Strange things are happening beneath the sand dunes of Mount Baldy. For years, small openings appeared and vanished without explanation — but now the sinkholes seem to be waking up again. Park rangers and geologists are racing to understand what’s causing the ground to collapse so suddenly in a place that should be stable. In this video, we’ll uncover the eerie science behind these shifting dunes, the danger they pose, and why some experts think more could form at any moment. What’s hiding beneath Mount Baldy’s surface is far stranger than anyone expected. And the deeper you look, the more unsettling it becomes. Credit: CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en Gloryhole Monticello Dam: by Damage10 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gloryhole_Monticello_Dam.jpg Glory Hole, Lake Berryessa: by Jeremybrooks https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Glory_Hole,_Lake_Berryessa.jpg KTB-Bohrturm: by Kreuzschnabel CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KTB-Bohrturm.jpg Samoa, regina della giungla / Romana Film LOTTE GEEVEN / tumblr Animation is created by Bright Side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
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00:00You've heard of Dune, right? Giant sandworms, Zendaya and Timothy walking the desert in funky spacesuits fighting over spice.
00:09Well, welcome to Mount Baldy, our very own real-life version of Dune, minus the celebrities and giant worms.
00:17Instead of space drama, we're dealing with something even weirder. A Dune that's literally eating people.
00:23Mount Baldy rises over Lake Michigan like a giant sandy mountain, looking totally normal.
00:32But under all that sand, there's a mystery that's got scientists scratching their heads.
00:38It all started on a sunny afternoon back in 2013, when a six-year-old boy named Nathan was running up the Dune.
00:46The boy was on vacation with his family and his best friend.
00:50They were excited to spend their days swimming in the lake's cold water and soaking in the warm sun.
00:56At some point, Nathan and his best friend got tired of swimming and decided to explore the dunes.
01:02Their idea of fun was to run up the slopes and then slide it all the way back down.
01:07When they were running uphill, Nathan took the lead and saw something weird.
01:12A hole.
01:13He leaned forward to check it out, when the ground literally swallowed him whole.
01:18It happened too fast. Nathan was gone before his friend got there.
01:23His family freaked out and for three long hours, search teams desperately tried to find him.
01:28Don't worry. The guy survived.
01:30Even though his chances were slim.
01:34And since then, scientists have been trying to understand what on earth caused this accident.
01:40The weird part here is that dunes like Mount Baldy shouldn't have holes or empty spaces underneath them.
01:45Dunes are supposed to be solid piles of sand.
01:49For sinkholes to happen, there needs to be running water below ground.
01:54This water usually weakens the soil up until the point where the ground breaks beneath the surface and a huge hole opens up.
02:01That afternoon that Nathan disappeared, a geologist happened to be passing by and was completely shook by what had happened.
02:09Erin Argylin, who tried helping with the rescue, said she never heard of anything like that in her years of studying dunes.
02:16She was determined to figure it out, though.
02:20So, she went back to Mount Baldy and used ground-penetrating radar to scan the dune.
02:26That's when she saw the problem was way bigger than expected.
02:31Bizarrely enough, there were another 66 hidden holes just waiting to collapse.
02:36It was like Mount Baldy was a dune full of invisible traps, and no one had any clue why.
02:44Argylin started to speculate what could possibly explain this phenomenon.
02:49One clue rests on the history of Mount Baldy.
02:52You see, over the years, sand was taken from Mount Baldy for industrial purposes, like making mason jars and other glass products.
02:59Some scientists think that removing all that sand disturbed the natural structure of the dune.
03:06This disruption could have caused the dune to weaken, making it unstable and creating the weird hollow pockets we're seeing now.
03:14But this theory doesn't explain why the sinkholes are only happening now or why they disappear so quickly.
03:22These sinkholes sort of look like those old Hollywood movies quicksand.
03:26They open up, sometimes swallow something or someone, then they disappear.
03:32But real quicksand is not as evil as the ones in the movies.
03:35It's a slushy mix of sand and water that looks solid from above,
03:39but it collapses into a more liquid form if a heavy object disturbs it.
03:45Another theory says it's probably because of fallen trees, buried long ago under layers of sand.
03:52These trees could be decaying and leaving behind empty spaces.
03:57If the sand shifts just right, it could cause these gaps to collapse, forming sinkholes.
04:03The problem with this theory goes back to the disappearing sinkholes.
04:08If it were true, the holes would remain open.
04:10This next deep hole seems to come out of a totally different Hollywood era.
04:17Something like if Jurassic Park met Aquaman.
04:21Behold, the famous sawmill sink.
04:24This wonder of nature is a deep, mysterious blue hole in the Bahamas.
04:28Think of it as a giant underwater sinkhole that goes down about 120 feet, filled with fresh and salty water.
04:37It's a natural wonder by itself, but also because scientists started to uncover perfectly preserved fossils and ancient bones in it.
04:46We're talking extinct species like giant tortoises, crocodiles, and even an ancient rat the size of your backpack.
04:52Back in 2004, scientists hit the jackpot when they dove down into the depths of sawmill sink and pulled up fossils that have been there for thousands of years.
05:04You may think they did not preserve well, but no.
05:08The water there is so cold and low on oxygen that everything stayed in tip-top shape, like it had been frozen.
05:14The scientists didn't just find long-lost animals, but human remains too.
05:21These bones composed a human tibia and sacrum of a Leucaean person, the indigenous folks who lived in the Bahamas about a thousand years ago.
05:30This discovery shocked archaeologists, because it gave them a major clue into the lives of the Bahamas' original inhabitants.
05:38And speaking of holes, this group of scientists tried digging an insanely deep one just to hear Mother Earth's heartbeat.
05:46Hang in there, I'll explain.
05:48It started back in 1987, when the Germans decided to dig the KTB borehole in Bavaria.
05:56A borehole is a deep hole in the ground used to find oil.
06:00These guys managed to dig almost 30,000 feet below the ground.
06:04Their mission was to understand more about our planet's inner workings, like tectonic movements, temperature changes, and seismic activity.
06:14But as they dug deeper, they were hit with a few surprises.
06:19Instead of finding solid, stable rock, they encountered fluids and gas seeping into the hole, which threw off everything they thought they knew.
06:27The heat also spiked way faster than expected, making scientists rethink their theories on how temperature behaves deep down.
06:36They actually had to stop digging, because they reached the insane temperature of 572 Fahrenheit.
06:42This hole experiment sparked the interest of a Dutch artist, who decided to tag along and do an experiment of her own.
06:51She used a geophone, which is an instrument that converts ground movements to voltage, and she recorded sound waves from the hole.
06:58When she got the results, she was shocked to hear that the sounds they recorded resembled a distant thunder, and almost sounded like a real heartbeat.
07:09Okay, so this diamond mine could easily be scouted as a location for some Star Wars sequel, and I'm not even joking.
07:20Located way up in the remote wilderness of northern Canada, surrounded by ice, snow, and a lake, sits the Diavik Diamond Mine.
07:28Since opening in 2003, Diavik has produced over 100 million carats of high-quality diamonds.
07:37But what really makes Diavik special is how it's powered, in part, by a wind farm.
07:43Yep, they managed to do that even in the cold tundra.
07:47When Diavik first opened, it was all about open-pit mining.
07:51But now they've moved underground, digging deeper to find those hidden treasures.
07:55And to make it all work, they had to build a dike system to stop the lake from flooding the mine.
08:01Pretty intense, right?
08:04And then there's the Monticello Dam, which sounds pretty Italian, but it's actually located in Napa Valley, California.
08:12This beauty was built between 1953 and 1957, and it created Lake Berryessa, which holds the record for the seventh largest man-made lake in California.
08:22The lake covers approximately 20,000 acres, which is about as big as Disney World in Florida.
08:30And although this lake works as a water reservoir for the northern region of the San Francisco Bay Area, that's not its most important feature.
08:38Its most unique feature is known as the Glory Hole.
08:42The Glory Hole is a morning glory-type spillway, which helps to drain the excess water from the dam.
08:48It has a diameter of 72 feet at the top, and it can drain an astonishing 48,000 cubic feet of water per second, when the lake reaches its maximum capacity.
09:00If you thought about swimming around in the lake, forget it.
09:04It's pretty fascinating, but it was forbidden since someone swam too close to it in 97 and was swept inside the spillway.
09:11That's it for today.
09:15So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
09:20Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.
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