The Gates of Hell | Hacker News Reader

The Gates of Hell

atlasobscura.com

133 pointsjoak65 comments

A coal seam has been burning for 6000 years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Mountain

A long list of similar fires:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire

In Colorado, coal fires have arisen as a consequence of fluctuations in the groundwater level, which can increase the temperature of the coal up to 300 °C, enough to cause it to spontaneously ignite.

Oklo, Gabon had an underground nuclear reaction for hundreds of thousands years: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph241/zhao1/

This sentence is neat “In the hundreds of thousands of years operating as a nuclear reactor, Oklo never had a meltdown or explosion.”

Ah, now it makes sense why that nuclear startup is called Oklo. Especially if they can market that hundred thousand year track record!

Interesting. Presumably that would have been a good source of genetic mutations for early life?

I wonder how much green house gasses come from these kind of fires in the world.

Not an amount that even remotely matters. Traffic in a day is probably many orders of magnitude more than these put out in a year.

I don't know 3% seems small but significant...

"Across the world, thousands of underground coal fires are burning at any given moment. The problem is most acute in industrializing, coal-rich nations such as China.[7] Global coal fire emissions are estimated to cause 40 tons of mercury to enter the atmosphere annually, and to represent three percent of the world's annual CO2 emissions.[8]"

From the wikipedia article above

Hard to estimate how much coal is burning per year but the answer seems to be a significant amount. Up to 1% if global CO2 from China (second largest coal reserves at time of writing). This would potentially put the figure at a reasonable level.

https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2009/3084/pdf/fs2009-3084.pdf

Here is another one that's more recent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire

I think there's one just a couple a miles from where I live.

Here it is, almost a 100 years ago:

https://localhistory.boulderlibrary.org/islandora/object/isl...

I visited this in 2012 while motorbiking to the Pamir Highway.

At the time, it was less known, and certainly hadn't attracted the "tourist destination" classification that it now has.

I had a vague GPS point, and we spent a good 4-5 hours riding around getting the bikes stuck in the 5km of deep, soft sand that lies between the North/South road of Turkmenistan and the 'Gates of Hell'.

To our frustration, night fell without locating the spot, and we started the arduous task of heading back to the road.

As defeat settled in, I turned to see a patch of clouds in the sky cloaked in a deep umber glow, projected from the fire below.

We followed the glow in the sky, and came upon the pit. It was completely mesmerising, two hours passed before we spoke a word.

Pictures for the interested:

https://travel.ninjito.com/images/2012-06-01-StanTour/SLR/qx...

Also, the infamous 'camel spiders' live here, and are particularly scary: I got chased a solid 200m by one. When I thought I'd shaken it, it appeared 10 seconds later on the nape of my neck.

How hard was the visa to get back then? Turkmenistan has a rep for being hard to visit!

The 'trick' back then, which I understand is still up to date is to request a transit visa, as opposed to a tourist visa, which requires/required a paid government guide at all times.

When you visited the embassy, if you were nice enough, had a chat with the consular staff, showed enthusiasm and had a cup of tea, they would issue a 7 day transit visa which you could pick up at the border of your choice.

If not, you'd get a 3 day, pre-dated visa stuck in your passport, which meant organizing a X-month trip around a three day window - tricky to say the least!

Camel spiders: Big. Scary. Harmless.

Excerpt: "The Gates of Hell crater was created in 1971 when a Soviet drilling rig accidentally punched into a massive underground natural gas cavern, causing the ground to collapse and the entire drilling rig to fall in. Having punctured a pocket of gas, poisonous fumes began leaking at an alarming rate.

To head off a potential environmental catastrophe, the Soviets set the hole alight, figuring it would stop burning within a few weeks."

Maybe they could try nuking it?

https://interestingengineering.com/soviet-engineers-detonate...

Nukes. The cause of, and solution to, all of the world's problems.

When force is not the solution to a problem, it just means you didn't apply enough of it!

Like it worked well with that whale (now more than) 50 years ago? https://politicalbombshow.com/2020/12/12/funniest-thing-that...

Reminds me of the time a drilling rig emptied a lake into a salt mine:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/lake-peigneur

Turkmenistan has essentially endless natural gas. They'd love to sell it but the Russian government is very focused on making sure that they stay as the only real buyer of their gas.

The Russian government seems very focused on ensuring that the central asian former soviet states remain as client states/economic dependants of Russia. As seen with recent events in Kazakhstan. And the efforts they put forth against anything like having real free/fair elections in places like Uzbekistan.

Surely the oligarchs can see the writing on the wall for the fossil fuels industry? I know it will take longer than most imagine for us to migrate, but these are not unintelligent people, are they diversifying yet?

from the point of view of a 55-65 year oligarch, they might be doing blunt math on their own expected remaining lifespan and the comfortable lifestyle they can live for the next 30-40 years, vs. projected future dates of absolute collapse of fossil fuel economy. could be a "not my problem..." approach to it.

Wouldn't they want their kids to live the same life?

The answer is we do plunder the planet like there's no tomorrow, notwithstanding what one ought think.

Surely Western oligarchs can see the writing on the wall about climate change?

There’s no writing on the wall for the fossil-fuel industry. Reality will bite back hard the technocrats who try to imprint said writing, because increasing energy costs and especially increasing heating costs in countries with temperate climate is not sustainable, society-wise.

I mean, the former communist leaders in my country did use to say “put an extra pull-over on” when we went through an energy and home-heating crisis of our own back in the ‘80s but that’s one of the main reasons why we’re now a “former” communist country, turns out people don’t like to freeze out in their own homes.

technocrats makes me think of a rpg I used to play. Called mage - the awakening. Who does it mean in this context? The writing I was thinking of was that new houses are getting those heat pumps that go down to -30c and electric cars are getting normal to see in every parking lot. Then its a matter of swapping the power generation which is happening already but slowly. In other words, I think market forces are the writing on the wall. But the lithium wars for battery production will be interesting.

Kazakhstan is interesting in that it has been right at the borders of Russian sphere of influence. Which Moscow accepted! What recently happened was an internal coup where the number two (Toakev, the president) overthrew the number one (Nazarbaev, First President) along with his family, breaking he power sharing agreement and overturning the country’s constitution.

Moscow came in when called upon, and apparently it was mainly to demonstrate the legitimacy of Mr. Tokaev. And now they are already packing their stuff and leaving (quite possibly without even leaving the airport).

Will be interesting what’s up next, specially since Putin had a warm relation with Nazarbaev (who’s nowhere to be seen ever since the crisis began)

Relevant update; Soon to be extinguished?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/08/turkmenistan-p...

FTA: “But the fate of the burning crater may be in limbo. In January 2022, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov ordered the government of Turkmenistan to begin researching how to put the fire out.“

(may have been added after you wrote your comment)

AtlasObscura is a great resource to take family or friends to unique places. One of the remarkable places we’ve found was Landschaftspark in Duisburg, Germany. It’s a disused industrial site that allows visitors to go high up the tall structures and ovens for a great overview of the area. Visit it when the sun sets and the structures are lit with different colored lights.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/landschaftspark-duisburg...

See also this interview with George Kourounis, who was able to take soil samples from the crater: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/15/1073331370/for-50-years-the-g...

Google Maps link, for those interested:

https://goo.gl/maps/w6Fg65CxYBi199Qp6

I'm a bit disappointed that this wasn't about Auguste Rodin's sculpture, The Gates of Hell:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gates_of_Hell

There's a copy outside the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, no admission charge.

The odd thing is the origin story despite being in the last 50-60 years is in dispute. There is a claim the collapse happened earlier in the 60s and the fire wasn't started until the 80s. I can't imagine you could see something like that and forget, so seems really odd that they can't clear this mystery up fairly easily.

Sorry for my ignorance but…can’t this be turned into an energy source?

Yes, but it hasn’t been considered economically viable to try. Another significant concern is if placing heavy equipment here would cause another collapse.

In theory, yes.

Practically, it's in the middle of nowhere. It has a clearly non-optimal shape for a boiler. You'd need to setup lots of piping and a steam turbine on potentially unstable ground. Since it's in the desert, there's no large body of water around so you would use a closed cycle system, meaning you need to turn steam back to liquid after you're done, limiting net power output. All to end up collecting a minor fraction of the energy, to send it... where?

it would be interesting to use it as a way to pump water and desalinated it, then use that clean water to reforest the dessert by making swells in the soil that collect the water. but don't know the area, the ocean might be pretty far away

> Turkmenistan

> the ocean might be pretty far away

That, sir, would be an understatement.

To be fair Turkmenistan does border the Caspian Sea (the world's largest lake).

The nearby Aral Sea has been pumped dry, and the Caspian sea is dropping at 7cm/year though: https://theconversation.com/the-caspian-sea-is-set-to-fall-b...

Reforest the desert… surely humans have fucked up the environment enough times to realise that ideas like this only end badly.

To mine Bitcoin, I assume.

Don't give the bitcoin bros any ideas

Wait that’s actually a great idea. It’s totally wasted now. One of the other comments say where would you send the power because it’s in the middle of no where. Small initial investment and some satellite internet and your off to the races.

I mean, it’s literally a complete waste right now, the Bitcoin infra might eventually become developed enough to complete cover the crater. Then you could potentially extinguish it and sell the gas.

What am I missing here?

> What am I missing here?

It would still be a complete waste.

Also all the work needed to set the plan in motion would probably be more expensive than just buying energy in a more convenient location.

Ideas like mining bitcoin with otherwise non-economical natural gas? Too late: https://blog.upstreamdata.ca/datacenters/

Something similar exists in Turkey, called Mount Chimaera: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Chimaera

  "Mount Chimaera was the name of a place in ancient Lycia, notable for constantly burning fires. It is thought to be the area called Yanartaş in Turkey, where methane and other gases emerge from the rock and burn."

I've seen it in person some number of years ago. It's really an amazing thing to see.

Would extinguishing this or other “eternal” fires qualify to be sold as carbon credits? Or would it actually be worse for global warming since carbon could escape as methane instead?

An opportunity to share one of my favorite websites from the old web…

https://www.entrances2hell.co.uk/

I remember having a laugh from that site. I probably found it on fark or somethingawful. I’m glad to see it still has hosting.

Sounds like a job for Red Adair! [1]

Too bad he's dead.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Adair

PSA: 230 feet ≈ 70 meters

Construct a giant dome over top it to deprive it of oxygen?

You can put the fire out, that's the "easy" part. The question is the gasses feeding it - you would not want to just let those leak out, you would need to harvest them, and somehow connect pipelines and sell the gas.

In fact, if you can pump out the gas fast enough, the fire will go out on its own.

No need to sell or transport: just mine *coin onsite via Star Link.

Why the /s ? That's actually an awesome idea!

Let's put together a prospectus, and get some investors.

You'd still have the gas and it would likely try to find a different way to the surface.

There really needs to be a disco there. Electric 6 opening night.

Also, this is one of those things that's constantly reposted on Redit - surprised it showed up here.

On a side note, Atlas Obscura is a great website.

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