There are many lakes on Earth. There are large lakes - so much so that they are called seas, there are also small, unnamed. There are salty lakes with water of an unusual color, covered with legends. Lake Cheko is also remarkable in its own way. It is located in Siberian forests - in the Krasnoyarsk region, 760 km north-east of the regional center.
Characteristics and history of lake exploration
Lake Cheko is a freshwater body of water. It is small in area, its length is less than a kilometer - 708 m, and its width is only 364 meters. At the same time, the lake has a very impressive depth - 50 m. The Kimchu River flows into Cheko. The lake is inhabited by swans, which explains its second name - Swan.
For the first time the lake was marked on the map in 1929, because before that the area was not sufficiently explored. The lake was studied in detail by Soviet researchers in the 60s, and its age was estimated at 5-10 thousand years.
There are various hypotheses regarding the origin of the lake, and none of them can be called perfect. According to one hypothesis, the Kimchu River washed out a cavity in a mountain fault, but this assumption does not agree with the depth of the lake, and it is located in a tectonically calm area. According to another version, Lake Cheko is a volcanic crater filled with water. The lake is indeed located at the base of the paleovolcanic complex, but its lower layers are located higher than other lakes of volcanic origin. Finally, Cheko, like many other Siberian lakes, could have arisen as a result of water filling voids formed during the thawing of permafrost. But such lakes usually have steep shores and flat bottoms, and Cheko is a cone-shaped funnel.
Lake Cheko and the Tunguska meteorite
An interesting version of Cheko's origin was put forward by Italian geologists who explored the lake in 1999. They used various methods of study - chemical, biological, radar, hydroacoustic - and came to two unexpected conclusions.
Firstly, 10 m below the bottom of the lake there is something that differs from the surrounding material in greater density. Secondly, judging by the accumulation of sediments at the bottom of the lake, its age is much less than previously thought - according to Italian researchers, it arose about a hundred years ago, approximately in 1908.
The year that Italian scientists considered the lake to be the date of birth was marked by a mysterious event that has not yet received an unambiguous explanation - the fall of the Tunguska meteorite. The epicenter of that disaster was located just 8 km from Lake Cheko. In this regard, a hypothesis was put forward that Cheko is a crater formed by a fragment of the Tunguska meteorite. This can explain both the conical shape, and the great depth, and the mysterious object at the bottom of the lake. This assumption is also supported by the magnetic anomaly discovered in this place in 2009.
However, the version of the meteoric origin of the lake cannot be considered proven yet. Further research is needed to acknowledge or disprove it.
