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The sinkhole is 630 feet (192 meters) deep, according to the Xinhua news agency, deep enough to just swallow St. Louis' Gateway Arch. A team of speleologists and spelunkers rappelled into the sinkhole on Friday (May 6), discovering that there are three cave entrances in the chasm, as well as ancient trees 131 feet (40 m) tall, stretching their branches toward the sunlight that filters through the sinkhole entrance. The discovery is no surprise, Veni told Live Science, because southern China is home to karst topography, a landscape prone to dramatic sinkholes and otherworldly caves. Karst landscapes are formed primarily...

The evidence that hurricane activity is at a historical low is hiding on the Caribbean seafloor, tucked away in odd geological features called blue holes. Blue holes are similar to sinkholes but on a much grander scale. They can be 300 meters deep, like the Dragon Hole in the South China Sea, or 300 meters wide, like the aptly named Great Blue Hole in Belize. The Bahamas is home to the world’s greatest concentration of blue holes, making it an appealing destination for paleotempestologists—scientists who study historical tropical cyclone activity. The seafloor at the base of a blue hole acts...

Families fled their collapsing homes in terror after they began to crumble in the middle of the night. Shocked neighbours found themselves scrambling for their lives in the dead of night after huge cracks began appearing in their walls. As they grabbed for treasured possessions the floor opened up beneath them, showing the earth below... ..A police officer at the scene told locals that foam concrete had been sprayed into the foundations and fixed the structure. He said: "Those houses won't move again. These guys are experts, they work all over the world."....

Just before the new year in 2021, the earth in a quiet area of Croatia began to act oddly. A near-perfectly round hole sprang out of nowhere in a garden in Meenani, a hamlet 40 kilometers (24 miles) from Croatia's capital city of Zagreb, measuring 30 meters (98 feet) broad and 15 meters (49 feet) deep. More and more of these huge holes appeared in Meenani and its adjacent village Borojevii during the next few weeks. According to the Croatian Geological Institute, at least 54 totally collapsed sinkholes of various sizes had been documented by the end of January. According...

Pipeline shutdown, Hernando de Soto bridge cracked in Memphis, sinkhole in Missouri draining a lake… Coincidence? or signs of the next big one along the New madrid Fault in the Midwest? Lone Elk Park in St. Louis County has a leaky lake — and an SUV-sized sinkhole that opened up there in recent days has drained about a third of it. St. Louis County Parks Director Tom Ott said he got word Friday that the lake had dropped about 3 feet, and then enough water drained away over the weekend to reveal the sinkhole. This isn’t the first time this...

After the deadly earthquake came the sinkholes… Yes, over 100 sinkholes have opened up in central Croatia after two earthquakes in December. Some holes have emerged under residential houses, forcing occupants to evacuate. A central Croatian region about 40 kilometers (25 miles) southwest of the capital, Zagreb, is pocked with round holes of all sizes, which appeared after December’s 6.4-magnitude quake that killed seven people and caused widespread destruction. Scientists have been flocking to Mecencani and other villages in the sparsely-inhabited region for observation and study. “These are so-called dropout sinkholes, and they appeared because of the specific geological composition...

A new gigantic 50-meter deep ‘crater’ opened up in the Yamal peninsula in Russia. The new Yamal pit was spotted by chance by a Vesti Yamal TV crew en route for an unrelated event in July 2020. The gigantic hole is the latest to be discovered since the phenomenon was first registered in 2014 in northern Siberia. A group of scientists then made an expedition to examine the large cylindrical crater which has a depth of about 50 meters. Scientists who examined the site said blocks of soil and ice were flung “hundreds of metres” from the epicentre with “colossal...

The view up from inside Amberjack Hole. (Mote Marine Laboratory) ===================================================================================== When sinkholes open up on land, it's terrifying. In an instant, they can swallow whatever's on top of them, whether that's a road, a landscape, or an ancient creature destined to not see the light of day again for millennia. Sinkholes aren't just confined to land, though. A similar phenomenon also takes place in the ocean, creating mysterious 'blue holes' that plummet into dark, watery nothingness. Distinct from the underwater caverns of cenotes, which exist under land, blue holes only open up in the sea, making them much more...

AUSTIN, Texas— The Center for Biological Diversity and Save Our Springs Alliance today filed a notice of intent to sue the Texas Department of Transportation and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over an Austin highway construction project’s threats to the federally endangered Austin blind and Barton Springs salamanders. The conservation groups recently learned that the MoPac Intersections Project has exposed at least 21 underground caves, sink holes and other karst features that provide habitat for the endangered salamanders. There is a high risk that construction will pollute the two species’ habitat by introducing silt and pollutants to the subsurface. The...

video of various sink holes of the world

EIN GEDI, Israel—Ten years ago, during a routine early-morning solo tour of the area surrounding his kibbutz, Ein Gedi, on the shores of the Dead Sea, geographer-geologist Eli Raz heard an ominous rumbling noise. Raz, who is widely considered Israel’s foremost expert on sinkholes—those terrifying crater-like holes that open up without warning—immediately knew that he was about to be swallowed up. Sitting in his windowless, cramped office on the kibbutz, Raz, 70, a wiry, sun-wizened man with thick silver hair, tells his tale calmly. “I fell in, tumbling down, deeper, deeper. I thought I’d be buried alive. Instinctively, I started...

Video at link.French free diver Guillaume Nery jumped into the largest sinkhole on Earth with no scuba gear, no snorkel, no gear of any sort. Just a pair of massive, rock hard cojones. "Dean's Blue Hole" is a 663-ft deep sinkhole in the Bahamas. A couple helpful little factoids to aid you in understanding the gravitas of Guillaume's dive. The average human being can hold their breath for 45 seconds - or a minute if they have an exceptionally healthy set of lungs. After that, your body essentially starts to suffocate, as cells in your organs shut down from lack...

Scott and Robin Spivey had a sinking feeling that something was wrong with their home when cracks began snaking across their walls in March. The cracks soon turned into gaping fractures, and within two weeks their 600-square-foot garage broke from the house and the entire property—manicured lawn and all—dropped 10 feet below the street. It wasn’t long before the houses on both sides collapsed as the ground gave way in the Spivey’s neighborhood in Lake County, about 100 miles north of San Francisco. … Unlike sinkholes of Florida that can gobble homes in an instant, this collapse in hilly volcanic...

Latvia has quite a few sink holes and caverns below. This is probably the ground eroded beneath that goes down into a cavern.

Officials in Pennsylvania’s state capital are dealing with an abysmal issue they can’t afford to fix: 41 massive sinkholes throughout the city as wide as 50 feet and as deep as a typical grave. ................ But the city is too broke to replace many of the aging pipes and repave its roads as it deals with ongoing budget woes and the looming threat of bankruptcy, according to media reports. The first of the recent sinkholes perforating Harrisburg was reported on New Year's Eve when a chasm measuring an estimated 50 feet long and eight feet deep, swallowed a neighborhood block,...

Hurricanes and other natural tempests make Florida a risky state for homeowners and insurers alike. But add sinkholes to the mix, and you're looking at an actuary's nightmare. The number of sinkhole claims in the state -- for reasons that could range from fraud to changing weather patterns -- has skyrocketed over the past few years, a trend that has sapped insurance companies of millions of dollars. Florida lawmakers are now coming to the industry's defense with legislation that would lift a longstanding requirement that they offer sinkhole coverage.

Pictures of the biggest scariest sinkhole I have ever seen.

ARCHER, Fla. -- Dozens of sink holes have opened up in north central Florida after three days of heavy rain from Hurricane Frances, including one that swallowed a Chrysler LeBaron as a man parked to get breakfast at a grocery store. Lawrence Means, 43, had stopped for a cup of coffee and a couple of biscuits Tuesday when he felt the earth move beneath him. A sinkhole opened under his car and nearly swallowed the entire vehicle, which was left standing on its nose in the hole with only its trunk above ground. "I felt something drop and I tried...

Picture credit: TheCabal"I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat"LINK TO THREAD TEN Iran seeks swap of Brits for suicide attackers Report says 40 Revolutionary Guard 'volunteers' held by UK Iran apprehended British military personnel and Navy vessels earlier this week in order to secure release of 40 "suicide operations volunteers" held by the UK, according to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard source. The source told the London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that the British Army command in Iraq received the demand from the Revolutionary Guard, reported the Middle East Media Research Institute. According to the source,...