Having an official task to draw up a geological map of the
region, a young geologist ended up running into something so unique,
outstanding and mysterious that it would still puzzle scientists more than six
decades later – the Patomskiy Crater. A host of theories have been put forward
in the intervening years: that the crater was created by an ancient
civilization, or by prisoners at a top secret Stalin labor camp, or by volcanic
activity, or by a meteorite, or by an underground hydrogen explosion, or by a
UFO. And even more tantalizing: by two UFOs. Stories have been handed down by
native people – who knew about the ‘cursed crater’ long before Kolpakov
revealed it to the outside world. Among these accounts, were warnings that this
‘Devil’s Place’ was dangerous to humans. Questions remain unanswered about a
phenomenon that has been called ‘The Most Mysterious Place in Russia.’ For
example, why don’t trees grow on the side of the cone-like structure? Radiation
levels are low now, but there is evidence they were once very high: why? In
August 1949, when Kolpakov reached the very north of Irkutsk region, local
Yakut people told him a story about an ‘evil’ place, hidden in the woods. They
called it the Fire Eagle Nest, and according to them even the deer didn’t dare
to go close to it. Locals told a lot of legends about it, warning people would
suddenly start feeling unwell or even disappear, some to be found dead later,
some never to be found. As recently as 2005, indeed, the head of a mission to
the crater died suddenly within several kilometers of it. Legends didn’t scare
Kolpakov back in 1949 but what he witnessed in a distance when he climbed up
the hill was shocking.
What pushed up this massive mountain of rocks from the
earth? ‘When I first saw the crater I thought that I’d gone crazy because of
the heat,’ he noted. ‘And indeed a perfectly shaped mount of a size of a
25-storey building with a chopped off top sitting in the middle of the woods
was quite an unexpected discovery. Since the discovery of this mysterious
place, later named Patomskiy crater, scientists came up with widely differing
theories of its origin: among them, an unknown underground explosion to the fall
from space of a mysterious super dense substance unknown to man. Or even the
UFO. But not a single one of these theories could fully explain the anomalies
of the crater and the processes that still go on inside it. Later, other
scientists, namely the geologist Alexander Portnov, came to the same
conclusion, arguing that it could easily be former by a piece of space rock
that sliced off the famous Tunguska meteoroid that exploded over Krasnoyarsk
region, to the west of Patomskiy Crater, in 1908. Another early explanation was
that the crater had volcanic origin. The shape superficially suggested this.
Amateurs looking at it might see this as a probable theory. They may yet be
right. “My NTV quote was a while ago, and since that time we’ve made a number
of experiments and analyses that showed that most likely it is a volcano. Yes,
the only one like this on this territory,” he said. “It is not a typical lava
volcano, but just at some point gas exploded there.” Of course, there are many
strange things still about the crater. There is no unified, definite consensus
yet about it. Together with geomorphologists we have decided that it is the
most likely version.
The strange thing that doesn’t fit the theory, however, is
that if it was a gas explosion, it would not have raised the temperature. And
there for a while the process of surface heating was certainly going on, there
was an increased temperature level. ‘So the hypothesis is quite approximate
still, but I do think that geomorphologists opinion is the most correct of all,
that it is a gas volcano. “It also shows the typical ways of rising for the gas
volcano – when gas keeps gathering inside the chamber, then there is an
explosion that rises the ground, and gas starts gathering again. Then another
explosion, and again the ground rises.” Alexander Pospeev, a doctor of
geological and mineralogical sciences, insists the explanation is more prosaic,
and less extra-terrestrial. “Even now, the origin of the crater is not
discovered, but we can say for sure that it has the earthly origin,” he stated.
“It could be caused by the underground release of some fluids such as hydrogen.
Maybe some other fluid, that’s what we do not know exactly. But studies have
now shown that there is no object like the fragments of an asteroid or some
metal object under the crater, as has been suggested.”
–Siberian Times
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