Siberian crater is just one of many mysterious holes around the world

A new-found cavernous crater has been spotted in a remote region of Siberia that has left experts scratching their heads and the internet abuzz with speculation as to its origin.

Video shot from a helicopter flying over Russia's Yamal Peninsula – a place so remote that locals call it the 'End of the World' – shows what looks like a deep, gigantic hole measuring 80 metres across with debris piled up around its rim.

Of course, the footage has gone viral on the web and everyone appears to have a theory as to this mysterious gape's origins – from the mundane to the ridiculous. Ideas have ranged from a meteor impact to weird conspiracy theories involving drilling UFOs to monster worms – seriously!

But the most likely cause put forward by scientists so far involves a buildup of an underground gas pocket that ignited. If it was formed through natural means, then that would point to a melting of permafrost or an enormous ice block, possibly caused by the recent warming of the Arctic region. However some suggest that it’s not coincidental that the area hosts one of the richest gas reservoirs in Russia, and possibly there was an ongoing buildup of underground gas until increasing pressure simply caused the ground to blow its top.

In any case, Russian scientists from the Center for the Study of the Arctic and the Cryosphere Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences are on their way to the location and so hopefully we’ll have some answers soon.

Weird holes in the ground are nothing new. For some reason, we humans have always been fascinated and drawn to the mysteries of gaping geological voids found around the world.

Sinkholes have made the headlines in recent years, but a whopper appeared in a Guatemala City back in February 2007 that swallowed not just one house, but an entire neighbourhood, killing three people and causing 1000 to evacuate. This subterranean monster reached more than 100 meters deep – enough to bury the Statue of Liberty twice over.

More recently at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, about an hour from Chicago, the sand dunes unexpectedly began acting like quicksand, forming holes. Park rangers were alerted last year July to these weird formations when a 6-year-old boy was climbing a dune that suddenly gave way and swallowed him up whole. After three hours of frantic rescue efforts, they managed to extract him from an 11-foot-deep cavern, and he fortunately survived.

Now researchers from Indiana Geological Survey and the local university are drilling core samples and using ground-penetrating radar to probe the dunes and map out their architecture, and have been finding more of these subsurface anomalies in the park. Scientists so far have been at a loss to explain their origins, but have found more of these openings and as a precaution they have kept the area closed to the public.

In the heart of the Karakum desert of the Central Asian state of Turkmenistan lies the Darvaza Gas Crater otherwise known as The Door to Hell. The crater, which measures 60 meters across and about 20 meters deep, formed more than 50 years ago during an old Soviet-era gas drilling explosion and still burns today.

Just this past November 2013 a National Geographic-funded explorer wearing a heat-resistant suit descended for the first time to the fiery depths of the gas-fueled chasm in search of extremophilic life that may survive in these hellish conditions. And indeed, methane-feeding bacteria were discovered to be eking out a living at the bottom of the the crater. These results bolster scientific theories that life could exist on worlds beyond Earth where similar conditions may exist.

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