The famous Patomsky crater discovered in 1949 by the geologist Vladimir Kolpakov is still one of the most mysterious natural objects on the planet. It is located in the Bodaibo District of the Irkutsk Region: in its size and shape, the crater looks like a lunar formation. It is about 40 m high, the crest diameter is 86 m. Local dwellers, Yakuts, who know about the crater since ancient times, call it "the nest of the fiery eagle", and the river at its foot--"the fiery river". Scientists are intrigued by these names and even more by the origin of the crater. There exist some dozens of hypotheses, but only two of them are the most probable. According to the first one, the crater is a result of meteoric fall. It was Kolpakov who first proposed this idea after geological surveying of the territory. Some of his disciples even tried to estimate the depth (180-200 m) of occurrence of a cosmic body in the crater and believed it was a fragment of the Tunguska meteorite that fell in the Siberian taiga in 1908*. The second hypothesis was offered in 1951 by a famous volcanologist Sergei Obruchev, Corresponding Member of the USSR AS. His point of view is shared by many scientists, including Viktor Antipin, Dr. Sc. (Geol. & Min.), a staff member of the RAS Siberian Branch Institute of Geochemistry named after A. Vinogradov, who spoke up in the Science in Siberia newspaper in the end of 2010. He is sure that the Patomsky crater could form only as a result of breakthrough of a * See: E. Galimov, M. Nazarov, "Centennial of the Tunguska Event", Science in Russia, No. 3, 2008.--Ed. deep steam-and-gas stream in the area of tectonic faults. This is proved by geological and geochemical studies carried out by scientists, including Viktor Antipin, during the complex expeditions of 2006, 2008 and 2010. He writes that endogenous (or deep) reasons of occurrence of this event are likely preconditioned by development of the magmatic process. Thus, as earl ... Читать далее