Portal to hell opens up in the middle of Guatemalan street

[Canadave]

^ Then it's not permafrost. Significant permafrost coverage doesn't extend any further south than somewhere around 55 degrees north in North America, aside from in mountainous regions. That's just regular ol' frozen ground that caused the flooding.

Well, it was called permafrost when I learned about it in elementary school, so I don't know what to tell you.

Huh. Your teachers must have been rather misinformed...

The reason it's called permafrost is because it is, quite literally, permanent frost. In other words, the ground remains frozen, even during the middle of summer, and doesn't undergo a seasonal freeze and thaw. Which is why you generally only find it in the far north; it gets far too hot down here during the summer for the ground to remain below 0C. So the reason I was surprised at the basement comment is because most buildings built on permafrost are built on stilts, to prevent the heat from the building melting the permafrost, and the building collapsing.

Anyway, apologies for the information overload, but my degree is in geography, so we covered permafrost pretty extensively in some of my classes.

 

[RoJoHen]

Well, it's possible I'm misremembering. I learned about it when I was about 9 years old, and I certainly haven't learned anything about it since.

 

[M'Sharak]

That's no cave!

The URL behind that link seems to have expired.

 

[Capn Flukie]

^ it's just pinin' for the fjords.

 

[pookha]

wonder what kind of things we could throw down it..
any new news about what is happening to the city?

 

[broberfett]

What disturbs me about the veracity of the picture is that I have not seen the sink hole from any other angle. You would think that something so unusual and interesting would have a few pictures dedicated to it. Has anyone here seen film of it or other pictures?

Edit: I kept seeing the same picture everywhere, but clicked the link and saw the second picture, but I'd still like to see more images.

 

[RJDiogenes]

National Geographic has some.

 

[Aragorn]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoOHmdL2I9Y[/yt]

 

[SmoothieX]

Ok, who divided by zero?

 

[ares93]

Racht!!!

 

[Trekker4747]

I think the Mythbusters went over board on this whole "dig a hole to China" test.

 

[Capn Flukie]

I expect an animated Ringo Starr to come crawling out of it.

 

[Lindley]

Where does that hole end?

[Kosh]IN FIRE.[/Kosh]

 

[F. King Daniel]

Captain Robau would like to apologize for the hole, and tell you all that he just got a little carried away digging a pond.

Unfortunately the hole extends into subspace, which is where the monsters are coming from.

 

[Tulin]

Photoshop.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Photoshop.

Can you Photoshop a video?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/latin_america/10211104.stm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoOHmdL2I9Y



And it wouldn't be the first time:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6391117.stm

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jhA5Gqridk[/yt]

(dated 23rd Feb 2007)

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Photoshop.

"Generation Stupid," as your sig calls them, would have at least spent ten seconds on a Google search of the hundreds of news articles and video reports on the sinkhole before foolishly declaring it a Photoshop.

 

[Kestra]

National Geographic has some.

That was quite interesting, thanks for the link!

 

[DBR]

I wonder if this is a marketing gimick for the upcoming Predators movie.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Photoshop.

"Generation Stupid," as your sig calls them, would have at least spent ten seconds on a Google search of the hundreds of news articles and video reports on the sinkhole before foolishly declaring it a Photoshop.

I'll try not to take that personally.