erhebung

There Be Circles

News of unusual hap­pen­ings on the surface of Lake Baikal:

Late in April 2009, astro­nauts aboard the Inter­na­tional Space Station observed a strange circular area of thinned ice in the southern end of Lake Baikal in southern Siberia. Siberia is remote and cold; ice cover can persist into June. The upper image, a detailed astro­naut pho­to­graph, shows a circle of thin ice (dark in color, with a diameter of about 4.4 kilo­meters); this is the focal point for ice break up in the very southern end of the lake. A sequence of MODIS images indic­ates that the feature was first visible on April 5, 2009.

Baikal con­tained another, very similar circle near the center of the lake above a sub­marine ridge that bisects the lake (ice circles are indic­ated by arrows in the lower MODIS image from April 20). Both circles are visible through April 20, 2009. Clouds cover the center of the lake until April 24, at which point the circular patch of thin ice was becoming a hole of open water. Similar circular ice patterns — although not nearly as distinct — have been doc­u­mented in the same central area of the lake in April 1994 (during the STS-​59 Shuttle mission) and in 1985 (during the STS-​51B Shuttle mission).

While the origin of the circles is unknown, the peculiar pattern suggests con­vec­tion (upwelling) in the lake’s water column. Ice cover changes rapidly at this time of year. Within a day, the ice can melt almost com­pletely and freeze again overnight. Throughout April, the circles are per­sistent: they appear when ice cover forms, and then dis­ap­pear as ice melts. The pattern and appear­ance suggest that the ice is quite thin. The features were last observed in MODIS images on April 27, 2009.

Below is the pho­to­graph taken by the astro­naut on the Inter­na­tional Space Station and a MODIS satel­lite image with the unex­plained circles (for what it’s worth, I think they’re caused by sub­merged UFOs that are attempting to start their anti-​matter drives) circled in red:

One of the strange circles that have appeared in the ice. (Source)

Sunken UFOs pre­paring to leave? (Source)