Recently, in an agricultural area outside the town of Tira Amarilla in the Atacama region of Chile, a confusing thing happened, on a straight road and on the surrounding land, in one night suddenly appeared a huge hole, the diameter of the cave mouth is about 30 meters, from above, the shape of this hole is unconventional, showing an incredible circle, and the inside of the hole is pitch black, it seems to be bottomless.
Witnesses broke out in a cold sweat as they passed the section of the road, and if they fell, the consequences were unimaginable, because the incident was sudden, and they did not know how deep, where the hole would lead, and the witness then called the police of the relevant local department.
Subsequently, the National Geology and Mining Administration of Chile quickly sent relevant geological staff to the scene of the incident. After investigation, the depth of this large hole is more than 200 meters, and there is no other detectable anomaly except for some stagnant water inside, and the staff cannot determine how the hole was formed in a short period of time. Now, the relevant authorities in Chile are conducting a joint investigation to try to find out the real reason behind the incident.
As soon as this news was issued, it immediately aroused the great curiosity of the local people, some people said that the holes were left by aliens, others said that the people in the center of the earth were going to come out to "brush the sense of existence", and some people said that the pit would become a new tourist attraction in Chile.
Although the official Chileans have not yet given a definitive conclusion, we may as well analyze the possibility of the source of this large hole.
The so-called "sinkhole" has a broad and narrow concept. In a broad sense, after the drastic changes in the rock layer, soil layer or underground aquifer that support the weight of the surface, the area that originally supported the weight of the surface has undergone structural changes, which is not enough to support the weight of the surface soil layer, then there will be a collapse in a certain area of the surface, so there will be various types of "sinkholes".
In a narrow sense, "sinkhole" in the field of geology mainly refers to a geological phenomenon developed in the karst geomorphological area, and over time the groundwater flow interacts with rocks, forming a "karst negative terrain" with a huge cavity, and the bottom of the pit is often connected to the underground river. Such sinkholes are more common in karst landform areas such as Guizhou on the mainland, and the "sinkholes" are surrounded by steep rock walls, depths and cave diameters of up to hundreds of meters.
If you exclude the "karst sinkholes" that appear in karst geomorphological areas, many sinkholes that appear in other parts of the world basically belong to the category of generalized sinkholes, such as the "Blue Hole" sinkhole in Belize City, the Guatemalan sinkhole, the Marbury sinkhole in Florida, the Giant Sinkhole in Siberia, Russia, and so on. From the cause of formation of these sinkholes, there are mainly the following reasons:
The first is the result of volcanic activity. When the magmatic eruption activity of the active volcano stops, the temperature of the lava in the magma pipe gradually decreases, gradually solidifies and shrinks, forming a depressed crater. If after the volcano erupts again, a large amount of magma erupts again, and the support of the magma body that originally supported the crater to the upper part disappears, and the surface will collapse significantly, thus forming a sinkhole such as a "caldera".
The second is the result of meteorite impacts. Around the Earth, there are a large number of small extraterrestrial objects, some of which will eventually fall on the earth due to the gravitational pull of the earth and the impact of asteroids on each other. Larger, faster, and very tightly structured asteroids will remain part of the process of crossing the Earth's atmosphere and smash into the ground, forming impact craters. Some craters are large in size and have a chance to form craters at the center of the impact.
The third is the result of climate change. In Siberia, Greenland and other high-latitude land areas, historically these areas of the climate is very warm, distributed a large number of forests and grasslands, with the movement of the earth's plate, these areas gradually become cold, the original large number of forests, shrubs and grasses are withered and dead, buried in the ground, some formed coal, oil and natural gas, and some formed peat, existing closer to the surface.
Under the long-term geological and biochemical action, many organic matter is gradually decomposed to release gases such as methane, which slowly accumulates below the surface. As global warming continues and intensifies, these high-latitude regions become more and more hot in the summer, the permafrost melts, and those gases that accumulate in some areas will be released in a concentrated manner or even cause explosions, triggering violent collapse of the surface, resulting in the formation of large sinkholes.
The fourth is the result of human activity. When human beings continue to develop groundwater, oil, coal, metal ore and other resources, due to excessive exploitation and unscientific exploitation, some areas below the formation occur loose or even hollow phenomena, so that the geological structure becomes unstable, in some areas will cause the loss of effective support, and eventually there will be continuous or sudden surface collapse, thus forming a man-made "sinkhole".
Judging from the location and situation of the "sinkhole" in Chile this time, it is certainly not caused by the ablation of permafrost caused by global warming, and of course, it should not be formed by volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts, so the possibility of human activities is greater.
On the one hand, near the site of the sinkhole, there is a copper mine called Alcaparosa, which may cause this surface collapse due to improper mining and continuous blasting during the mining process.
On the other hand, the area where the sinkhole is located is an agricultural area, which belongs to the very arid climate of Theta Cama region, in order to maintain agricultural production, local farmers have to rely on high-intensity pumping of groundwater for irrigation, resulting in a serious overdraft of groundwater in the local area, which may also lead to the emergence of sinkholes.
Readers, what do you think is the most likely cause of this sinkhole?
#智利天坑 #