Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today
Speaker 1: we're bringing you an episode from the vault. This is
Speaker 1: part two of our series on sinkholes that originally aired
Speaker 1: in January. Let's jump right in Welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert
Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
Speaker 1: two of our discussion of sink holes. Now. In the
Speaker 1: last episode, we talked about some some fabulous examples of
Speaker 1: sinkholes that suddenly open up and reveal interesting things. Below,
Speaker 1: we talked about how sinkholes form, the geology and hydrology
Speaker 1: of sinkholes, and we talked about some interesting specific examples
Speaker 1: in the world. But today we wanted to get into
Speaker 1: some things about the religious significance of sinkholes and sinkholes
Speaker 1: as a scientific tool that can help show us things
Speaker 1: about the past UH and also maybe some sinkholes in space.
Speaker 1: But I thought sinkholes in religion would be a good
Speaker 1: place to start because one of the interesting ways of
Speaker 1: conceptualizing UH deities is that deities are often manifestations of
Speaker 1: natural forces and natural resources, and of course one of
Speaker 1: the most important natural resources is water, so there are
Speaker 1: all kinds of water deities around the world. Coastal civilizations
Speaker 1: and cultures will have deities associated with the ocean that
Speaker 1: are very important in their culture. But if you're if
Speaker 1: you're more inland, there will often be deities associated with
Speaker 1: where you get your fresh water. Either are a very
Speaker 1: important river or they're even There are lots of holy
Speaker 1: wells that are found throughout the history of Europe, both
Speaker 1: Pagan and Christian. There are a lot of like holy
Speaker 1: wells and water sources, and the same is true of
Speaker 1: many sinkholes in ancient meso America. That's right, um, in
Speaker 1: particular the sacred senotes of the Maya, which is what
Speaker 1: we'd like to talk about here. I was reading a piece,
Speaker 1: really nice piece on Mexico Lore dot co dot UK
Speaker 1: by Maya archaeologist Andrew kenkela Um just titled Sacred Sinkholes,
Speaker 1: and he discusses sum of what we've already mentioned in
Speaker 1: regard to, you know, the large number of these sinkholes
Speaker 1: of sinotes in Mesoamerica. The entire area is situated on
Speaker 1: a limestone bedrock, and we end up with with these
Speaker 1: hollows and then they collapse, and then of course then
Speaker 1: they often fill with water. But so yeah, your world
Speaker 1: left with something. There's not just a deep pit, which
Speaker 1: alone can be pretty interesting, but pits with water often
Speaker 1: from deep underground, so you're often talking clean water, clear
Speaker 1: water an ideal source. Some of these contain as much
Speaker 1: as like fifty meters of water. Uh. He points out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of fascinating things about these sinkholes.
Speaker 1: One of which, just before I forget, I wanted to
Speaker 1: call attention to that they explore some of these uh
Speaker 1: sinotes in the Yucatan Peninsula. In the documentary that we
Speaker 1: recently interviewed Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer about there, there's
Speaker 1: a segment where they so that documentary is called Fireball,
Speaker 1: and it's about impacts from space and the scars they
Speaker 1: leave on Earth and and what we can learn from them.
Speaker 1: And one of the things they explore is if if
Speaker 1: you look at a map of the senotes of the
Speaker 1: Yucatan Peninsula, there's one part of the Yucatan where there's
Speaker 1: this almost perfect partial ring of sinotes and it's like,
Speaker 1: what's going on there? And that apparently corresponds to the
Speaker 1: outer rim of the crater that was left by the
Speaker 1: impact from the KPg extinction, the large space impact that
Speaker 1: probably contributed significantly to the extinction of the non avian
Speaker 1: dinasas wars. And so in Fireball there's a segment where
Speaker 1: where Clive Oppenheimer goes down into one of these beautiful
Speaker 1: ancient senotes with a local researcher and and they talk
Speaker 1: about not just what it can tell is geologically we
Speaker 1: might get a little bit more into that later, but
Speaker 1: but also what it means religiously. Yeah, So, especially for
Speaker 1: areas far from rivers, these sonotes became very important for
Speaker 1: just purely practical reasons like this is where you could
Speaker 1: get water. This enabled you to live and have you know,
Speaker 1: have have communities that existed further away from those rivers.
Speaker 1: But then they ended up taking on religious power as well.
Speaker 1: And can Tela writes that the ancient Maya regarded senotes
Speaker 1: as one of the three symbolic entry ways uh to Sibalba,
Speaker 1: the Mayan underworld. So eventually this kind of he describes
Speaker 1: it as a senote cult emerges devoted to venturing out,
Speaker 1: like taking these pilgrimages to different senotes, collecting water from
Speaker 1: them from different different ones and making what offer rings
Speaker 1: up to the watery depths. And their role these these priests,
Speaker 1: these pilgrims, their role would have been seen is vitally important,
Speaker 1: especially during times of drought, you know, when when the
Speaker 1: the resources of the son Nottes becomes uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in doubt or seems threatened, like they seem to have
Speaker 1: a role in in trying to maintain the balance, to
Speaker 1: try and maintain the bountiful gifts of these places. I
Speaker 1: was also looking at an article on National Geographic titled
Speaker 1: Secrets of the Maya in the Other World, and this
Speaker 1: was by Alma Guillermo Prieto, and this is about the sinkholes,
Speaker 1: uh that we've been discussing here, and about how they
Speaker 1: were also associated with a key deity which was chock.
Speaker 1: I believe that it's spelled in this article is c
Speaker 1: h A A K. I've also seen it with a
Speaker 1: with a C ch A C. I think. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: here's what they wrote in this article quote or this
Speaker 1: is just a really I think telling a passage from it.
Speaker 1: Quote for men like unkin the old gods are still
Speaker 1: very much alive, and Chock, ruler of sinotes and caves,
Speaker 1: is among the most important gods of all. For the
Speaker 1: benefit of living things. He pours from the skies, the
Speaker 1: water he keeps in earthenware, jars and caves. Chalk is
Speaker 1: one in many. Each thunderclap is a separate chock in action,
Speaker 1: breaking a jar open and letting the rain fall. Each
Speaker 1: god inhabits a separate layer of reality, along with dozens
Speaker 1: of alternatively complacent and ferocious gods that live in the
Speaker 1: thirteen other worlds above and the nine other worlds below. Together,
Speaker 1: they filled the Maya people's lives with dreams, visions, and nightmares,
Speaker 1: a complicated calendar of agricultural times and fertility rituals, in
Speaker 1: a firm sense of the way things must be done.
Speaker 1: Chock had moved, Unkin said, and that meant the planting
Speaker 1: season would soon arrive. That's beautiful. Yeah, yeah, So in
Speaker 1: this we see that a cave or sinote could be
Speaker 1: seen as as a dwelling place of chalk, but it
Speaker 1: could also, can you know, be seen as this yawning
Speaker 1: mall of the earth, or even this gateway to deeper
Speaker 1: realms of reality. Yeah, and and this combines the multiple version,
Speaker 1: so you you can of course see these senotes as
Speaker 1: a gateway to the underworld and a source of water.
Speaker 1: But I was also reading in a different National Geographic
Speaker 1: article um about like the the the specifics of certain senotes. Like,
Speaker 1: it's not just all senotes are religiously equivalent. There would be,
Speaker 1: for example, some senotes and specific locations that have different
Speaker 1: religious significance for the people who live nearby. The one
Speaker 1: I was thinking of was the a senote that, as
Speaker 1: the ancient mind city had a wall, there was like
Speaker 1: many senotes within the wall that could be used as
Speaker 1: a water source. But there's one senote outside the city
Speaker 1: wall that it seems was regarded primarily as a place
Speaker 1: for the burial of the dead. And there have been
Speaker 1: many human remains found down inside that one. Yeah, yeah there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're a whole slew of them with different significance.
Speaker 1: Is the most famous of the sonotes, uh, it's probably
Speaker 1: the Sacred Sinote at the Maya site of Sanita, where
Speaker 1: there was this, it's been a place of of a
Speaker 1: fair amount of study. There was a small building by
Speaker 1: it that was apparently used for blood sacrifices um, again
Speaker 1: tying into traditions related to the you know, the sacredness
Speaker 1: of the spot and the continuation of water. Variety of
Speaker 1: sacred objects were also apparently cast into the sinote, including
Speaker 1: precious jade artifacts, gold and copper disks, uh, foods, and
Speaker 1: other organic items that that we've we actually can find
Speaker 1: you know, evidence of. But uh, yeah, so you think
Speaker 1: of this as like an opening up into the world
Speaker 1: below where you might throw offerings, where you might make
Speaker 1: sacrifices of material or sacrifices of blood. It's hard for
Speaker 1: me not to sort of connect this to some of
Speaker 1: the stuff we were talking about in the previous episode
Speaker 1: where there is a pretty your link between pumping too
Speaker 1: much groundwater up. You know, like there's certain places where
Speaker 1: there's a need for for massive irrigation of fields maybe
Speaker 1: sometime to like protect a certain crop from frost or something,
Speaker 1: so you will pump just tons and tons of water
Speaker 1: just to put over the fields so so so much
Speaker 1: that you really lower the level of the groundwater and
Speaker 1: suddenly cause lots of sinkholes to to open up where
Speaker 1: the suddenly the you know, the water pressure is not
Speaker 1: what it was below the overburden can't hold up its
Speaker 1: own weight and then collapses. And this has happened in
Speaker 1: the US in places like Florida. I mean, it could
Speaker 1: be it's very easy to see how something like that
Speaker 1: could be interpreted as as the wrath of the gods, right, yeah, absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're messing with the domain of the the earth gods. Now.
Speaker 1: One of the interesting things about these Mesoamerican traditions concerning
Speaker 1: sinots is that it's also thought that that native people's
Speaker 1: um elsewhere in the America has probably carried some of these, uh,
Speaker 1: these ideas with and so when you encounter of some
Speaker 1: North American sinotes, there's there's evidence of that these areas
Speaker 1: that native peoples may have used them as burial places
Speaker 1: as well given them, um, you know, places of importance
Speaker 1: in their worldviews. And one such place is Devil Sinkhole
Speaker 1: northwest of San San Antonio. Um it's now a state park,
Speaker 1: but it's a hundred and forty ft deep or forty
Speaker 1: three meters deep, and um uh yeah, apparently there's evidence
Speaker 1: that ancient people's came here and probably held it in
Speaker 1: some esteem. But one of the really crazy natural world
Speaker 1: things about Devil Sinkhole is that it is home to
Speaker 1: or at least part of the year, it is home
Speaker 1: to three million Mexican freetailed bats. Wow, that's a lot
Speaker 1: of bats. Yeah, so they migrate to Mexico for the
Speaker 1: cooler months, but they roost up in the sinkhole other
Speaker 1: parts of the year. And we've we've talked about how
Speaker 1: amazing bats are in the show before and especially especially
Speaker 1: insectivore uh bats you know that eat insects. Well, it's
Speaker 1: been estimated that the bats that live in Devil Sinkhole
Speaker 1: again something like three million Mexican freetail bats that they
Speaker 1: consume un estimated thirty tons of beetles and moths each night,
Speaker 1: each night, thirty tons, thirty tons beetles and moths. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: That's one of those facts that makes you wonder how
Speaker 1: many tons of beetles they're just are already? Like, is
Speaker 1: that is that half the beetles in the area? Is
Speaker 1: that one percent of the beetles in the area. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just a tremendous biomass out there, and
Speaker 1: these bats are here for it um and most of
Speaker 1: it is insect or arthur pod in some way, or
Speaker 1: you know, most of the animal is is arthur pod
Speaker 1: in some way, and wow, that's just amazing. You can
Speaker 1: measuring insects or beetles in units of like garbage truck fulls.
Speaker 1: So I love this because, yeah, this is a great
Speaker 1: example of just sort of how like we said in
Speaker 1: the last episode, when a sinkhole occurs, it does not
Speaker 1: you know, create this natural void. Like. Things will move
Speaker 1: into the sinkhole, things will take advantage of this new
Speaker 1: um aspect of the geography, and in this case, the
Speaker 1: bats make it their home. So if you if you've
Speaker 1: lived in the San Antonio area, you've visited there, and
Speaker 1: you've been to two Devil sinkhole, I'd love to hear, uh,
Speaker 1: hear about your experience checking it out. I know, if
Speaker 1: you go during the right time of the year, you
Speaker 1: can actually observe the bats like, uh, moving in and
Speaker 1: out of the of the cavern area. So uh, it
Speaker 1: sounds beautiful. I've read that there are also I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the things is that belief in the sacredness
Speaker 1: of of sinkholes and and their association with the world
Speaker 1: of the gods is not just an ancient belief, it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily extinct. I mean there are people today for
Speaker 1: whom sinkholes hold sacred importance, and if if you, if
Speaker 1: you are one of those people or know some, I'd
Speaker 1: like to hear about that too. Yeah, yeah, I'd love
Speaker 1: to hear, especially the details about any modern rights associated
Speaker 1: with it, and and just of the belief system built
Speaker 1: up around it, you know, the stories than Now, one
Speaker 1: of the things we mentioned in the previous episode is
Speaker 1: that the sink whole is a natural feature that can
Speaker 1: inadvertently serve as a type of scientific instrument, much in
Speaker 1: the same way that like ancient ice. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like nobody intended it to be this way, but we
Speaker 1: can learn things about the ancient climate from taking ice cores,
Speaker 1: so that you know, those layers of ice really give
Speaker 1: us a lot to read into the history of the Earth.
Speaker 1: And apparently sinkholes can do the same thing, right, that's right.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we think about how they gobble
Speaker 1: up parts of the surface world, and yeah, they do
Speaker 1: sometimes do scientists a huge favor by collecting and to
Speaker 1: some degree preserving evidence of past life forms, even past
Speaker 1: like storm activity and and and climates of ancient times. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so when we ventured into the sink whole. With
Speaker 1: the right tools or with the right methods, we're able
Speaker 1: to uncover those secrets that have been reserved there. And
Speaker 1: they've just been There've been numerous studies that have looked
Speaker 1: at sinkholes and uh and gathered specific information from from
Speaker 1: these sinkholes, and we're not gonna be able to give
Speaker 1: a full overview of them here in this episode, but
Speaker 1: I wanted to touch on some that I thought provided
Speaker 1: a reasonable overview and in an idea of what sort
Speaker 1: of stuff we can learn from sinkholes. So uh, there's
Speaker 1: the For instance, in two thousand fourteen, a team from
Speaker 1: the University of Illinois at Urbana Champagne studied genetic information
Speaker 1: extracted from the tooth of an adolescent girl who fell
Speaker 1: into a sinkhole in the Yucatan some twelve thousand to
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand years ago, and this with her remains were
Speaker 1: found alongside the remains of ancient beasts. Because you know,
Speaker 1: what what occurs is some of these really treacherous sinkholes,
Speaker 1: is like things will fall in and then they cannot
Speaker 1: get out, and of course they die down there. They
Speaker 1: decay down there, and the remains are down there for
Speaker 1: us to later discuss ever in study. Oh, I hadn't
Speaker 1: thought about this, but I wonder if sinkholes are one
Speaker 1: of these things, one of these terrain features that can
Speaker 1: serve as a natural predator trap. Um. A predator trap is,
Speaker 1: I guess, a concept in the interaction between the landscape
Speaker 1: and and the animals that live nearby. But you know,
Speaker 1: a classic example is like the Librettar pits. You know,
Speaker 1: so a an animal becomes stranded and dies in it,
Speaker 1: and then the smell attracts predators or scavengers who then
Speaker 1: themselves become trapped. Another example I was reading about not
Speaker 1: too long ago was there is a geologically active valley
Speaker 1: in the cum Chotka Peninsula where often like birds are
Speaker 1: killed by volcanic fumes, and then their decaying bodies attract
Speaker 1: predators into the area, who then also are killed by
Speaker 1: the fumes, and it leads to this feedback cycle. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh. I think in some cases they definitely are
Speaker 1: serving as predator traps um. So in this particular study,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons this tooth was so important is
Speaker 1: that the researchers were studying the influx of humans into
Speaker 1: the America's and wanted to see of a specimen such
Speaker 1: as this with a skull shape that was that is
Speaker 1: unusual among other Native American lineages. They wanted to see
Speaker 1: if it fell in line genetically with those lineages or
Speaker 1: represented something else, perhaps lining up with theories about migration
Speaker 1: from Southeast Asia or even Australia that didn't come in
Speaker 1: through the bearing straight um. And they found that their
Speaker 1: remains did line up with with the bearing straight or
Speaker 1: Barringian migration. So that's just one cool example. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: hear another, all right, Yeah, here's one from nineteen Researchers
Speaker 1: from the Florida Museum of Natural History looked at the
Speaker 1: preserved bones of a Craton's carcara and an extinct carrion
Speaker 1: eating falcon from the Caribbean that was killed off roughly
Speaker 1: a thousand years ago when humans first entered the region.
Speaker 1: And they were looking at these remains in a flooded
Speaker 1: sinkhole um on Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas, and
Speaker 1: the whole is a amill sink, a a hundred foot deep, dark,
Speaker 1: oxygen free environment that preserved the two thousand, five hundred
Speaker 1: year old bones of this creature enough that they could
Speaker 1: they could conduct genetic studies of it. In fact, the
Speaker 1: bone yielded ninety eight point seven percent of the bird's
Speaker 1: mitochondrial genome, which is pretty impressive. Again, it's like it's
Speaker 1: like a deep cooler, you know, it preserves these remains,
Speaker 1: uh that if they were dropped, you know, in other
Speaker 1: places on the world, would have just been long lost,
Speaker 1: no ice required. UM. Here's another one of note. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and eighteen, another study from the University of Illinois,
Speaker 1: your Banno Champagne studied the remains of a giant sloth
Speaker 1: that fell into a sinkhole in what is now Carriblanca
Speaker 1: in central Belize twenty seven thousand years ago. And in
Speaker 1: this the tooth, humorous and femur were partially fossilized, but
Speaker 1: there was still enough unaltered tissue for stable carbon and
Speaker 1: oxygen isotope analysis to study what the slow off eight.
Speaker 1: And this in turn revealed details about local climate and
Speaker 1: local environment there in that region at that time, which
Speaker 1: is pretty pretty astounding. Did did it say exactly what
Speaker 1: the sloth did eat? Um? I didn't get into the
Speaker 1: the the nuts and berries of that. Basically, suffice to say,
Speaker 1: I'd love to come back and discuss um. Uh, giant
Speaker 1: ground slots more in the future though, But but basically
Speaker 1: it provided them the the information they needed to, you know,
Speaker 1: to actually gaze back in the past and consider, you know,
Speaker 1: what it was consuming, and that means what was around it,
Speaker 1: what was you know, how it was able to make
Speaker 1: its home in in the world at that time. So
Speaker 1: it's pretty amazing. We could probably do a whole episode
Speaker 1: or series of episodes just on really interesting studies finding
Speaker 1: out what ancient peoples and creatures eight using analyses and
Speaker 1: chemical analyses of these kinds. Yeah, I mean it reveals
Speaker 1: so much, so much. Absolutely. One I was just reading
Speaker 1: not too long ago that was kind of funny to
Speaker 1: me was, um, was a chemical analysis of a gigantic
Speaker 1: copper light found I think it was around the city
Speaker 1: of York in England that revealed it was left by
Speaker 1: a human I think like a thousand years ago or so,
Speaker 1: you know, roughly, and revealed a diet heavy and meat
Speaker 1: and bread, but also just just riddled with intestinal worms.
Speaker 1: So then you get the double You have the fossilized poop,
Speaker 1: but then the fossilized creatures that were writhing inside it.
Speaker 1: But I guess if it's about a thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I'm not sure if that counts as fossilized.
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's a good question. I don't know.
Speaker 1: So it was, you know, poop from hundreds of years ago,
Speaker 1: so you know, roughly around a thousand years ago. But
Speaker 1: is that technically a fossil or is that just very
Speaker 1: well preserved poop. We'll have to come back and discuss
Speaker 1: in the future. Okay. Um, here's a two thousand twenty
Speaker 1: study from go Through University in Frankfort. They dove into
Speaker 1: one of the most impressive sinkholes in the world, the
Speaker 1: Blue Hole. I believe we mentioned this um in the
Speaker 1: last episode, at least in Passing Uh. This is a
Speaker 1: flooded cart sinkhole on Lighthouse Reef in Belize and they
Speaker 1: were able to to to drill up and analyze a
Speaker 1: sedimentary quote storm archive covering two thousand years of history,
Speaker 1: built layer by layer by layer in the dark depth
Speaker 1: of this whole, and it revealed a lot about the
Speaker 1: frequency of tropical storms in the area. Over time. They
Speaker 1: found quote hurricanes in the Caribbean became more frequent in
Speaker 1: their force varied noticeably around the same time that classical
Speaker 1: mind culture in Central America suffered its final demise. So
Speaker 1: again just a chance to do gaze back in time
Speaker 1: and see what what was going on, um, you know,
Speaker 1: with the climate and with weather patterns by looking into
Speaker 1: the sinkhole. So is the suggestion there. I assume it's
Speaker 1: not totally known, but the suggestion there may be that
Speaker 1: the organizational decline of the mind Civilis station was in
Speaker 1: some ways possibly related to changes in weather patterns. That's
Speaker 1: my understanding that it would have would have impacted UH,
Speaker 1: that that civilization UH and would have potentially contributed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also ran across a two thousand seventeen study from
Speaker 1: the University of Hawaii at Manoa that looked into uh
Speaker 1: uh Makawai Cave and Kauaii, the largest limestone cave in
Speaker 1: y and only accessible via a sinkhole. So it's a
Speaker 1: it's a rich fossil site providing insight into Hawaiian life.
Speaker 1: The sinkhole Paleo Lake contains ten thousand years of sedimentary information,
Speaker 1: revealing a rich diversity of natural information as well as
Speaker 1: Polynesian artifacts. So in this study they were able to
Speaker 1: find supporting evidence in the coral fragments there to discover
Speaker 1: the source of the mega earthquake UH in the Aleutian
Speaker 1: Islands that spawned the devastating fifteen eighties six tsunami that
Speaker 1: hit uh sen Riku, Japan. And so uh, you know again,
Speaker 1: it's it goes beyond merely being able to go in
Speaker 1: and find the remains of creatures, you know, which is
Speaker 1: I think the first place your mind goes when you
Speaker 1: think about sinkholes. But able to to be able to
Speaker 1: go in there and find some some shattered bits of
Speaker 1: coral and then compare that to um two other bits
Speaker 1: of information and sort of piece together like seismic activities
Speaker 1: that occurred centuries ago. And I have I have one
Speaker 1: more here. This one's really fun too. Back in v
Speaker 1: a twenty five thousand year old sinkhole in Wyoming Natural
Speaker 1: Trap Cave and Big Horn Canyon was found. It measured
Speaker 1: fifteen feet across about eighty five ft deep, and when
Speaker 1: they went into it, they discovered fossils of mammoths, short
Speaker 1: faced bears, camels, and um collared limmings. But they ended
Speaker 1: up boarding it up after that for thirty years to
Speaker 1: prevent accidental falls. Because the Natural Park Service I was
Speaker 1: reading describes that Uh, this particular sinkhole is quote virtually
Speaker 1: impossible to see until it is directly underfoot, and if
Speaker 1: you look at pictures of it, yeah, it looks because
Speaker 1: if you fell, like it widens out underneath, so you
Speaker 1: wouldn't like skid along the side of this or even
Speaker 1: like it would just you would just plummet down to
Speaker 1: the bottom. Yeah. It's not a cone. It's not even
Speaker 1: a cylinder. It's like a jug with the with the
Speaker 1: you know, bottle opening. Yeah, so it's it's very impressive.
Speaker 1: You should look it up. They have some wonderful pictures
Speaker 1: of it in the National Park Service does. But so, yeah,
Speaker 1: they ended up bordering it up, boarding it up for
Speaker 1: thirty years. But when scientists finally got a chance to
Speaker 1: dig in again, they discovered numerous large prehistoric mammal bones
Speaker 1: and even complete skeletons of smaller mammals, and they said
Speaker 1: that it ultimately functioned like a refrigerator, even preserving collagen
Speaker 1: and some of the bones. It wound up containing a
Speaker 1: whopping thirty thousand specimens, they say, And on top of this,
Speaker 1: scientists are still studying what the cave can reveal about
Speaker 1: ancient human migration, ancient climate. So again, just another cash
Speaker 1: of information shan about about the past that we find
Speaker 1: in one of these sinkholes. Now, I'm sorry if I
Speaker 1: missed this. Do they know if this this huge cache
Speaker 1: of different animal specimens, is that a result of some
Speaker 1: kind of natural deposition process, or is that the result
Speaker 1: of humans like humans putting animal remains into the sinkhole? Um?
Speaker 1: My understanding is that this would have been animals accidentally
Speaker 1: falling in over over the ages. Um. But it could
Speaker 1: be wrong on that. Um. There's I guess it's possible
Speaker 1: that that some of these bodies would have been thrown in.
Speaker 1: But uh, my impression was that we were dealing with
Speaker 1: with things that had had made the very mistake that
Speaker 1: the Natural National Park Service was was warning about, you know,
Speaker 1: that it being virtually impossible to see it until it's
Speaker 1: directly underfoot. Like you've got to do a real dexterity
Speaker 1: saving throw to avoid fall into the bottom of this baby, Yeah,
Speaker 1: at disadvantage? Yes? Thank? Okay, Well I've got another one
Speaker 1: for you. Obviously, it would be bad to suddenly plunge
Speaker 1: down into a sinkhole unwittingly on Earth, But what if
Speaker 1: you were to do it in space? Oh? Wow? Well,
Speaker 1: that would be even worse. Well, actually you might think so,
Speaker 1: but I just I just now thought of a condition
Speaker 1: that would make it maybe not nearly as bad. I
Speaker 1: don't know what we'll get into that. I mean, I
Speaker 1: would hate to fall into a sinkhole like the one
Speaker 1: we just described in general. But what if then you
Speaker 1: I mean, because if you get to the bottom, what
Speaker 1: you're injured, maybe you maybe you're gonna starve to death,
Speaker 1: or you know, dive your wounds or dive exposure down there.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's a recently uh fall an animal down there
Speaker 1: you can you can eat, or maybe there's something down
Speaker 1: there that is going to eat you. There's so many
Speaker 1: horrible ways it could go. But space is a lonely
Speaker 1: place to die. So I don't know how true that is.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about a space object, an
Speaker 1: object called comment six P Trumov Garasimenko. Now, this comment
Speaker 1: is called sixty seven P because it is the sixty
Speaker 1: seven periodic comment discovered in our solar system. It was
Speaker 1: found in nineteen sixty nine at an observatory in Russia
Speaker 1: by an astronomer named Klim Ivanovich Churyumov from a photographic
Speaker 1: plate that was taken by some fed Lana Ivanova Garasimenko
Speaker 1: and like I said, as a periodic comment, meaning that
Speaker 1: it's a comment with a relatively short orbit that we've
Speaker 1: documented repeatedly returning to the inner Solar system. Some comments,
Speaker 1: you know, they're just way way out there and they're
Speaker 1: never going to get close to the Sun, so we
Speaker 1: don't really have any chance to get a good look
Speaker 1: at them. This is one of the ones that comes
Speaker 1: in at one angle of its of its orbit, pretty
Speaker 1: close to the Sun, and astronomers have of course cited
Speaker 1: it a bunch of times since it was first discovered,
Speaker 1: since it comes around every six and a half years
Speaker 1: or so, if you've seen pictures of a comet up close,
Speaker 1: there's a good chance it was this one. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: it's kind of l shaped, or sort of like a
Speaker 1: bent barbell with a very short handle. It has these
Speaker 1: two lobes of frust or rocky icy material and its nucleus.
Speaker 1: It also kind of looks like a bent double mushroom.
Speaker 1: It probably originally came from the Kuiper Belt, which is
Speaker 1: a large loose collection of icy objects that extends far
Speaker 1: out past the orbit of Neptune. So if you go
Speaker 1: out past all of the planets, you know, you go
Speaker 1: past the gas giants, past Neptune, into the realm of Pluto,
Speaker 1: and then from there on out there's just sort of
Speaker 1: this big shell around the Solar System of of space,
Speaker 1: and these icy objects that if they're perturbed in just
Speaker 1: the right way, if they get flung off of their
Speaker 1: their deep orbital path and thrown down into the inner
Speaker 1: Solar System, they can become these familiar periodic comets. And
Speaker 1: that appears to be what happened to Six. It was
Speaker 1: probably flung on this path that occasionally brings it close
Speaker 1: to the Sun when long ago it was subject to
Speaker 1: a collision or gravitational disturbance by some other object. At
Speaker 1: its biggest dimensions, it's a little over four pometers or
Speaker 1: about two point five miles long and wide, so it
Speaker 1: would be big enough to walk on, but not nearly
Speaker 1: as big as a planet or even a moon. Now
Speaker 1: we know a lot about six and have great pictures
Speaker 1: of it because it was the target of the e
Speaker 1: s A, the European Space Agency Rosetta mission, which actually
Speaker 1: landed a probe on the surface of this comment and
Speaker 1: took a bunch of amazing photos. Among other things, Uh,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot that's really interesting about this comment.
Speaker 1: There's likely one amazing short video or gift that you've
Speaker 1: seen from its surface, and this was made out of
Speaker 1: a series of still images taken by the lander. That's
Speaker 1: that we're sequenced together into an animation where it looks
Speaker 1: kind of like there's a snowstorm or a blizzard raining
Speaker 1: down onto the surface. Rob have you seen this animation before, Yes,
Speaker 1: it's really amazing. Now it does need some qualification that
Speaker 1: this is not actually a snowstorm like we would experience
Speaker 1: here on Earth. Uh. And the animation that we see
Speaker 1: is a sped up animation. It takes something I think
Speaker 1: like twenty five minutes of original uh you know, time
Speaker 1: lapse between the different photos, and compresses it into a
Speaker 1: few seconds of of panning camera shot. So it's not
Speaker 1: actually a snowstorm, but probably more like the movements of
Speaker 1: dust particles and the star field as the comet travels.
Speaker 1: But it's still just one of the most strange and
Speaker 1: beautiful images I've seen made out of photos taken by
Speaker 1: space probe. Yeah, I mean, it's it's absolutely other worldly. Now,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of things that were interesting about
Speaker 1: the Rosetta mission, including the ways that the Rosetta mission
Speaker 1: kind of went wrong. Do you do you remember this
Speaker 1: when it was trying to put the phile a lander
Speaker 1: down on the surface of the comet, and how it
Speaker 1: kind of bounced in a way it wasn't supposed to.
Speaker 1: I I remember, I remember this being a point in
Speaker 1: the news around the time it happened. Yeah. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: the so the Rosetta mission had it had a lander
Speaker 1: that separated from the orbiter craft, and then the lander
Speaker 1: was supposed to touch down on the surface of the comet,
Speaker 1: and I believe it was supposed to fire these harpoons
Speaker 1: that would lock get into the surface so it didn't
Speaker 1: float away again, because again, thinking about the gravity of
Speaker 1: a comet, uh, it's mass is so small compared to
Speaker 1: the kind of gravity we're used to on planets or
Speaker 1: moons that you can quite easily drift away from it
Speaker 1: if you've really got any momentum at all. I believe
Speaker 1: I read that the escape velocity from this commet was
Speaker 1: one meter per second. So if you're you know, moving
Speaker 1: away from its center of mass at one meter per
Speaker 1: second or more, you're not going to fall back down.
Speaker 1: You're just gonna keep drifting away. But anyway, what I
Speaker 1: think happened with the lander was that it was supposed
Speaker 1: to fire these harpoons to lock it into the surface,
Speaker 1: but that didn't work correctly, so instead it kind of
Speaker 1: bounced after it touched the surface, and then bounced a
Speaker 1: couple of times and eventually came to rest under a cliff.
Speaker 1: Because remember this is not like a spherical commet, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of bent l shaped with these round edges.
Speaker 1: It came to rest under some kind of cliff or overhang,
Speaker 1: the shadow of which mostly blocked the solar panels that
Speaker 1: were supposed to power the lander. So then that led
Speaker 1: to you know, uh laed to it not having enough
Speaker 1: power to do all the things it wanted to do.
Speaker 1: But despite that, there was still a huge amount of
Speaker 1: um really great science that came out of the rosett
Speaker 1: emission and these wonderful photographs. And one of the interesting
Speaker 1: findings about this comet sixty s P that I wanted
Speaker 1: to mention this was from a NASA press release from
Speaker 1: September of called comet discovered to have its own northern lights.
Speaker 1: Uh this was actually revealed with the help of NASA
Speaker 1: instruments that were part of the essay Rosette emission. What
Speaker 1: they found was that the comet has this invisible glow.
Speaker 1: It has an aurora of far ultra violet radiation. Uh.
Speaker 1: These findings were published in Nature Astronomy of last year,
Speaker 1: and this electromagnetic glow was an aurora much like we
Speaker 1: see in the polar regions of Earth. So on Earth,
Speaker 1: the northern and southern lights are created when charged particles
Speaker 1: from the Sun collide with gas particles in our upper atmosphere,
Speaker 1: and this results in reactions that create patterns of green, red,
Speaker 1: and white across across the sky. Other planets in the
Speaker 1: Solar System also have a rural phenomenon. Jupiter does, I
Speaker 1: think even Mars does. Mini planets, but this is the
Speaker 1: first time we've ever observed it surrounding a comet. And
Speaker 1: quote from the press release here quote electrons streaming out
Speaker 1: in the solar wind. The stream of charged particles flowing
Speaker 1: out from the Sun interact with the gas in the
Speaker 1: comets coma, breaking apart water and other molecules. The resulting
Speaker 1: atoms give off a distinctive far ultraviolet light, invisible to
Speaker 1: the naked eye. Far ultra violet light has the shortest
Speaker 1: wavelengths of radiation in the ultra violet spectrum, which makes
Speaker 1: me wonder if this comet could give you a sunburn.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I want to get around to the main study.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about tying into our our overall
Speaker 1: theme today. So this is a study published in Nature
Speaker 1: by Jean Baptiste Vincent at All called large heterogeneityse and
Speaker 1: commets et seven p as revealed by active pits from
Speaker 1: sinkhole collapse. So the authors here talk about how a
Speaker 1: lot of times when we get a look at the
Speaker 1: surface of a cometary nucleus, that's the hard icy core
Speaker 1: of the comment. Remember comment has so it's got a
Speaker 1: hard core that's made of like ice and dust, the
Speaker 1: part you could walk on, and then it's surrounded often
Speaker 1: by sort of cloud or tail. The coma is made
Speaker 1: of water, vapor, dust and gas. And when they get
Speaker 1: a look at this hard nucleus of a comet, we
Speaker 1: often observe pits. Now, there's one way that that might
Speaker 1: not be surprising, because if you think about other objects
Speaker 1: in the Solar System, like the Moon or asteroids the
Speaker 1: dwarf planet like series, they have a lot of pits also,
Speaker 1: and these are quite clearly impact craters. As these objects
Speaker 1: are bombarded by space junk over millions of years, these
Speaker 1: pits accumulate, and if the planets or moons don't have
Speaker 1: active geology like volcanoes and plate tectonics to repeatedly pave
Speaker 1: and smooth over the surface, the pits from ancient impacts
Speaker 1: just sit there and they stay there, and we can
Speaker 1: see them easily. But there is a problem with explaining
Speaker 1: the pits on commets as impact creators. First of all,
Speaker 1: our best guests about how often commets encounter large impacts
Speaker 1: does not seem to correlate with the number of pits
Speaker 1: that we see. And then second, when we try to
Speaker 1: create physical models of what would happen when a comet
Speaker 1: suffered a high speed impact, these models just don't create
Speaker 1: pits like the ones we actually observe. So what's making
Speaker 1: the pits? Uh? Some researchers have hypothesized that the pits
Speaker 1: are a result of internal explosions of some kind, But
Speaker 1: in the words of the author's quote, the driving process
Speaker 1: remains unknown. Uh So do we have any better guesses? Well,
Speaker 1: according to this study, yes we do. Zarab. I want
Speaker 1: you to look at this next picture picture I've got
Speaker 1: for you here. This is a picture of Commet six
Speaker 1: seven shared by the E s A. And if you
Speaker 1: look at this comment from a close orbit under the
Speaker 1: right conditions, you can see what look kind of like
Speaker 1: shafts of light, almost like those Spielberg lights, you know,
Speaker 1: from Steven Spielberg movies. He loves these God lights, the
Speaker 1: shafts of light piercing through a dusty patch of air
Speaker 1: or you know, cutting through different obstacles in the foreground.
Speaker 1: You see these shafts of light blasting out of the
Speaker 1: surface of the comet, like it makes me think of
Speaker 1: Indiana Jones saying, you know, lightning, fire power of God
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, yeah, it does bring to mind the
Speaker 1: you know, the fires of the art or or the
Speaker 1: lights of you know, the UFOs, the very spaceships that
Speaker 1: are that they are encountered in Spielberg films. So I
Speaker 1: was reading an article about this study by phil Plate
Speaker 1: the Bad Astronomer, at his blog on sci Fi, and
Speaker 1: he highlighted this image in particular, the one you're looking
Speaker 1: at now, rob in connection with the subject matter the study.
Speaker 1: This photo is taken from a distance of about a
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy seven kilometers. And the point of it
Speaker 1: is that what's being shown in these shafts of light
Speaker 1: in the image is not actually lightning or fire a
Speaker 1: power of God. They're not actually shafts of light. It
Speaker 1: is actually jets of water vapor that are gassing out
Speaker 1: from the surface of the comet and being illuminated by
Speaker 1: the sunlight. And I've got another photo for you to
Speaker 1: look at this up close of these jets. It truly
Speaker 1: does look amazing. Yeah, it creates this feeling that it
Speaker 1: is glowing or emitting energy. Um what whicheness since it
Speaker 1: is emitting energy here. Uh, but yeah, it creates these
Speaker 1: are very these are beautiful images like these would not
Speaker 1: look out of place, like framed on the wall of
Speaker 1: some sort of you know, trendy uh you know in
Speaker 1: New York eatery or something. Yeah, I agree. I mean
Speaker 1: they have an almost artistic quality with their their real photos.
Speaker 1: So scientists believe these jets are caused in the following way.
Speaker 1: A large part of the nucleus of a comet is
Speaker 1: made of water ice. As a comet with an irregular
Speaker 1: orbit gets to that part of its orbit closest to
Speaker 1: the Sun, of course, the ice in its crust heats
Speaker 1: up and it melts or its sublimates, it vaporizes, turns
Speaker 1: into a gas, and these jets we see in the photos,
Speaker 1: this is the water vapor that is being exhaled into
Speaker 1: space by the crusty lobes. But here's where all of
Speaker 1: the different subjects we've been talking about come together. What
Speaker 1: we have recently observed in these images is that many
Speaker 1: of these jets seem to be shooting directly from the
Speaker 1: mysterious pits in the surface of the comet. Now what
Speaker 1: does that mean. Well, the authors of this study in
Speaker 1: Nature conclude that the pits are probably sinkholes, sinkholes in space. Well,
Speaker 1: that makes sense given what we've just discussed about the
Speaker 1: water vapor jetting out of them. Right, it is leaving
Speaker 1: a hollow and uh, and that's the very kind of
Speaker 1: situation that on on Earth can lead to a sinkhole
Speaker 1: exactly right Now, These wouldn't be caused by the exact
Speaker 1: same process as natural sinkholes on Earth, just because it
Speaker 1: wouldn't involve things like rain, drainage and such. But it's
Speaker 1: pretty close. It's it's almost exactly the same thing. And
Speaker 1: what you're what you're saying rob is exactly correct. So
Speaker 1: the hypothesized mechanism works like this. The comet travels into
Speaker 1: the inner parts of its orbit so it gets close
Speaker 1: to the sun. Heat from the sun warms the comet,
Speaker 1: turning the ice into water vapor, and apparently sometimes this
Speaker 1: heat penetrates the surface, sublimating large pockets of ice underneath
Speaker 1: the top layer of the comet, and then the water
Speaker 1: vapor gets blasted off into space, leaving these voids or
Speaker 1: caves underneath the surface where the ice used to be. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the overburden lying above these evaporated comet caves can't support
Speaker 1: itself and it collapses, leaving a pit. And this can
Speaker 1: create an interesting feedback cycle because now that there's a pit,
Speaker 1: radiation from the Sun can pin to trade deeper into
Speaker 1: the surface of the comet, warming even more ice below,
Speaker 1: which is why we see jets of water vapor shooting
Speaker 1: out of the pits themselves. These are sort of hot
Speaker 1: spots where the solar radiation can access pockets of ancient
Speaker 1: ice and heat them up very fast. The author's right
Speaker 1: quote here. We report that pits on Comet six Triuma
Speaker 1: of Garrisimenko are active and probably created by a synk
Speaker 1: whole process, possibly accompanied by outbursts. We argue that after formation,
Speaker 1: pits expand slowly in diameter owing to sublimation driven retreat
Speaker 1: of the walls. Therefore, pits characterize how eroded the surface is.
Speaker 1: A fresh commentary surface will have a ragged structure with
Speaker 1: many pits, while an evolved surface will look smoother. The
Speaker 1: size and spatial distribution of pits imply that large heterogeneitys
Speaker 1: exist in the physical, structural, and compositional properties of the
Speaker 1: first few hundred meter is below the current nucleus surface.
Speaker 1: So what they're saying there is that there's also probably
Speaker 1: a way to tell how old the pits are and
Speaker 1: how old the surface of the comet is by looking
Speaker 1: at these pits. Over time, the vaporization of ice eroads
Speaker 1: and smooths over the walls of the pit. So if
Speaker 1: you're looking at a comet, uh, the older a comet
Speaker 1: sinkhole is, the smoother its walls and the shallower its
Speaker 1: pits become. And very new pits in in less evolved
Speaker 1: comets are the ones with very steep, straight walls. It's
Speaker 1: kind of the exact opposite of like how human faces age, right,
Speaker 1: So a very old piece of comet terrain that's been
Speaker 1: exposed to the sun many times. I guess would probably
Speaker 1: have a smoother surface with shallower pits, and one where
Speaker 1: the pits are fresh. It's gonna be craggier. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting. But but but, like you said, this
Speaker 1: is essentially a sinkhole in space, and not even in
Speaker 1: the most likely place you might think to find it,
Speaker 1: not on a planet, but on the surface of a comet. Now,
Speaker 1: the one reason I said maybe, actually it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: quite as bad to fall into a sinkhole in space,
Speaker 1: at least in this example, is that the gravity of
Speaker 1: the comet is so low that when you fell into
Speaker 1: the sink whole, you wouldn't fall very fast, so you'll
Speaker 1: probably be fine when you hit the bottom. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: maybe you can catch an upward boost on one of
Speaker 1: those jets right right. It sounds like a great place
Speaker 1: for an action scene to take place. Yeah, Ice pirates
Speaker 1: to sinkhole City. I think all city sounds great. That
Speaker 1: sounds like exactly like the kind of place you'd want
Speaker 1: to wind up in and um like a space noar
Speaker 1: kind of a um you know fiction. Yeah, sinkhole City,
Speaker 1: I like it. Well, we've I feel like we've really
Speaker 1: expanded even more on the idea of the sinkhole and
Speaker 1: hopefully worked a little more to to rescue the sinkhole
Speaker 1: from the what you call it, the the the the
Speaker 1: section at the bottom of blogs. The chum box. Chum box.
Speaker 1: That's not a word of Mike Pointage. That's like a
Speaker 1: well known term. I think it was a term innovated
Speaker 1: by somebody who wrote, like a I don't know, like
Speaker 1: a Gawker article or something about them a long time ago,
Speaker 1: about like how they're put together and what's in them.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that that that is not a term original
Speaker 1: to me, but I think it is a very good term.
Speaker 1: It's an apt description. Yeah, returning, I guess it's referring
Speaker 1: to the kind of like a slurry of meat that
Speaker 1: you throw out of a boat to attract sharks. Yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: that is exactly what those boxes are. They're just like
Speaker 1: kind of throwing rotten garbage out there to see what
Speaker 1: comes up. Yeah, and the sinkhole deserves better. The sinkhole
Speaker 1: is far more interesting. Yet. Yeah, certainly they do, uh,
Speaker 1: they do have this this visceral impact on us. Just
Speaker 1: this again, this idea of the earth opening them up,
Speaker 1: opening up and swallowing his whole, or exposing dark realms
Speaker 1: beneath the earth. But but there's much more beyond that,
Speaker 1: much more than just sheer terror titilation. So hopefully we've
Speaker 1: we've you know, urged everyone out there too to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, respect the sinkhole a little bit more. And obviously, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from anybody out there, you know,
Speaker 1: if you've traveled any of these sinkholes we've mentioned, if
Speaker 1: you've been to impressive sinkholes that we didn't get into
Speaker 1: in these episodes, um, or you just have general thoughts
Speaker 1: about them, we would love to hear from me. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you would like to listen to other
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Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
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