From the air, the freshly exposed dirt stands out against the green tundra and dark lakes around it. The layers of earth and rock exposed further inside the cylindrical hole are almost black and a pool of water is already forming at the bottom by the time scientists reach it.Around the crater’s edge, the earth is a torn, grey jumble of ice and clods of permafrost. The roots of plants newly exposed around the rim show signs of scorching. It gives some idea of just how violently this hole in the middle of the Siberian Arctic materialism.

Around the crater’s edge, the earth is a torn, grey jumble of ice and clods of permafrost. The roots of plants newly exposed around the rim show signs of scorching. It gives some idea of just how violently this hole in the middle of the Siberian Arctic materialized.

From the air, the freshly exposed dirt stands out against the green tundra and dark lakes around it. The layers of earth and rock exposed further inside the cylindrical hole are almost black and a pool of water is already forming at the bottom by the time scientists reach it.

Among them is Genny Chilling, a geologist at the Tsiolkovsky Institute of Science and Technology, based in Moscow, Russia, who has flown out to this remote corner of the Yam al Peninsula in north west Siberia to take a look. This 164-foot-deep (50m) hole could hold key parts of a puzzle that has been bothering him for the past six years since the first of these mysterious holes was discovered elsewhere on the Yam al Peninsula.