Did you hear about the weird holes scientists found at the bottom of Lake Michigan? Divers exploring the lake stumbled across perfectly round pits that look like something out of a sci-fi movie. At first, people joked it might be aliens or underwater crop circles, but the truth is still pretty mysterious. Scientists think the holes might be formed by methane gas escaping from beneath the lakebed, or maybe by strong underwater currents eroding the sand. What’s even cooler is that these holes are home to unique ecosystems with strange microorganisms. It’s like a whole underwater world we’re just beginning to explore! Credit:
la lasta glaciepoko: by ZDF/Terra X/Bilderfest/Florian Breier/Klaus Wache/Tobias Forth/Maik Siegle /Peter Riegel/Lilly Wagner/ Maximilian Mohr, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:046_-_Kiel_la_lasta_glaciepoko_komenci%C4%9Dis_-_scivolemo_-_zdf.webm
Shirase Glacier Antarctica: by Google Earth, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Google_Timelapse-_Shirase_Glacier_Antarctica.webm
Pine Island Glacier: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
Glacier Valley formation: by Cecilia Bernal, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Glacier_Valley_formation-_Formaci%C3%B3n_Valle_glaciar.gif
Greenland Ice Flow: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
Lac Beauchamp marks: by FinTheKnight, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lac_Beauchamp_chatter_marks.jpg
map of Lake Michigan: by NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/, https://flic.kr/p/79HVyF
Geheimnisvolle Tiefsee: by ZDF/Terra X/Gruppe 5 Filmproduktion/Tamar Baumgarten/Scope VFX/Maximilian Mohr, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geheimnisvolle_Tiefsee.webm
Gastrosaccus spinifer: by Hans Hillewaert, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gastrosaccus_spinifer.jpg
Mysida sp: by Rickard Zerpe, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mysida_sp._(48929234648).jpg
Myoxocephalus thomsonii: by JG Mychek-Londer, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22Myoxocephalus_thomsonii%22_%22deepwater_sculpin%22.JPG
Rock covered: by NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rock_covered_in_quagga_mussels_(20444468834).jpg, https://flic.kr/p/x9BfiY
Archean: by Tim Bertelink, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Archean.png
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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.
la lasta glaciepoko: by ZDF/Terra X/Bilderfest/Florian Breier/Klaus Wache/Tobias Forth/Maik Siegle /Peter Riegel/Lilly Wagner/ Maximilian Mohr, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:046_-_Kiel_la_lasta_glaciepoko_komenci%C4%9Dis_-_scivolemo_-_zdf.webm
Shirase Glacier Antarctica: by Google Earth, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Google_Timelapse-_Shirase_Glacier_Antarctica.webm
Pine Island Glacier: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
Glacier Valley formation: by Cecilia Bernal, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Glacier_Valley_formation-_Formaci%C3%B3n_Valle_glaciar.gif
Greenland Ice Flow: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
Lac Beauchamp marks: by FinTheKnight, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lac_Beauchamp_chatter_marks.jpg
map of Lake Michigan: by NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/, https://flic.kr/p/79HVyF
Geheimnisvolle Tiefsee: by ZDF/Terra X/Gruppe 5 Filmproduktion/Tamar Baumgarten/Scope VFX/Maximilian Mohr, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geheimnisvolle_Tiefsee.webm
Gastrosaccus spinifer: by Hans Hillewaert, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gastrosaccus_spinifer.jpg
Mysida sp: by Rickard Zerpe, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mysida_sp._(48929234648).jpg
Myoxocephalus thomsonii: by JG Mychek-Londer, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22Myoxocephalus_thomsonii%22_%22deepwater_sculpin%22.JPG
Rock covered: by NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rock_covered_in_quagga_mussels_(20444468834).jpg, https://flic.kr/p/x9BfiY
Archean: by Tim Bertelink, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Archean.png
Animation is created by Bright Side.
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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
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FunTranscript
00:00Lake Michigan is one of the largest and most mysterious freshwater lakes in the United States.
00:06And now, deep inside it, scientists have stumbled upon something unexplainable.
00:11Vast, round craters scattered all across the lake's floor.
00:16It all started in 2022.
00:19A team of researchers wanted to map the lake's bottom and look for some shipwrecks.
00:24At first, they were sure it's going to be just some typical rocky terrain or sandy patches.
00:30But what they saw on their sonar screens stopped them cold.
00:34Strange, circular shapes that looked almost too perfect to be natural.
00:40They were hiding about 500 feet beneath the surface, in places where the water turns dark and impenetrable.
00:48Those guys are huge, ranging from 300 to 600 feet wide.
00:53They also plunge nearly 40 feet deep.
00:57And there are dozens of them, neatly arranged like some footprints.
01:01But the team had no idea what these things were.
01:05Then, in August 2024, the mystery only deepened.
01:09Using a remotely operated vehicle, they got a closer look at these formations.
01:15There were about 40 of them.
01:17No one had ever seen anything quite like this before in the Great Lakes.
01:22What could have created those craters?
01:24Could they be ancient?
01:26Perhaps remnants of some geological event lost to time?
01:30If that's the case, it's weird how long these holes have likely been sitting there, undisturbed.
01:36Theories started popping up.
01:38One possibility was that they could be sinkholes, or dolines.
01:43Those are basically holes that suddenly appear in the ground when the surface layer collapses.
01:49The rock beneath the surface, often made of limestone, gets slowly dissolved by water over time, creating voids underground.
01:58When the surface of those voids can no longer hold its own weight, it caves in.
02:03And this forms a hole.
02:05Think of it like when you poke a straw through the lid of a drink.
02:09Sinkholes can be small dips or huge, spanning up to 2,000 feet.
02:15They can happen gradually or all at once.
02:18Sometimes they can swallow entire cars, or even buildings!
02:23And Lake Michigan sits on limestone bedrock.
02:26It erodes pretty easily when water flows through it.
02:29Sinkholes like these have already been found in Lake Huron, and they look kinda similar.
02:35But there are some plot holes, no pun intended, with this theory.
02:40For example, it's wild how they all would be so huge.
02:44It's also weird and pretty rare for sinkholes to occur in a lake bed.
02:49They also kinda resemble a straight pattern.
02:52They seem to extend generally southward, forming a loose line, which is pretty weird.
02:59If these are sinkholes, then they're definitely not playing the usual geological rules.
03:05Though it might be some new, unusual process at play beneath the lake's surface that we haven't discovered yet.
03:12There's another theory, though. Glaciers.
03:16Glaciers are wild rivers of ice.
03:19They covered much of the Earth during the last Ice Age, and they're incredibly powerful.
03:25While they might move slowly, sometimes only a few inches per day,
03:29they have such immense weight that they can reshape entire landscapes over thousands of years.
03:37Glaciers can grind and scoop the land beneath them.
03:40They're basically like colossal bulldozers.
03:43Their weight, combined with the slow but steady movement, grounds down everything beneath them.
03:49Rocks, soil, even bedrock!
03:52This can create deep gouges in the Earth's surface, called glacial troughs.
03:58During the last Ice Age, there were lots of glaciers all over the northern U.S., including the Great Lakes region.
04:06If they moved across what is now Lake Michigan, they could have carved out these deep holes.
04:12Glaciers often move in a pretty straight path.
04:15As they move, they cause terrain to erode, but the resulting erosion varies based on terrain.
04:22Sometimes there are places where the bedrock is softer or fractured,
04:26and these places are more easily carved and crushed by the glacier.
04:30That could explain why some holes could be bigger and deeper than others.
04:35Harder bedrock is less affected.
04:38But usually this leads to rounded, crescent-shaped depressions known as chatter marks.
04:44Those marks are more like grooves rather than circular, big craters like those in Lake Michigan.
04:50Once the glaciers melted, the Great Lakes themselves formed.
04:54If the craters were formed by them, they may have filled with water, becoming part of the Michigan Lake.
05:01Though this theory is more like a speculation, so we need more evidence.
05:06But there's another layer to this mystery.
05:08The craters are not just curious geological formations.
05:12They actually may hold valuable clues about early life on Earth.
05:18Parts of Lake Michigan, especially dark ones, are relatively low in oxygen.
05:23It's like a lighter version of deep ocean environments that often have very little of this element.
05:30For example, hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean.
05:34Underwater openings in the Earth's crust with some hot, mineral-rich water that are often very low in oxygen.
05:41But some organisms love places like these.
05:44For example, opossum shrimp.
05:47Teeny tiny shrimp-like creatures that love cold, deep waters.
05:51They get their name because they have a pouch to carry their young until they're ready to be on their own, like an opossum.
05:58Or deep water sculpin fish.
06:01Small, bottom-dwelling fish that also enjoys cold lakes.
06:05They're well-adapted to living in dark waters and usually stay close to the lake bed.
06:11And weird organisms like invasive quagga mussels, which kind of look like shells.
06:16These are small, freshwater mussels that have spread there to the Great Lakes.
06:21They attach themselves to hard surfaces and can cause problems for ecosystems by competing with native species for food and space.
06:30All these guys could be in Lake Michigan, and even more.
06:34There might be microbes or even bacteria that are specially adapted to these harsh conditions, just like it was in Lake Huron.
06:43There's only a handful of creatures that could survive deep within these craters.
06:48And studying them could give us insight into how life once flourished in Earth's ancient, oxygen-poor oceans.
06:56That's because it's in places similar to these where some of the earliest lifeforms thrived.
07:02Early Earth had an atmosphere with little oxygen, although it was much more hot and ancient microbes adapted to this.
07:10The Great Lakes, especially Lake Michigan, have always had a bit of a ghostly reputation.
07:16Like, even this mission was organized to study the shipwrecks.
07:20There were about 6,000 of them in the Great Lakes.
07:24Many of these wrecks are still sitting on the lake beds, preserved by the cold, fresh waters.
07:29And shipwrecks aren't the only strange things tied to the Great Lakes.
07:34Over the years, there have been stories of unexplained disappearances.
07:38Boats and even planes have vanished without a trace.
07:42The lakes, often calm on the surface, can suddenly turn dangerous with unpredictable storms and massive waves, leading to these mysterious events.
07:52Not even mentioning all the creepy stuff people noticed there over the centuries, such as ghostly lights above water,
07:59or bizarre weather patterns like eerie, sudden fogs that seem to appear out of nowhere.
08:07In 2007, they even discovered some prehistoric structure that looks like Stonehenge there.
08:13Well, it was way smaller, but still.
08:16It lay about 40 feet below the surface in the heart of Grand Traverse Bay,
08:20and it's speculated to be about 9,000 years old, way older than Stonehenge.
08:26Looks like this is a print of those who lived in the area thousands of years ago.
08:31These massive stones are arranged in a careful, winding pattern stretching over a mile.
08:37They range in size from basketballs to compact cars.
08:41But one, in particular, stands out.
08:44A boulder 3.5 to 4 feet tall, 5 feet wide.
08:48It's etched with the image of a mastodon, a creature that roamed the Earth about 11,000 years ago, before it went extinct.
08:57It probably sank there during the end of the last Ice Age we mentioned.
09:01This period had reshaped the region.
09:03This place is underwater now, but back in the day, it was still dry land.
09:08So, the stones were probably created by people who lived there, though we're not sure why.
09:14Were they used as hunting blinds?
09:17Or was it some sort of an ancient calendar?
09:19Who knows?
09:21Only about 15% of the Great Lakes' floors have been explored.
09:25Now, scientists are gearing up for a deeper dive into this mystery, both literally and figuratively.
09:32They want to analyze the lake beds surrounding the craters,
09:35hoping that maybe something in the environment around them might have caused them to appear.
09:41They have initiatives like Lakebed 2030.
09:44These missions should map the entire underwater landscape.
09:48This would help us learn tons of interesting stuff about Lake Michigan and our planet's past.
09:55Who knows what other secrets these dark waters hide?
10:00That's it for today.
10:01So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
10:06Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!