Once Yakutia was a sacred area. It was forbidden even to approach her, so as not to incur the wrath of higher powers. Now, travel to one of the most mysterious regions of the country is available to tourists. One of the attractions is the Great Batagay Gap.
To this day, none of the scientists can find the answer to the constant deepening and widening of the funnel. Even the distance from Yakutsk to the local curiosity is covered with mysticism: it is equal to 666 km.
Birth
A rift appeared in the sixties. The reason was the felling of the taiga in the southwest, near the village of Batagay. The soil subsided, revealing a layer of permafrost. With an increase in temperature in subsequent years, the rocks previously frozen in ice thawed. Because of this, the dimensions of the Yakutsk crater were constantly growing.
Erosion accelerated noticeably after the major flood in 2008. But even before it, the spring floods perfectly helped expand the funnel by 15 m annually. At present, the crevice has reached a kilometer length. It went a hundred meters deep into the ground, and the width of the hole reaches eight hundred meters.
Such faults also exist abroad, in Greenland and Canada. However, it was the Siberian cleft that managed to noticeably bypass them in depth. For this reason, the crater is especially attractive for paleontologists and permafrost researchers. The slopes of the gorge do not hide geological layers of different eras. By their structure and composition, scientists can easily find out many secrets of the planet's past, about its inhabitants and the peculiarities of the climate.
Research
In 2009, it was in the Batagaysky Gap that the perfectly preserved remains of a bison calf were found. The approximate age of the find is 4400 years old. There are many mammoth bones here. Since 2011, investigations have been regularly carried out by the staff of the Research Institute of Applied Ecology of the North.
The local group expanded in 2011 with the addition of University of Sussex Professor Julian Merton in May. The English frozen man believed that participation in the Siberian expedition would clarify some of the issues of his research.
At the bottom of the cleft, specialists managed to take soil samples with the remains of living organisms frozen into it. The oldest of the exposed layers is about 200 thousand years old. By its composition, Merton found out that at that time it was warmer in the vicinity of Verkhoyansk than it is now.
Conclusions and hypotheses
Although the climate has changed insignificantly over time. Fragments of relict trees became the proof. The permafrost has preserved them perfectly. The British scientist decided to continue his research. For this, he planned more than one expedition to the Yakutsk failure.
In Russia, the Batagai crater is far from the only one. There are similar formations in Yamal. The cause of the craters is called global warming. According to Merton's conclusion, it is quite probable that new basins will appear in the vicinity of Batagay in the near future.
All the conclusions of the researchers agree that the crater should have stopped growing a long time ago. However, due to the fact that this did not happen, the crevice deepens by 30 m per year and is constantly lengthening. Ironically, scientists call the crater a hellish portal. Although the locals do not deny the name given by scientists, they always speak seriously about the sights.
