Around mid-July of 2014, mysterious holes started appearing in the permafrost in the Yamal region of northern Russia. One after another, the holes started showing up. As for explanations for these mysterious holes.. No one really had any solid answers. The theories ranged from meteorites to stray missiles to aliens. After a bit of study, researchers found that there were unusually high concentrations of methane inside the first crater, leading them to believe that explosive methane releases from global warming were to blame.
However, when they found four more mystery craters, scientists believed that explosive methane releases were not the culprit. One popular theory is the pingo. A pingo is a plug of ice that forms near the surface of the Earth over time, but has a small mound or hill on top of it. When the ice plug melts quickly, as they have been seen to do in such warm temperatures, there’s a good chance that the ground will collapse with it, forming a crater.
