Satellite images of the Russian Siberian region baffle American experts

The US space agency “NASA” published on its website pictures of the Arctic part of Siberia.

The website of the US Space Agency pointed out that the pictures were taken by the “Landsat 8” satellite, as it showed the Markha River, whose banks are lined with strange intermittent and wavy lines and patterns.

Sweltering, Smoky Fires in Siberia https://t.co/5rIXbH1I2F #NASA pic.twitter.com/AvhIT785IR

— NASA Earth (@NASAEarth) May 18, 2018

These pictures attracted the attention of experts at NASA, which contained strange terrain on both sides of Al Markh and considered that an unusual pattern on the surface of the Earth.

Researchers have uploaded all the photos of the area since 2013 and came up with an idea that patterns change little with the seasons, becoming more variable in the winter.

One possible explanation for this phenomenon is the permafrost found in the Central Siberian Plateau, where the Markha River flows, and the permafrost layer reaches 1,500 meters thick in the summer, and its small areas thaw for a short period and then freeze again, forming wavy patterns on the surface.

The experts considered that these forms on the banks of the Al-Markha River are due to the cooling disturbance (thawing and periodic freezing), through which the different soil layers are mixed.

In the same context, Russian experts expressed a different point of view, as Alexei Ivanov, a doctor of geological and mineral sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, commented that the hypotheses published on the NASA website did not seem reasonable to him.

“American researchers talk about permafrost. Of course, it exists but it does not relate to it at all. In this part of Siberia, 250 million years ago, so-called shield volcanoes often erupted,” Ivanov said.”The lava spread so far away over time due to weather factors,” he added. “It formed such a relief gradient in geology and called it traps – from the Swedish word for stairs.”