A pit in the shape of an ideal hemisphere was found in an abandoned field near Nizhny Tagil. According to ITAR-TASS, a researcher, senior researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Arkady Ovcharenko, the object was first noticed during a flight at low altitude by a local pilot Viktor Izhetnikov in early August.
He informed the scientists about his find, providing the coordinates of the place (from the surface in the thick tall grass, the pit is practically invisible).
The facility, according to experts, is located in a vast field, where agricultural work has not been carried out for two years. There are no emissions from the funnel, and there are no traces of anthropogenic activity nearby. The pit is about 2.3 meters deep and about three meters in diameter.
In the analyzes, the scientists used a highly sensitive magnetometer with a decimeter-accuracy reference system and other equipment. The study consisted of photographing, determining the exact coordinates, magnetic surveying within a radius of 25 meters or more, three-dimensional laser scanning and measurement work, performing vertical electrical soundings, electrical profiling through the object and away from it.
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“The pit could have appeared as a result of a relatively rapid subsidence, probably associated with suffusion (removal of small mineral particles of the rock by water filtering through it) or karst processes, and the existence of an extensive cavity at a depth of over 16 meters. It may have been the cause of the final drawdown,”Ovcharenko said.
Such processes in the region have never been observed before, the geophysicist noted. The very fact of the pit appearance may require a large-scale revision of the reliability of geotechnical surveys of objects and structures in an industrially saturated region.
Similar objects appeared in different parts of the world - Argentina, Guatemala, in the USA, near the archaeological site of Stonehenge in England and in other places. All these findings are distinguished by remoteness from housing, smooth spherical or cylindrical walls, as well as the complete absence of human influence - usually a large mass of soil disappears almost without a trace in a short time.