The most important secret of Lake Ladoga is the origin of the barrantids. On Ladoga, Barrantids are called sounds of unknown origin, coming from under the water of Lake Ladoga in the area between the islands of Valaam and Konevets. Sounds most often appear in the area of the deepest depths in the lake and, with their eerie effect, frighten local fishermen and passengers sailing past ships.
Valaam island
Photo: slavyanskaya-kultura.ru
I heard an underwater drone on Ladoga only once - on the coast near the village of Kuznechny. This sound reminded me of the sound of a bell - or a hammer on an anvil - in general, iron on iron. There was complete calm, and Ladoga, at other times the color of Marengo, seemed blue, because the sky was reflected in it. The sound lasted a minute and a half, gradually fading out. After asking the local residents, I was convinced that literally everyone living in the North and North-East of Lake Ladoga heard such sounds.
Many attribute them to "military explosions" or the echoes of mining operations. It is true, of course, that on a huge lake it is difficult to determine the source of the sound … But the barrantids existed even before the invention of dynamite …
Alexander Dumas made a colorful description of the barrantids while traveling in Ladoga in 1858: “… everything was covered with such a fog that it was impossible to see each other. Thunder rumbled through the fog, and the lake seethed like water in a cauldron. … It seemed that the thunderstorm had originated not in the air, but in the depths of a bottomless lake. The fog thickened more and more, the rolls thundered more and more deafeningly, extinguished in dense clots of steam, the lightning gleamed with some deathly brilliance; the waters of the lake rose higher and higher and not because of the riot of waves, but from some kind of latent bubbling. … All this lasted two hours."
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The monks of the Valaam Monastery also left evidence of the Barrantids. Here is an entry dated March 5, 1917: “The chancellery of the monastery hastens to announce that today at 2 o'clock. 17 minutes In the morning, a very strong underground impact was observed, the central force of which was very audible on the main island, where the monastery was spread. The blow was single, prolonged, like a thunderous blow, the duration of the phenomenon extended to 30 s. The impression of this blow was such that, after the bursting underground sound near the monastery, the echo of this phenomenon rolled to the east, gradually fading in its strength and sonority … "(I quote from the article" Mysterious phenomena on Lake Ladoga ", B. A. Assinovskaya, candidate Physics and Mathematics, A. A. Nikonov, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences Joint Institute of Physics of the Earth, Russian Academy of Sciences. No. 5).
The scientific study of this phenomenon began in 1914 at the Pulkovo Central Seismic Station. Apparently, then they decided that such hums are the predecessors of earthquakes. True, it has not yet been possible to detect the relationship between the microshocks recorded by seismic equipment and sounds from the depths of Lake Ladoga. And the last powerful earthquakes (up to 7 points) in the Ladoga Lake basin occurred about 3 - 3.5 thousand years ago and, apparently, preceded the breakthrough of the Neva from the lake.
Descriptions of the underwater hum, "boiling water" in complete calm, fog of unknown origin, and so on, we can read not only in the memories of Ladoga captains, but also in stories about ocean voyages. In particular, eyewitnesses of the “anomalies” there describe their observations in the “Bermuda Triangle” in about the same way. Proponents of the existence of "underwater alien bases" suggest that the underwater drone is a consequence of "underwater UFO" maneuvers; mystically minded people believe that the "Ladoga monster" is to blame for everything.
Be that as it may, but barrantids are a phenomenon that has not yet been explained and, apparently, fraught with a great potential danger to people.
Most likely, the cause of barrantids is a change in the pressure of a huge layer of water on the underwater crust. The depth of Ladoga in these places reaches 200 - 240 meters. At the same time, the water level in the lake changes quite a lot over the years - Ladoga, like the Caspian Sea, "breathes". The average long-term level of Lake Ladoga is 476 cm above sea level. The highest standing of the level was observed in 1924, when the level was almost 2 meters higher. In 1942, the standing of the level was the lowest - 1.5 m below average.
Hydrogeologists and seismologists are aware of cases when the overflow of a reservoir basin caused local earthquakes. So, for example, in May 1939 strong seismic shocks occurred in the area of the Mead reservoir on the Colorado River in the United States in a seismically safe, "platform" area - as soon as the water level rose above 100 meters … In 1962, the Coyne reservoir was filled to 103 meters in India. The seismic shocks, gradually increasing after that, ended in 1967 with a devastating 9-point earthquake.
An earthquake of magnitude 8 south of Novosibirsk near the city of Kamen-na-Obi in 1963 was unexpected for specialists. Only much later they began to associate it with the filling in 1957 - 1959 of the Ob Sea with a volume of 8.8 cubic kilometers … According to American data, in the United States, approximately 15% of reservoirs cause seismic activity. In Ladoga, with its gigantic area and volume (respectively 17.6 square kilometers, not counting the islands, and 905 cubic kilometers), an increase in the water level even by centimeters causes a significant change in pressure at the bottom of the lake, accompanied by the release of gases from rotting organic remains, a shift in the underlying layers rocks, expansion or contraction of cracks in the earth's crust - and probably acoustic effects. However, there is another hypothesis of the origin of barrantids, and we will now talk about it.
Lake Ladoga is not only full of mysteries. It is itself a mystery. The mysteries of Ladoga, in particular, the amazing depth of its northern part, is explained by the hypothesis of the scientist Valery Yurkovits. Its essence is that Lake Ladoga was formed from the impact of a large meteorite about 40 thousand years ago. The meteorite was about 11 kilometers across and formed a crater, which became the deep-water part of Lake Ladoga. Yes, but then we would have to observe the fused rocks along the shores of the lake, you say. They should have been, if not for the subsequent glaciation, which hid the traces of this catastrophe.
True, in some places in sedimentary rocks we can find melted "preglacial" pebbles, for example, in the territory south of Ladoga, where there was no continuous glaciation. In particular, in the underwater part of the sand pit in the village of Shapki, Tosnensky District, Leningrad Region. The quarry has already been worked out below the groundwater level and the sand in it is dredged from the bottom of the formed reservoir. The marking horizon is located at a depth of about 10 meters, from where pebbles of partially melted rocks of the most varied composition rise massively. As a rule, a layer of fine stone chips is observed on the melted side, which has become attached to the melted crust, which is obviously raised by the vortex of the blast wave.
Here, perhaps, direct evidence of the fall of a cosmic body was found - an alleged micrometeorite that fell into a pebble of Devonian quartz sandstone - a rock common in the Ladoga area.
Valery Yurkovets's hypothesis is rather scary, but at the same time, it may have some grounds. In particular, it explains the presence of ash layers that fell from the atmosphere 40 thousand years ago, reaching up to half a meter on the Russian Plain, and the phenomenon of the so-called "volcanic winter" of that time, which was previously associated with the eruption in the Phlegrean fields.
They are located north-west of Naples on the shores of the Pozzuoli Bay and cover an area of 10 square meters. km. This is a zone of increased seismic activity, where lava comes so close to the earth's surface that the earth's crust literally floats on it, making vertical vibrations, this phenomenon is called bradyseism. In this case, Ladoga is still an active volcano in its last, fumarole stage. And at its depth, in the very heart of the crater, there is an analogue of the Kamchatka Valley of Geysers and the Yellowstone Park of America.
The volcano in the fumarole stage no longer spews out lava or ash, but all of its vigorous activity takes place in the form of the release of gas jets (probably, this phenomenon explains the "boiling" bands in Ladoga), water vapor and hot water. Here is another hypothesis of the origin of barrantids, a new explanation of the geothermal anomaly as a second volcano venting to the surface …
Does this hypothetical "underwater geyser" threaten us with disaster? I don't think so. If only because such a natural phenomenon would have long ago caused a change in the mineral composition of the water, and Lake Ladoga, as you know, is ultra-fresh and no consequences from the presence of an "analogue of the Valley of Geysers" are observed in it.
Of course, I do not want to say that before our very eyes there are no movements of the earth's crust. This is far from the case. On the territory of the Leningrad Region, many completely mysterious manifestations of the latest tectonics still occur. For example, from the lake. The spill in the northeastern direction up to Lake Ladoga is distinguished by a zone of increased activity and instability of movements, which in the area from the river. Okhta to r. Avlogi and Lake Ladoga is fixed by the boundary of the change in the sign of vertical movements.
The fault zone of the meridional direction in the form of small blocks can be traced from the coast of Lake Ladoga (settlement Vladimirovka) through St. Petersburg, Gatchina and Vyritsa to Lake Vyalye and pos. Torkovichi. Geochemical anomalies, anomalous values of the volumetric activity of radon and methane in the soil air, and highly anomalous concentrations of radium and uranium in groundwater often tend to this zone and individual faults.
The currently active regional Onega-Riga fault zone of the east-north-east direction stretches through the southeastern part of the Neva Bay and St. Petersburg (in the area of the metro accident near the station "Ploshchad Muzhestva") and further into the southern Ladoga region, the width of the zone is from 5-7 to 15-25 km. Currently, this zone is most active in the area from the lake. Babinsky to St. Petersburg and the city of Vsevolozhsk, where it creates an increased environmental hazard in the adjacent territories.
This zone is traced by helium and radon anomalies. Its characteristic manifestations in the landscape indicate active strike-slip and / or reverse-strike-slip deformations. In some areas, part of this zone is fixed by a chain of local uplifts.
Signs of modern tectonic activation are unevenly distributed over the area, have a "spotty" character. In one case, they are concentrated within the block on a significant segment of the fault zone, namely at the intersection of multidirectional faults; in the other case, they periodically appear in fault zones of a certain direction. This difficult to explain fact of the uneven manifestation of modern revitalization is possibly explained by a single deep factor (for example, the processes of cold degassing of the Earth).
And in the area of the city of Sosnovy Bor, a wide development at the bottom of the Gulf of Finland of structures was discovered that can be diagnosed as pockmarks (gas craters). It is known that accumulations of pockmarks can serve as indicators of the proximity of hydrocarbon manifestations, geochemical barriers, fold lines of the buried relief, weakened zones and buried faults both in the sedimentary mass and in the basement. Pokmarkas - such craters at the bottom of the sea - were first noted by the captain of the research vessel "Ladoga" VASnitko in 2009.
Previously, they were only observed in the Gulf of Gdansk. These craters turned out to be rather large for the shallow Gulf of Finland. The largest ones reached twenty-three meters in width, and a little more than two in depth. To the west of them stretched a whole field of faults, craters and cracks already 12 meters deep - with an average depth of 26 meters. Most likely, these are traces of destruction of the bottom, caused by tectonic reasons. All together, this clearly indicates an increase in seismic activity in the North-West region.
Yuri Shevchuk, Green Cross.
Based on materials from the book "Amazing and Mysterious Places of the Leningrad Region".