A meteorite, a nuke or gulag inmates? Scientists baffled

The site in Irkutsk, Siberia was discovered in 1949 and is a huge convex cone with a funnel-shaped recess and a rounded hill in the middle, which looks a little like an eagle’s nest with an egg nestled inside it.The origin of the Patomskiy crater has baffled scientists for decades and theories for its existence have ranged from a nuclear blast to a secret gulag mine and even a meteorite strike.The current thinking is that the site was indeed created by a meteorite strike, but no evidence has been found to support the theory.The cone is 80metres tall and has a diameter of 150metres at its widest. The depth of the inner circle ditch is around 10metres.It was named Patomskiy after a nearby river and was discovered by a geologist called Vadim Kolpakov who tried and failed to arrange a scientific trip to examine the site, but numerous expeditions have taken place since and one last year collected samples.Theories that the mound is a giant slagheap have been thrown out as there were not enough people living nearby when the crater is thought to have formed to create such a pile.And there were never labour camps or gulags in the region.Half a tonne of samples were taken from the site and removed by helicopter last year.The samples led scientists to dismiss ideas of a uranium ore explosion as the background radiation at the site is low and no uranium has been found nearby either.This left them with two main theories – one of a volcano and another of a meteorite.However, the mysterious site has not given up any meteoritic material and the area is not thought to be volcanic. In fact there are no volcanoes within thousands of kilometres of the Patomskiy crater and it also seems to be relatively new.Scientists thought the crater was only between 100 and 500 years old and could be the result of the Tunguska meteorite, which fell in the Krasnoyarsk region in 1908, but whose crater has never been discovered.It is thought the meteorite was sighted just 70km away from the ‘eagle’s nest’ and that distance is a mere 10 to 15 seconds of flight.As the Tunguska event occurred in 1908, the age coincides, but modern tests have shown that the crater is actually 250 years old – so it could have been formed by a previous meteorite that fell when the area was virtually unpopulated.Scientists now think that there is something with a high iron content and ferromagnetic materials buried between 100 and 150 metres underneath the crater.They believe it could be a meteorite or another incredibly dense object, but they are not certain.The fact that the crater is ‘alive’ as its shape changes constantly - by rising and falling - and that the trees nearby the site are reported to grow abnormally fast, adds to the mystery.(dailymail.co.uk)ANN.Az