A ring of sinkholes around a buried crater
A cenote is a natural sinkhole where the limestone ground has collapsed and exposed the groundwater below. The Yucatán Peninsula has no surface rivers to speak of, so this underground water is what its people have long relied on, and today it is also what visitors swim in. More than two thousand cenotes are registered, from open pools in the jungle to cave systems you enter through a hole in the ceiling.
Many of the cenotes sit along a ring about 180 kilometers across. That ring follows the edge of the Chicxulub crater, left by the asteroid that struck about 66 million years ago and ended the age of the dinosaurs. The crater is buried roughly a kilometer underground and is invisible from the surface. Scientists first found it in gravity and magnetic data, and a ring of cenotes seen in satellite images matched it.
Researchers think the rock weakened by the impact helps explain why the ground collapses into sinkholes along that line. Whatever the exact mechanism, the result is something you can actually do: put on a swimsuit and jump into the water.
From our Letsa Atlas Short · Watch on YouTube