From the vastness of space, these strange shapes look almost organic.
Long, brown masses drift through the deep blue. Each one sports a distinct, tapering tail.
To an astronaut, they resemble giant sea creatures gliding across the surface.
NASA scientists quickly ruled out any biological origin. Yet these mysterious formations still behave in unpredictable, violent ways.
What powerful force is sculpting these massive, shifting shapes along the coastline of Azerbaijan?
What has NASA stated about these strange shapes in our oceans
NASA spotted these unusual formations near the Absheron Peninsula in Azerbaijan.
They looked like giant tadpoles that sat in the Caspian Sea. NASA quickly realized they were massive islands of landmass. Each one had a rounded head and an elongated muddy tail.
The tails stretched outwards like giant brushstrokes made by a divine creator.
Initial expectations were that the oddities were land masses underwater. They actually turned out to be islands that formed via underwater eruptions in the region. Most islands in the sea are formed by lava flows.
That is where these islands were different, very different.
They were, in fact, made of mud, water, methane, and sediment under the surface. One island even produced an astonishing fireball in the past that almost took out a lighthouse nearby.
This is not normal behavior for an island. So what exactly was causing this odd happening underwater near Azerbaijan?
The Land of Firewas constructing islands, then erasing them without a trace
Azerbaijan is known around the world as the “Land of Fire”.
We know how some tectonic plates shift, which reshapes the Earth in real time. But under the Caspian Sea, something else was at play. Pressure was slowly building underwater. Trapped beneath layers of sediment and gas, the pressure has nowhere to go.
Over time, the pressure becomes too much.
Instead of lava, the Earth released a cold, muddy slurry underwater. NASA Science has noted that these muddy slurries erupt out of cracks in the seabed. This creates what geology calls mud volcanoes.
They erupt without warning and are exceptionally violent.
Satellite images from outer space looked like some kind of living creature with a tail. But further investigation proved they were nothing more than mud volcanoes. Proving that even satellite data can, at times, get things wrong.
NASA Science has noted that the region around Azerbaijan has at least 220 of these mud volcanoes. So what was happening under the surface to lead to these underwater islands forming?
Mud volcanoes are reshaping the region around Azerbaijan
These mud volcanoes prove that the Earth can reshape itself in more ways than one.
Deep beneath the surface, the planet is reshaping in real time. Thankfully, we have the capacity and technology to study this as it happens. The oddly shaped “creatures” turned out to be nothing more than mud volcanoes.
These mud volcanoes can erupt more than once, it turns out.
One such example is Xərə Zirə Adası, which erupted for the first time in 1961. It then waited several decades to violently erupt again in 2006. These islands do not follow our previous understanding of how landmasses form.
Islands in the Caspian Sea that are playing by their own rules
Unlike islands like Hawai’i, these were built by methane pushing cold mud upwards.
That mud rises rapidly, breaks the sea’s surface to form new muddy islands. But they are weak and fragile. Waves and currents immediately rip them apart. Which is what created the “tails” seen by NASA Science from outer space.
Geologist Mark Tingay noted that the tails formed from erosion. They are actually islands that are slowly being pulled apart.
NASA Science has used its telescopes in space to spot several odd happenings on Earth. But this one has shown us how some islands have a muddy tail, at least for some time, while they are ripped apart.