The crater is located beneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico and has a diameter of more than 180 kilometres (that’d be around 110 miles). When the Chicxulub asteroid crashed into the Earth it released the equivalent energy of about 100,000,000 megatons of TNT, making the impact around 2 million times more powerful than the most powerful man-made explosion.

After the collision, scientists believe that a number of changes occured on the Earth. These would have included megatsunamis with waves thousands of feet high and hot clouds of dust and ash that spread across much of our planet’s surface.

Pieces of the asteroid would have been ejected out of the Earth’s atmosphere, burning up as they rose into the sky and causing the Earth to broil, igniting world-wide bushfires and causing acid rain.

Shock waves from the impact would have triggered a countless number of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions as the Earth watched the demise of the thunder lizards and began to prepare for the arrival of mankind.

Researchers in the physiology department at the University of Adelaide have been working with flies to determine how the insects judge the speed of moving objects.

Surely everyone should realise that no good can come from the unholy union of science and flies.

Severe tropical storms are believed to have triggered the appearance of the 30-metre-deep (almost 100 feet) hole, which swallowed a three-storey building and left an eerily symmetrical wound in the Earth. Surprisingly, no human lives were lost, despite unsubstantiated reports by a local newspaper claiming that a security guard was killed.

Sinkholes are normally formed when there is an excess of water in the soil that makes it too heavy for empty “voids” below the surface to continue supporting. The poor quality of sewage systems in Guatemala (a sewage leak was blamed for the appearance of another sinkhole there in 2007), as well as torrential downpours from recent tropical storms are believed to have combined in the creation of the sinkhole, which some experts are predicting could grow even larger.

Conspiracy theories abound, with people claiming that everyone from aliens to demons (and probably a few human governments) are to blame. But just as a Vegas magician earns his living, might the sudden appearance of this sinkhole in Guatemala be a cunning act of misdirection—intended to draw our attention away from some of the other holes in our planet?

Keep reading to find out about a few more places that are probably teeming with tentacled horrors.

The Great Blue Hole

Surely the only thing more awesome than a sinkhole on dry land is one underwater. The Great Blue Hole can be found off the coast of Belize and is 300 metres across (almost 1,000 feet) and reaches a total depth of 125 metres (410 feet).

The hole is believed to be the largest example of such a sinkhole worldwide and forms part of the Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System—a UNESCO protected location. It is a popular destination for scuba divers, who for some reason enjoy floating above unfathomable voids.

Dersios

Surely the only thing more awesome than an underwater sinkhole is one with a name as ominous as “Dersios”. Sounding like something ripped straight out of Greek mythology, the Dersios sinkhole is located on Mount Parnon in Arcadia, Greece.

Dersios has been known about since those ever-elusive “historical times”, but was not explored until 1974. Since then, estimates about the depth of the sinkhole have doubled to well over 150 metres (just under 500 feet). We might never know how deep Dersios actually is, but there’s a fair chance Pandora’s Box is down there somewhere.

Sima Humbolt and Sima Martel

The Venezuelan plateau of the Sarisariñama tepui is a place spoken of in fearful tones by the Ye’Kuana Indians, who tell that the forested mountain-top is home to an “Evil Spirit” who devours human flesh.

It was not until 1961 that a pilot flying above the region spotted a pair of enormous sinkholes amid the trees. As it turned out there are four related sinkholes in the location, the two largest being Sima Humboldt and Sima Martel. Both sinkholes contain living jungles at their bases… and possibly also dinosaurs.

Don’t get any ideas about Triceratops rides just yet though, as the Sarisariñama tepui remains off-limits to tourists.

Yesterday the police reported that they had seized a cache of weapons belonging to an Adelaide Doomsday cult. Twelve properties connected to the Agape Ministries cult were raided by police, uncovering more than 20,000 rounds of ammunition, several unregistered firearms, explosives and detonators.

The word “agape”, usually taken to describe “wide open” (like this :O) actually has a seperate meaning in Christian theology, where it is is used to describe the intense feelings of love that God has for mankind. How that translates into hiding high-powered ammunition in the steel frame of your bed, I don’t know.

Police are still searching for the leader of the cult, known as “Brother Rock”, which… and let’s be honest about this, sounds like it came out of a novel, or at least an episode of Criminal Minds.

It is believed that Agape Ministries was collecting funds (it allegedly asked all members of the ministry to contribute 10% of their total earnings) in order to establish a new Christian colony on a Pacific island, ahead of the world ending in 2012 (gee, that’s original).

But after a recent spate of television advertisements alerted me to the fact that many companies still make use of MSG in their food products, I decided to find out what all the fuss was about.

The commercials, complete with ominous music and men with unrealistically deep voices, seem to infer that something dangerous is going on here… but what do the men in white coats think?

The first “real” concerns about MSG arose in 1968, when a Doctor named Robert Ho Man Kwok wrote a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine complaining about a variety of symptoms that he frequently suffered after eating at Chinese restaurants. Numbness, a general feeling of weakness and palpitations were among the symptoms described by Kwok, and thus the term “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” was born.

Since then, MSG has come under scrutiny from a number of investigative bodies, none of which have been able to prove any direct correlation between the substance and the symptoms of Chinese Restaurant Syndrome (or CRS).

This includes research conducted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, the Select Committee on GRAS Substances, the Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Health Organization, the European Community’s Scientific Committee for Foods and the American Medical Association.

The fact that so many people remain dubious about MSG, says far more about the power of suggestion than it does about the dangers of food additives. It is astounding to think that—despite research by a number of reputable bodies indicating evidence to the contrary—a statement made more than 40 years ago can effect our behaviour and invoke such fear.

The advertisements that I mentioned earlier exploit this, intimidating consumers into spending more money on “all natural” snacks, lest they develop migraines, fall into comas or have heart attacks.

To MSG or not to MSG? That is the question. But current research seems to indicate that we should all be far more afraid of our mobile phones than of our packet noodles.

It’s weird, “going away”. For a time you live somewhere else, you look out at a different view and then—before you know it—you’re back again and it’s as though none of it ever happened. In a lot of ways going on a holiday isn’t that different from visiting Narnia. No matter what adventure and whimsy you encounter on your journeys when you get back everything seems just the same as it’s always been. The mundane settles over your life once more and the scent of pine trees is replaced with that of mothballs.

And that all sounds a little more depressing than I intended it too. As a self-professed hermit, I believe that the benefits of being home cannot be ignored. No longer are you forced to climb trees in search of wild fruit for your supper, but can rely on the comforts of a microwave and a well-stocked freezer. For the record, I don’t currently own a microwave because I don’t trust them. But if any microwave companies want to send me a microwave for free (preferably one capable of time travel and/or the remote detonation of fireworks) my opinion could well change.

Enough! That’s enough! The point is that I’m back. But surely the world didn’t stop turning while I was away, surely there were still some sort of “important events of note” that I missed out on. Of course there was.

Hugh Hefner saved the Hollywood sign. I first learnt that the Hollywood sign was in dire peril while watching Ellen, something that is becoming an alarmingly frequent habit of mine. At the time she was calling for donations to save the iconic letters and revealed that no less than $900,000 was needed to prevent them from redeveloping the area around it.

“Pfft,” I said aloud in my empty hotel room. “Why, surely $900,000 is but a drop in the pan for many Hollywood residents. Surely the sign is not in such dire perils as this Ellen would have me believe!”

A mere one day later my powers as the world’s most powerful clairvoyant was proven, with the announcement that Hugh Hefner (I think he has something to do with magazines, but I wouldn’t know anything about that) had single-handedly donated the required funds in order to save the Hollywood sign from certain destruction.

The thing that worried me about this was: how long until “They” (you know… Them) start asking for even more money to ensure the continued existence of the sign? Surely the future of the Hollywood sign is still “hanging over a barrel of monkeys” (I messed that up, didn’t I?), as they say.

Actually, no. As it happens, the Hollywood sign itself was never really in peril at all and the fact of the matter (like anyone cares about those) is that it was merely the uninhabited land to the west of the sign that was in question. This had more to do with displacing wildlife (they have wildlife in Los Angeles? Surely that vixen, Ke$ha, doesn’t count…) than it did with saving any sign.

So what exactly did Heff contribute his hard-earned dollars for? Does he even know what’s going on anymore? Oh yeah, apparently it was part of a deal to buy the actual land that the Hollywood sign occupies; a deal that also involved Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. Neither of them seemed to get nearly as much media attention as Hugh Hefner did, which I guess is to do with their relative lack of involvement with marvelous female breasts.

An oil-tanker leaks into the Gulf of Mexico. This is one of those news stories that makes me genuinely sick to my stomach. But as an oil-swilling inhabitant of the Earth, it’s difficult to point the finger. The fact is we’re all reliant on oil and it’s this reliance that makes such horrifying environmental disasters possible in the first place.

The great “climate change debate” that has filled our news screens in recent months seems to miss the point entirely, because whether or not human beings are responsible for climate change does little to acknowledge the countless ways in which we are undoubtedly damaging the planet every day in pursuit of full gas tanks.

It’s disgusting and disasters like this should be enough motivation alone for us to investigate alternative energy sources…

Like nuclear fusion.

“Nuclear fusion, what?” I hear you say. “Isn’t that the foolish stuff of science fictions?”

Well yes, of course it is, but that’s not going to stop a bunch of hot-shot scientists from firing the world’s biggest laser in the hopes of creating the Earth’s tiniest star (there’s a whole sort of philosophical appeal to that statement that means I’m sticking to it, even if somebody tells me it’s hopelessly incorrect).

The aptly-named National Ignition Facility began “powering up” it’s lasers last week, as part of a plan to fire 192 intersecting beams of light at a single point in the hopes of creating a reaction six-times hotter than the centre of our own sun.

Of course it’s not dangerous. Never is with these scientist types.

It’s been nice knowing you.

Tourists are still travelling to the site of the eruptions, Fimmvörðuháls in southern Iceland which occupies a space between two glaciers. The journey to see the fire in the ice is not without it’s dangers, however, as two tourists died from exposure earlier this week after hiking into the mountains without appropriate equipment.

Hundreds of people have reportedly left the area since the eruptions began. So far, the Fimmvörðuháls eruption has produced a 300 metre (almost 1,000 feet) crack in the earth and volcanologists (who wouldn’t want that as a job title?) are continuing to report the emergence of fresh lava to the north of where the activity began.

The coconut crab (or Birgus latro if you’re in Ancient Rome) is believed to be about as big as an arthropod can possibly be in Earth’s current atmosphere. The crabs can be found along many Indo-Pacific coastlines, terrorising villagers (or maybe just me) with their pincers.

At night, while sensible humans have sealed themselves away and performed the appropriate warding rites, the coconut crabs emerge. Each member of the species possesses ten legs, the front pair consisting of claws with which they can lift objects weighing up to 30 kg (or 64 lbs, for those of you who aren’t down with the metric system). These claws are powerful enough to puncture the hard shell of coconuts, as well as—assumedly—human skulls.

The next four legs are strong enough that the species uses them to climb vertically up objects such as up the trunks of coconut palms—not to mention all the way up your body in order to eat your face off.

Coconut crabs are capable of living for as many as 30 years and are considered by the inhabitants of some islands to contain the spirits of Taotao Mona, “ancient people” that haunt the land.

Dubbed “2010 AL30″ in what is an obvious attempt to render it extremely uninteresting, the alleged asteroid came within 135,000 kilometres (less than 85,000 miles) of the Earth.

Some experts suggested that object could have been a man-made rocket from an early space mission, but NASA have since stated that it appears to have been an asteroid 10-15 metres (up to 50 feet) wide based on observations of the object’s orbit.

Thanks Rolling_Go.