposed a loophole that would allow humans to safely pass through wormholes without destroying themselves, the universe, life and everything. Is it true or have they been in quarantine too long?

“Traversable wormholes are a staple of the science fiction literature. In classical general relativity, they are forbidden by the average null energy condition [1, 2, 3]. Interestingly, they are allowed in the quantum theory, but with one catch, the time it takes to go through the wormhole should be longer than the time it takes to travel between the two mouths on the outside.”

That opening paragraph is the last one understandable by non-theoretical physicists in the paper, “Humanly traversable wormholes,” written by Juan Maldacena, Princeton professor of theoretical physics, and Alexey Milekhin, Princeton graduate student of astrophysics. Fortunately, Universe Today breaks it down into terms this humble writer can understand. The key sentence is the one about the time it takes to travel between the two mouths on the outside – anything else would violate the General Theory of Relativity, which science fiction does all of the time. Even worse, wormholes are short-lived and volatile, so you might not make it to the other side before being crushed out of existence. Finally, this would only seem to work with matter at the particle level – no starships can fit nor shrink that small.

“The Randall-Sundrom II model was based on the realization that this five-dimensional spacetime could also be describing physics at lower energies than the ones we usually explore, but that it would have escaped detection because it couples with our matter only through gravity. In fact, its physics is similar to adding many strongly interacting massless fields to the known physics. And for this reason it can give rise to the required negative energy.”

Maldacena and Mikekhan propose using a quantum physics model with a fifth dimension (yes, we’ve entered a new Age of Aquarius) to provide the negative energy (the fifth dimension) required to keep the wormhole stable and maintain the tunnel until the body passes through the other end. They used charged massless fermions (particles like the electron but with zero mass) which exist in black holes and travel in circles. That would make the wormholes look like black holes, but all of that negative energy would require the ship to exert a sudden boost of energy to pass the midpoint in the tunnel. Finally, this wormhole would allow speeds far greater that the speed of light, allowing a ship to cross the Milky Way in ten seconds.

Oh, and one more thing (maybe two) …

“[F]or astronauts going through the wormhole it would take only 1 second of their time to travel 10,000 light-year distance (approximately 5000 billion miles or 1/10 of Milky Way size). An observer who does not go through the wormhole and stays outside sees them taking more than 10,000 years. And all this with no use of fuel, since the gravity accelerates and decelerates the spaceship.”

No fuel and no violation of the General Theory of Relativity! That’s not exactly good news – the Enterprise arrives 100,000 years too late to stop the Romulan fleet from destroying Earth. But it keeps wormholes in the realm of the possible – at least the quantumly possible. Maldacena and Milekhin admit traveling them is well beyond current technology and protection against exposure to massive amounts of cosmic radiation. But it’s something to strive for.

Quite a challenge for a species that still can’t get flying cars flying at the speed of cars.

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011