Sinkholes: What on earth’s happening?

Grown men shed tears when they discovered eight vintage Corvette luxury cars were swallowed by a sinkhole when one opened up in the middle of the Corvette Museum in Kentucky in 2014.

Sinkholes are patches of the earth surface that collapse, forming an abyss. In urban areas they have swallowed entire houses and parking lots.

Security cameras have captured the collapse of sinkholes in streets, roads, freeways and beaches. So why do sinkholes happen? And can we predict them? Are they naturally occurring? Has human activity made them a more common occurrence?

One only needs to look at the different layers of rock cutaways on freeways to realise the earth is a dynamic thing, transformed by not only plate tectonics, volcanoes, earthquakes but also weather, plants and humans.