There’s something that was a bit unnerving to me after reading an article on Lew Rockwell. There have been giant sinkholes appearing all around the globe in increasing numbers within the recent years.
Has anyone been following this strange phenomenon? They have been large and small, with the largest one being 3 kilometers in Ethiopia!! If you read that article, many strange things have been going on in the past few months, such as NASA declaring emergency preparedness initiative and no fly zones declarations.
Comment on these strange events, please? Especially the sinkhole one, anyone here a scientist who happens to be researching the sinkhole? Is this a sign that the planet is becoming more and more unstable.
Is this a sign that the planet is becoming more and more unstable.
No. These are all pretty much sensationalist and pop stories. I’m a geologist, I have many well respected contacts in the the field. The world is not imploding. Sinkholes happen all the time. The 3km crack is completely consistent with fault movement in a geologically active area like Peru.
I’m a little more concerned that the world is preparing, under the radar, for full scale warfare.
NASA might know that and be issuing warnings to families for all kinds of reasons. And the FAA closings were primarily SECURiTY and HAZARDS so i don’t know what they could mean.
Seeing that you are a geologist, I’d like to ask you a question, could you please explain a little bit about (or refer to some resource about) these sinkholes? That one in Guatemala looks so perfect, it is almost like if a machine drilled it.
@LogisticEarth
See, this is why I love Mises forum. Here are the smartest, most knowledgeable people on the planet. I knew there had to be one or two people who happens to work in the field.
@Jacob
Yes, it is very strange that NASA issued that warning…anyone else here happens to know what’s really been going on?
Seeing that you are a geologist, I’d like to ask you a question, could you please explain a little bit about (or refer to some resource about) these sinkholes? That one in Guatemala looks so perfect, it is almost like if a machine drilled it.
Basically, what happens is that you get a large cavity forming underneath the ground, typically from the dissolution of limestone or other carbonate bedrock. The rock dissolves, and makes what is, essentially, a cave. If it’s shallow enough, it can collapse, which then allows all the overburden (soil) to fall down inside, and the previously unnoticed cave is revealed. Your common sinkhole forms in a very small karst (cavity), and when it collapses you only see the depression in the soil, not the cavity underneath.
The Guatemala sinkhole is just a very large example of this. It’s made more dramatic by the fact that the cavity underneath is well exposed, making it look like a bottomeless pit. If you look at some other shots of it, you can see that the hole looks a lot more conical, and a lot less “machine drilled”:
True. A small one opened up behind my granparents’ house after an earthquake. It didn’t affect the house itself but it took quite a few trucksloads of rubble, earth etc to be filled in.
Yeah except whatever you’re dumping down the hole is directly intereacting with the groundwater, in an area that has probably some of the highest flow in the aquifer.
The Earth’s circumference is 25,000 miles (depending on where you measure) and its crust is between 5 and 30 miles thick. Show me a crack 250 miles long (1% of Earth’s circ.), a half mile deep and I’ll be concerned.
Hm…since your’e a geologist, what’s the method to locate wells? Do you use dowsing rods?
Dowsing is generally not a scientific method of detecting groundwater, and isn’t used by anyone outside of cranks and the occasional hobbyist. I’ve been with a few drillers who have claimed to be able to dowse, with varying degrees of success, but nobody with a reputation relys on that as it’s basically been proven to be statistically no more accurate than chance.
As to how you locate wells, generally it’s simply a matter of picking a spot to sink the hole. It depends on what the local geology is like. Groundwater is basically everywhere, you just have to drill deep enough, or if you’re in low-porosity rock (ie, shale, granite, etc.) hit a water-bearing fracture. A lot of people have this image of “underground rivers and lakes” that you drill into. This is mostly innaccurate. These things do exist but mostly in very isolated cave systems, which are not what you’re looking for when you’re drilling a well.
Think of the aquifer as a giant sponge made of rock or soil. There are little holes that water flows through, often through an entire region or watershed. When you drill a well, you’re just drilling into this “sponge” and making a hole yourself that can be accessed via the surface. As you draw water from the well, new water will flow in from the surrounding rock/soil.
Here’s a simple model from Wiki that illustrates the idea well enough:
