What (or who) is at the bottom of Lake Baikal?
From a height of 354 km, astronaut Michael Reed Barratt photographs the Lake Baikal, the largest natural freshwater basin in the world, as well as the deepest and oldest on the planet, considering its 25 million years. When Barrat sends the images to Earth, a curious detail emerges: on the surface there is a gigantic black ring with an almost perfect circumference.
On April 23, 2009 the International Space Station is flying over the frozen Russian territories of Siberia. From a height of 354 km, astronaut Michael Reed Barratt photographs the Lake Baikal, the largest natural freshwater basin in the world, as well as the deepest and oldest on the planet. It is probably 25 million years old.
When Barrat sends the images to Earth, a curious detail emerges: on the surface there is a gigantic black ring with an almost perfect circumference. The ring structure looked like a crack in the ice of a type no one had ever observed before.
Photo analyzes show that the ring is very large, with a diameter reaching almost 5 km. Furthermore, the phenomenon, or what caused it, managed to penetrate the ice for more than a meter.
What force of nature could possibly cause a rift of that kind?
Scientists studied other strange ice formations found on this ancient lake. They observe frozen ridges almost 15 meters high, like mini mountain chains, but the anomalous ice ring immortalized by Barret is unique. So how was it formed?
A possible explanation could be a thermal phenomenon that heated the water, so there could be a huge heat source at the bottom of the lake. It could be a volcano, but experts don't know it, having never detected signs of volcanic activity.
Is it possible that the strange ring on the ice is just a sign of the lake's age? Or are we dealing with some complex chemical process that occurs at the bottom of the lake? It has been discovered that in some points on the lakebed the sediment layers release methane gas. The problem is that it would take a significant amount of methane to penetrate through one meter of ice and form a circle almost 5 km wide.
To find other clues, scientists study the various satellite photographs taken over the years, discovering that on the surface there are other mysterious rings of various sizes and located in several points of the lake.
They seem to form and then vanish each in a different year and never appear in the same spot on the lake. The mystery deepens: whatever generates the rings, it moves!
Could some unknown creature lurking at the bottom of the lake be responsible for creating the rings? Over the last 25 million years, thousands of species have evolved independently in this lake.
There are at least a thousand Baikal species that scholars have cataloged and which have no equal anywhere else in the world. Living isolated from the rest of the world, the species of Lake Baikal have followed their evolutionary path, in some cases showing almost "alien" traits.
Whatever generates the rings does so by generating enormous amounts of heat, enough to melt the ice and form the circle. No creature is known to be capable of doing this.
Most of Lake Baikal is still completely unexplored today. In one of the few explorations carried out by Russian soldiers, an incredible encounter is reported: the encounter with mysterious humanoid figures.
Three divers lost their lives in that exploration, and four others were injured. The survivors claim to have been attacked by beings described as "silver and humanoid in shape".
These bizarre figures wore some sort of helmet and the explorers' logical deduction is that we are dealing with intelligent life forms.
The meeting is described in an official Russian army report and was also reported by the national press. To date, it is still unknown what or who the divers actually saw.
