MOSCOW: Russian scientists have discovered seven giant craters in remote Siberia, a geologist said on Thursday, adding that the mysterious phenomenon was believed to be linked to climate change.

The discovery of an enormous chasm in a far northern region known to locals as “the end of the world” in July last year prompted speculation it had been caused by a meteorite or even aliens.

A YouTube video of the hole went viral and a group of scientists was despatched to investigate.

“We have just learnt that in Yakutia, new information has emerged about a giant crater one kilometre in diameter,” the deputy director of the Oil and Gas Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vasily Bogoyavlensky, said.

He said this brought to seven the number of reported pits.“Footage allows us to identify minimum seven craters, but in fact there are plenty more,” he said.

All of the craters have been discovered in the remote energy-rich Yamalo-Nenetsky region, in north-western Siberia.

Scientists say that rather than aliens or meteorites, the holes are caused by the melting of underground ice in the permafrost, which has possibly been sped up by rising temperatures due to global warming .

Published in Dawn, March 13th, 2015

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