NASA Found a Giant Hole Under Greenland - and It’s a Total Mystery - video Dailymotion

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NASA just discovered a massive hole under Greenland, and scientists are scratching their heads trying to figure out how it got there. 🕳️ This giant cavity is hiding beneath the ice, and it’s so big that it could change what we know about Greenland’s glaciers. Some researchers think it might have formed due to melting ice, while others believe it could be a sign of something even more mysterious. If the ice above it collapses, it could speed up sea level rise, which is pretty concerning. But for now, it’s just sitting there like a giant question mark under the frozen landscape. NASA is on the case, and hopefully, they’ll crack this icy mystery soon! 🚀🔍  Credit: NASA Goddard / YouTube greenmanbucket / YouTube cryocity / YouTube Jason Box / YouTube Unknown / Imgur soupyhands / Reddit glacierguide / Reddit Hiawatha Crater: by NASA/Cindy Starr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hiawatha_Crater.gif, https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/international-team-nasa-make-unexpected-discovery-under-greenland-ice/ Hiawatha: by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hiawatha_v45_scene1_4k_5mtopo.1760.tif?page=1, https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4572 Animation is created by Bright Side.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV   Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en Telegram: https://t.me/bright_side_official   Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.

Transcript

00:00There's nothing around.

00:02Just the eternal, endless whiteness of Greenland's snow and cold winds blowing into your face.

00:09Nothing hints at the impending catastrophe.

00:12You take another step and freeze in horror.

00:16An abyss is spreading at your feet, bottomless and dark.

00:20If you had made a bigger step, it would have swallowed you.

00:24That infamous Greenland's hole.

00:27It happened in the middle of the 2010s.

00:30A group of geologists were scanning the surface of Greenland's Hiawatha Glacier using radar

00:35when they spotted something very, very strange.

00:39It was a giant pit, more than 980 feet deep and almost 20 miles wide.

00:46That's big enough to fit inside Washington, D.C. or Paris.

00:51After staring at their radars for quite a while and scratching their heads, researchers

00:55decided to find out what could have made such a huge hole.

00:59Could it have been good ol' erosion, a raging volcano, an asteroid impact, a giant sandworm?

01:06Ugh, I might have gone a bit overboard with this worm idea, but you never know with these

01:11ancient glaciers.

01:12Anyway, in our case, one mystery seemed to lead to another, which had been puzzling scientists

01:18for decades.

01:19And to solve both of them, scientists needed something super common but at the same time

01:24very important.

01:25Quartz, one of the most abundant materials in Earth's crust.

01:30But before we dig deeper into this topic, let's make a small detour and talk about

01:34a pretty bizarre phenomenon called the Younger Dryas Event.

01:40To see what it was like, we need to go deep into the past.

01:44As far back as 12,900 to 11,600 years ago.

01:49During that period, the planet became much colder, especially in Europe and North America.

01:55Now let's talk a bit more about that weird climate change in the Northern Hemisphere.

02:00There are a few theories, one that involves a change in currents in the Atlantic Ocean.

02:05Another speaks about something large kicking tons of dust into the air and effectively

02:10blocking sunlight.

02:12The two most popular, and likely, hypotheses mention a volcanic eruption and an asteroid

02:18impact.

02:19Indeed, there was a volcanic eruption on the territory of modern-day Germany at around

02:24the right time.

02:25But there's also a probability that a space object struck the planet during this period

02:30too.

02:33And now let's get back to the hole scientists found in Greenland.

02:37When NASA's IceBridge program and Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute discovered it, it

02:42seemed they had finally found the reason for the Younger Dryas Event.

02:47But was it really an asteroid that created that impressive pit and caused temperatures

02:51to drop all over the Northern Hemisphere?

02:54To test this theory, the researchers needed quartz.

02:58The thing is, in its pure form, quartz has a very simple structure.

03:03It's made from interlocking silicon-oxygen tetrahedra.

03:06Efficient and so pretty.

03:09Just look at these six-sided prismatic crystals.

03:12Since its structure is so simple and the components are so common, you can find quartz

03:16almost in any rock on the planet.

03:19At one point, magic happens.

03:22Larger rocks erode away, pushing out tiny bits of quartz sand.

03:27The scientists exploring the mysterious pit gathered the quartz sand that had been washed

03:31out from underneath a glacier.

03:34It was like looking at the rocks at the very bottom of the hole without having to actually

03:38get all the way down there.

03:41Very handy!

03:42So while examining the material, they discovered quartz grains with the tell-tale signs of

03:47terrible catastrophe.

03:49They had PDFs all over them.

03:53Uh, no, I'm not talking about the document format.

03:57PDFs stand for Planar Deformation Features, and they look like lines etched into the crystal

04:03surface.

04:04These lines are a sign that you're holding shocked quartz.

04:08It forms under immense pressure.

04:11And the internal crystals are pushed out of alignment.

04:14But the most exciting thing here is that shocked quartz only appears under the influence of

04:19powerful forces, like massive impacts or terrifying explosions.

04:25In other words, finding this poor shocked quartz under the Hiawatha Glacier could be

04:30much-needed proof that the hole was an enormous impact crater that formed when something equally

04:36enormous crash-landed there.

04:39Based on the size of the crater, this space object probably was a bit more than a mile

04:44across, which is twice the height of the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai.

04:49A meteorite that big would have looked three times as bright as the sun when traveling

04:53across the sky, and it would have hit Earth with an immense force.

04:59The impact would have been so great, it'd have vaporized rock and thrown debris for

05:03hundreds of miles away.

05:06The sky would have filled with dust, it would have dimmed the sun, and led to a temperature

05:10drop all over the planet.

05:12And guess what?

05:13The last part about decreasing temperatures got the researchers super excited.

05:19Because it opened up a possibility that the impact could have been connected to the Younger

05:23Dryas event.

05:25To prove this idea, scientists decided to use quartz again.

05:30They examined it more closely, trying to date the impact.

05:35Well, they were in for an even greater shock.

05:37The Hiawatha crater turned out to be not 12,000, but 58 million years old.

05:44On the other hand, the researchers were disappointed that they hadn't been able to confirm their

05:49theory.

05:50The crater couldn't explain the Younger Dryas cold snap.

05:53But on the other hand, it was still an amazing discovery.

05:58Now, get ready for one final twist to this story.

06:02And it revolves around quartz again.

06:05Other scientists have recently discovered more deposits of shocked quartz all over what

06:09is now the eastern USA.

06:12It was hiding in sediment layers dating to just before the Younger Dryas.

06:16Interestingly, there aren't any craters around those sites whatsoever.

06:21But quartz can't lie.

06:22It provides evidence of a powerful explosion.

06:26It makes scientists think that their impact hypothesis might still be true.

06:30But instead of a collision, it could be an airburst.

06:34A massive comet could have broken up while entering Earth's atmosphere around 12,000

06:39years ago.

06:41And the fragments could have exploded before reaching the ground.

06:44It would have caused catastrophic mass burning throughout the North American continent and

06:49messed with the climate so much that the Younger Dryas would have been triggered.

06:54Well, I guess we need to wait a bit longer for scientists to find some further proof

06:58of this hypothesis.

07:00But it doesn't mean we don't have any more curious phenomena to explore in Greenland.

07:05Take these fascinating holes.

07:08They sure are kinda smaller than the monster we were talking about.

07:12They're called moulins, and they carry surface meltwater all the way down to the base of

07:17the Greenland ice sheet.

07:19And they have prepared some surprises for us too.

07:22Apparently, they're way larger than we previously thought.

07:26That's what a recent study based on observation and first-hand exploration claims.

07:31Even more interesting, this high volume might influence the stability of the ginormous ice

07:37sheet in question, as well as the speed at which it's sliding towards the sea.

07:44Researchers think that increased water depth and pressure inside moulins might lubricate

07:49the base of the ice sheet, making it move faster.

07:53You know, the way an ice cube slides more easily on a thin film of melted water.

07:58Until recently, we knew too little about the real size of moulins and how much water they

08:02can hold.

08:04But now, we know that moulins can be giant.

08:07The team made two trips to the Greenland ice sheet in 2018 and 2019.

08:13During each of them, they used ropes and climbing equipment to drop around 330 feet into two

08:19separate moulins, almost touching the water's surface.

08:24Those who did it described the experience as intimidating.

08:28Picture this.

08:29Your back is over the edge.

08:31All you see is bluish ice going down and blurring into blackness.

08:36And the only thing you hear is occasional sounds of crashing ice.

08:41It must be extremely unnerving.

NASA Found a Giant Hole Under Greenland - and It’s a Total Mystery

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