Chile's startlingly perfect sinkhole plunged 650 feet, and investigators blamed a mine

A viral Reddit post is drawing renewed attention to one of the world's eeriest mining disasters, showing a nearly perfect circle in the Chilean desert that plunges more than 650 feet into the ground. 

Though the image looks almost computer-generated, investigators found that the cause was all too real.

In 2022, the massive sinkhole opened near the Alcaparrosa mine in Tierra Amarilla, in Chile's Atacama Region. An image of it later resurfaced on Reddit, where it has reached over 30,000 users.

What happened?

One user shared the image of a near-perfectly circular sinkhole described as dropping "650+ feet straight down into the earth."

Chile's geology agency, Sernageomin, said on the social media platform X that the collapse occurred on land operated by Canadian Lundin Mining, at the Alcaparrosa copper mine. 

"There is a considerable distance, approximately 200 meters (656 feet), to the bottom," Sernageomin's director, David Montenegro, reported.

"We haven't detected any material down there, but we have seen the presence of a lot of water."

Later investigations found that mining operations at the Alcaparrosa had created a subsurface void that eventually gave way, according to Reuters. 

Afterward, Lundin temporarily halted operations and was sanctioned. 

In 2025, nearly three years after its first appearance, the massive sinkhole remained unfilled, and a court ruling hoped to repair the environmental damage, Reuters reported. 

"Ever since the sinkhole occurred ... we've lived in fear," Rudy Alfaro, whose home is 800 meters from the site, told Reuters. A health center and preschool are nearby, too, Alfaro said.

"We were afraid it would get bigger, that it would expand, move toward the houses."

The collapse turned what had seemed like a bizarre geological event into a high-profile warning about the risks of underground extraction.

Why does it matter?

When underground cavities collapse, the danger can extend beyond a mine site, potentially affecting nearby land, infrastructure, and groundwater. 

For communities living near tunnels or active extraction zones, this can create uncertainty about what is happening beneath their feet.

While metals from mines are essential for everything from construction to energy systems, poorly managed operations can leave environmental damage behind. In this case, the collapse showed how underground problems can remain invisible until the surface suddenly gives way.

"That looks pretty ominous in the middle of the road," one person commented under the Reddit post.

"That's not a sinkhole. That's a collapsed mine," another added.

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