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Name : The Gates of Hell
Location : Karakum desert , Turkmenistan
The “Gates of Hell” in Turkmenistan are also known as the Darvaza gas crater.
Coordinates:40.252501987265276 , 58.43959946915778
Why it ’s incredible : The total gas volcanic crater has been on fire for more than 50 long time .
The " Gates of Hell , " also known as the Darvaza gas volcanic crater after a nearby village , is a methane- and fire - fill volcanic crater in Turkmenistan ’s desert .
Soviet scientists set the crater ablaze thinking the fire would die down within a few weeks.
There areseveral different accountsof when and how the Gates of Hell formed , but the most widely circulated story is that the volcanic crater opened in 1971 after a Soviet natural gas boring rig by chance strike a natural flatulence reservoir . ( Turkmenistan was a organic democracy of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1991 . )
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The puncture caused the soil around the rig to collapse , take the drilling infrastructure down with it and create a giant passing water from the reservoir . As soon as the ground opened , methane gas and other noxious fumes began wafting from the volcanic crater , which is roughly 230 feet ( 70 time ) in diam and 100 invertebrate foot ( 30 m ) deep . This prompted geologist to fall up with a sheer plan to avert a possible environmental disaster — masses in neighboring villages becoming poisoned by the peeled gases , for deterrent example .
Shortly after the crater opened , Soviet scientists set its walls alight , thinking the fire would burn off the methane within a few weeks before dying down . But rather , the fire kept burn .
Fifty - three years after — and despite Turkmenistan ’s presidentannouncing plans to end the Gates of Hell — the Darvaza natural gas volcanic crater is still a raging hell . The volcanic crater sits atop the Amu - Darya Basin , a extremely productive oil and born petrol province thatstretches across Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan . Huge measure of natural gas — predominantly methane — seep through Earth ’s crust across the basin , so " we should n’t be surprised [ the Darvaza crater ] exists,“Mark Ireland , a senior reader in muscularity geoscience at Newcastle University in the U.K. , toldNational Geographic .
The crater is likely connected to stores of flammable methane gas that leave ostensibly straight-out fuel for the fire .
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The charred remains of the drilling rigging are thought to be somewhere inside the crater .
The fiery glow is seeable from miles away , according toAtlas Obscura , and the site has become one of the land ’s top tourist attraction , draw around 10,000 visitant per twelvemonth . The crater also gained internet fame in 2019 , when Turkmenistan ’s chairman Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedovreleased a videoof himself driving a rallying railcar and perform donuts on the border of the volcanic crater .
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