- 18 hours ago
Strange openings in the Earth are revealing secrets no one expected. From enormous hidden worlds sealed off for millions of years to unexplained formations discovered beneath one of America’s Great Lakes, these discoveries are rewriting what we thought we knew about our planet. Scientists are still trying to understand how these places formed, what they’re hiding, and what their existence means for Earth’s past and future. Animation is created by Bright Side.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV
Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightplanet/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en
Stock materials (photos, footages and other):
https://www.depositphotos.com
https://www.shutterstock.com
https://www.eastnews.ru
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV
Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightplanet/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en
Stock materials (photos, footages and other):
https://www.depositphotos.com
https://www.shutterstock.com
https://www.eastnews.ru
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00Imagine you are walking to your car in the morning, but there is a problem.
00:04Your vehicle is not sitting neatly by the side of the road.
00:07Its rear end is sticking out of a gaping hole.
00:11This is what happened to a Queens resident, New York, back in 2020.
00:16A sinkhole had swallowed his SUV overnight.
00:19Events like this are nothing out of the ordinary in many parts of the globe.
00:23But sometimes, sinkholes can hide unspoken beauty inside them.
00:27In East Asia, a recent find stunned the scientific community.
00:33Cave explorers came across a colossal sinkhole that concealed an ancient forest.
00:38It is located in a province, Guangxi, Zhuang, close to the north of Vietnam, the Ley County,
00:45where researchers discovered the hidden forest is already famous worldwide for sinkholes.
00:50This one brings the number to 30.
00:53They are scattered over an area the size of three Gibraltars.
00:57This is just a tenth of the total number of sinkholes in the whole country.
01:02The name, Tiankeng, for these large holes in Earth's surface, translates as skyholes, or heavenly pits.
01:10The dimensions of the new sinkhole are impressive.
01:13It is over a thousand feet long, and it's pretty deep, too.
01:17You could fit the Great Pyramid of Giza one and a half times inside it.
01:20The sinkhole's total volume matches that of 2,000 Olympic swimming pools.
01:26The exploration team had to hike for hours to reach the bottom.
01:30It was all worth it in the end.
01:32They discovered a pristine underground forest that had no trace of human activity.
01:37Scientists estimate that the plants date back to the time of the dinosaurs.
01:41The foliage reached to the explorer's shoulders.
01:45Some trees were two times taller than the Hollywood sign.
01:49This discovery was amazing, but not entirely unexpected.
01:53Geologists were familiar with this type of landscape.
01:57In this part of East Asia, karst topography is pretty common.
02:01The word is Slavic in origin.
02:03Since the late 19th century, geologists have been using it to describe barren, limestone regions.
02:11This type of landscape features fissures in the ground, caves, underground streams, and, of course, sinkholes.
02:19Karst forms in parts of the world with heavy rainfall.
02:22The water dissolves materials such as limestone or dolomite.
02:26This creates a scenery that many people describe as wild beauty.
02:30Karst terrains have a practical purpose as well.
02:34They are ideal for storing water that humans can drink.
02:38Around 700 million people around the world use these karst aquifers as their primary water source.
02:44In the United States alone, 40% of the groundwater used for drinking comes from them.
02:50Springs of Florida and the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky are just some of the most famous karst areas.
02:56Geologists classify around a fifth of the U.S. land surface as karst.
03:02This type of terrain exists on other continents as well, in the Caribbean, Europe, Australia, and Asia.
03:09Due to local differences in climate and geology, karst doesn't appear the same everywhere.
03:14In the Spanish province of Malaga, the landscape consists of barren rock.
03:19This is what the karst regions of Italy, Slovenia, and Montenegro also look like.
03:24In East Asia, the landscape over the karst is green.
03:29This is because of the humid, tropical climate.
03:32Sinkholes and cave entrances are usually hidden behind lush vegetation.
03:37The region's unique appearance got it inscribed on the UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2007.
03:42The world's second most populous country is home to two-thirds of the planet's natural occurring sinkholes, Tiankengs.
03:51They start to form when rainwater seeps into cracks in the limestone.
03:56Over time, the gaps widen as more and more material is washed away.
04:01At one point, the ground above the limestone becomes unstable.
04:04The end result is the collapse of the surface layer.
04:08This happens suddenly and without prior warning signs.
04:12Once a hole forms in the ground, water starts filling it up.
04:16Another way for a sinkhole to form is the existence of an underground cave.
04:20Its roof can collapse.
04:22The shape of such sinkholes resembles a funnel.
04:25It is wider at the opening on the top and narrower near the bottom of the pool.
04:29The most famous of these sinkholes are cenotes.
04:33They occur naturally on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
04:37The region is home to more than 2,000 cenotes.
04:40They are all former caves whose roofs had collapsed at some point in time,
04:44and they are filled with fresh water.
04:47The local people have been using them as water sources for thousands of years.
04:51The ancient Mayas gave them mystical symbolism.
04:54For them, the cenotes were passageways to the other world.
04:57In reality, they are just a feature of karst terrain.
05:01Sinkholes that form in regions with abundant rainfall and limestone beneath the surface soil.
05:07The depth of a sinkhole can vary significantly.
05:11The smallest are barely 3 feet deep.
05:14When it fills up with water, it turns into a pond.
05:17A large lake can form in the place of a large sinkhole.
05:20One example is the Red Lake in Croatia.
05:23The most impressive thing about it are the steep cliffs that rise above the lake.
05:28They are nearly 800 feet tall.
05:31The world's biggest and deepest sinkhole,
05:34Xiaoshai Tiankeng, lies in the vicinity of the Yangtze River.
05:39The outside world discovered it only in 1994.
05:43The hole is so deep that you could stack up seven statues of liberty inside it.
05:48During the rainy season, a waterfall cascades from the pit's mouth into a cave system at the bottom.
05:55But not all sinkholes fill up with water.
05:59This was the case with the newly discovered giant sinkhole in Asia.
06:02It developed its own ecosystem.
06:05The high humidity and low temperature inside it were perfect for plant life to thrive.
06:10The very bottom of the hole is connected to an underground water flow.
06:16Scientists discovered 72 species of rare wild plants in the area.
06:22They are in danger of disappearing on the surface.
06:25But inside the sinkhole, they have found the perfect conditions for growth.
06:30The enormous opening in the ground is essentially a wildlife refuge.
06:34This was confirmed in 2021.
06:37That's when biologists discovered two species in the Yunnan province that they previously thought had gone extinct.
06:45Who knows what other animal and plant species are still hiding in there.
06:49Exploring these underground cave systems can be quite dangerous.
06:54They are often home to venomous snakes and mosquitoes.
06:57Even descending into a sinkhole is perilous.
06:59The cliffs are steep and stones are often very sharp.
07:04That's why the exploration of sinkholes in Asia is going slower than research would like.
07:10The sinkholes I've mentioned so far have all formed naturally.
07:14Erosion is the main process behind their creation.
07:17But the ground can also open because of human activity.
07:21Everything from a construction site to a leaking sewer pipe can cause the earth to give way.
07:26Sinkholes in urban areas pose a risk to infrastructure.
07:30One of the most famous examples of this happened in Japan in 2016.
07:36A busy street in downtown Fukuoka collapsed near the main train station.
07:40The sinkhole severed power lines and pipes that lay underground.
07:44Luckily, no one was injured.
07:47The diligent Japanese engineers repaired the damaged road section in just 48 hours.
07:52The biggest issue with sinkholes is that you never know when and where they are going to open.
07:59The best tool that geologists have for detecting underground cavities is ground-penetrating radar, GPR.
08:06It resembles a landmower.
08:08The operator goes up and down a troubled area to scan the ground underneath.
08:12The radar sends out impulses that detect any contrast between different materials.
08:18It feeds back this info in the form of a 2D or a 3D image.
08:23Once engineers detect a potential sinkhole, they use different techniques to stabilize the ground above it.
08:29The simplest method is called grouting.
08:32It involves filling the hole so it won't collapse.
08:35The most common materials are polyurethane foam and cement.
08:39The alternative is to lift a structure above the sinkhole.
08:43This technique is called underpinning.
08:46Workers drive steel rods into the load-bearing deeper layer of soil.
08:51This is the same construction method engineers use to erect stilt houses above the waterline.
09:00Lake Michigan is one of the largest and most mysterious freshwater lakes in the United States.
09:06And now, deep inside it, scientists have stumbled upon something unexplainable.
09:11Vast, round craters scattered all across the lake's floor.
09:16It all started in 2022.
09:19A team of researchers wanted to map the lake's bottom and look for some shipwrecks.
09:24At first, they were sure it's going to be just some typical rocky terrain or sandy patches.
09:29But what they saw on their sonar screens stopped them cold.
09:34Strange, circular shapes that looked almost too perfect to be natural.
09:40They were hiding about 500 feet beneath the surface, in places where the water turns dark and impenetrable.
09:47Those guys are huge, ranging from 300 to 600 feet wide.
09:53They also plunged nearly 40 feet deep.
09:56And there are dozens of them, neatly arranged like some footprints.
10:01But the team had no idea what these things were.
10:05Then, in August 2024, the mystery only deepened.
10:08Using a remotely operated vehicle, they got a closer look at these formations.
10:14There were about 40 of them.
10:16No one had ever seen anything quite like this before in the Great Lakes.
10:22What could have created those craters?
10:24Could they be ancient?
10:26Perhaps remnants of some geological event lost to time?
10:29If that's the case, it's weird how long these holes have likely been sitting there, undisturbed.
10:36Theories started popping up.
10:38One possibility was that they could be sinkholes, or doliens.
10:43Those are basically holes that suddenly appear in the ground when the surface layer collapses.
10:48The rock beneath the surface, often made of limestone, gets slowly dissolved by water over time, creating voids underground.
10:57When the surface of those voids can no longer hold its own weight, it caves in.
11:02And this forms a hole.
11:05Think of it like when you poke a straw through the lid of a drink.
11:09Sinkholes can be small dips or huge, spanning up to 2,000 feet.
11:14They can happen gradually or all at once.
11:17Sometimes they can swallow entire cars or even buildings.
11:21And Lake Michigan sits on limestone bedrock.
11:25It erodes pretty easily when water flows through it.
11:28Sinkholes like these have already been found in Lake Huron, and they look kinda similar.
11:34But there are some plot holes, no pun intended, with this theory.
11:39For example, it's wild how they all would be so huge.
11:44It's also weird and pretty rare for sinkholes to occur in a lake bed.
11:49They also kinda resemble a straight pattern.
11:52They seem to extend generally southward, forming a loose line, which is pretty weird.
11:59If these are sinkholes, then they're definitely not playing the usual geological rules.
12:05Though it might be some new, unusual process at play beneath the lake's surface that we haven't discovered yet.
12:11There's another theory, though.
12:14Glaciers.
12:16Glaciers are wild rivers of ice.
12:19They covered much of the earth during the last ice age, and they're incredibly powerful.
12:23While they might move slowly, sometimes only a few inches per day, they have such immense weight that they can reshape entire landscapes over thousands of years.
12:37Glaciers can grind and scoop the land beneath them.
12:40They're basically like colossal bulldozers.
12:43Their weight, combined with the slow but steady movement, grounds down everything beneath them.
12:49Rocks, soil, even bedrock.
12:52This can create deep gouges in the earth's surface, called glacial troughs.
12:59During the last ice age, there were lots of glaciers all over the northern U.S., including the Great Lakes region.
13:06If they moved across what is now Lake Michigan, they could have carved out these deep holes.
13:12Glaciers often move in a pretty straight path.
13:15As they move, they cause terrain to erode.
13:17But the resulting erosion varies based on terrain.
13:22Sometimes, there are places where the bedrock is softer or fractured, and these places are more easily carved and crushed by the glacier.
13:31That could explain why some holes could be bigger and deeper than others.
13:35Harder bedrock is less affected.
13:37But usually, this leads to rounded, crescent-shaped depressions, known as chatter marks.
13:44Those marks are more like grooves rather than circular, big craters like those in Lake Michigan.
13:49Once the glaciers melted, the Great Lakes themselves formed.
13:53If the craters were formed by them, they may have filled with water, becoming part of the Michigan lake.
14:00Though, this theory is more like a speculation, so we need more evidence.
14:06But there's another layer to this mystery.
14:09The craters are not just curious geological formations.
14:13They actually may hold valuable clues about early life on Earth.
14:17Parts of Lake Michigan, especially dark ones, are relatively low in oxygen.
14:24It's like a lighter version of deep ocean environments that often have very little of this element.
14:29For example, hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean.
14:34Underwater openings in the Earth's crust with some hot, mineral-rich water that are often very low in oxygen.
14:41But some organisms love places like these.
14:44For example, opossum shrimp.
14:47Teeny-tiny shrimp-like creatures that love cold, deep waters.
14:51They get their name because they have a pouch to carry their young until they're ready to be on their own, like an opossum.
14:58Or deep-water sculpin fish.
15:01Small, bottom-dwelling fish that also enjoys cold lakes.
15:05They're well-adapted to living in dark waters and usually stay close to the lake bed.
15:10And weird organisms like invasive quagga mussels, which kind of look like shells.
15:16These are small, freshwater mussels that have spread there to the Great Lakes.
15:21They attach themselves to hard surfaces and can cause problems for ecosystems
15:26by competing with native species for food and space.
15:30All these guys could be in Lake Michigan, and even more.
15:34There might be microbes or even bacteria that are specially adapted to these harsh conditions,
15:39just like it was in Lake Huron.
15:43There's only a handful of creatures that could survive deep within these craters.
15:47And studying them could give us insight into how life once flourished in Earth's ancient, oxygen-poor oceans.
15:56That's because it's in places similar to these, where some of the earliest life forms thrived.
16:02Early Earth had an atmosphere with little oxygen, although it was much more hot and ancient microbes adapted to this.
16:09The Great Lakes, especially Lake Michigan, have always had a bit of a ghostly reputation.
16:16Like even this mission was organized to study the shipwrecks.
16:20There were about 6,000 of them in the Great Lakes.
16:24Many of these wrecks are still sitting on the lake beds, preserved by the cold, fresh waters.
16:30And shipwrecks aren't the only strange things tied to the Great Lakes.
16:34Over the years, there have been stories of unexplained disappearances.
16:39Boats and even planes have vanished without a trace.
16:43The lakes, often calm on the surface, can suddenly turn dangerous with unpredictable storms and massive waves,
16:50leading to these mysterious events.
16:53Not even mentioning all the creepy stuff people noticed there over the centuries,
16:57such as ghostly lights above water, or bizarre weather patterns,
17:01like eerie, sudden fogs that seem to appear out of nowhere.
17:06In 2007, they even discovered some prehistoric structure that looks like Stonehenge there.
17:12Well, it was way smaller, but still.
17:15It lay about 40 feet below the surface in the heart of Grand Traverse Bay,
17:20and it's speculated to be about 9,000 years old, way older than Stonehenge.
17:25Looks like this is a print of those who lived in the area thousands of years ago.
17:30These massive stones are arranged in a careful, winding pattern stretching over a mile.
17:36They range in size from basketballs to compact cars.
17:40But one, in particular, stands out.
17:43A boulder three and a half to four feet tall, five feet wide.
17:47It's etched with the image of a mastodon, a creature that roamed the earth about 11,000 years ago,
17:54before it went extinct.
17:56It probably sank there during the end of the last ice age we mentioned.
18:00This period had reshaped the region.
18:03This place is underwater now, but back in the day, it was still dry land.
18:08So, the stones were probably created by people who lived there, though we're not sure why.
18:14Were they used as hunting blinds?
18:16Or was it some sort of an ancient calendar?
18:19Who knows?
18:21Only about 15% of the Great Lakes' floors have been explored.
18:25Now, scientists are gearing up for a deeper dive into this mystery, both literally and figuratively.
18:32They want to analyze the lake beds surrounding the craters, hoping that maybe something in the
18:37environment around them might have caused them to appear.
18:41They have initiatives like Lakebed 2030.
18:44These missions should map the entire underwater landscape.
18:48This would help us learn tons of interesting stuff about Lake Michigan and our planet's past.
18:55Who knows what other secrets these dark waters hide?
19:00That's it for today.
19:01So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
19:06Or, if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!
Be the first to comment