One look at the frozen Lake Abraham, in Alberta, Canada, and you know something special is going on below the ice.

At first glance it looks a bit like pillars of ice have formed below the water, but the natural phenomenon is actually caused by bubbles of frozen Methane – and they’re surprisingly dangerous.

The Methane bubbles form when dead organic matter from plants or animals falls into the water and is consumed by the bacteria below.

The resulting methane is the waste (of sorts) of this bacterium, and it’s highly flammable, so probably best not to light up if you’re skating over the lake.

Watching the video above will give you just a little bit of an idea of the damage this stuff can do, and scientists also point out that it’s a significantly more potent threat to the world’s climate than even carbon dioxide.

So that’s not great.

On the bright side though, at least the bubbles do look pretty awesome when they’re frozen below. Let’s just hope they don’t come back to cause the end of the world!

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