Deep in the arid desert of Turkmenistan, a huge crater has been burning with the wrath of a thousand flames, night and day, day and night. Tourists flock to its precipitous edges, while after dark, spiders are drawn to its brilliant glow, hypnotically crawling to a fiery death. No-one knows how the pit, officially called the Darvaza crater, was first formed before it was set aflame. Perhaps there was simply no one around. Or maybe it’s classified. Some believe engineers were drilling for oil when a rig gave way and punched into a massive underground natural gas cavern, forming the huge crater, 70 metres wide and 30 metres deep. ‘There are thousands of little flames all around the edges and towards the centre. Then there are two large flames in the middle at the bottom, and that is probably where the drilling rig hole was for the natural gas extraction.’ But its mystery origin is now secondary, as there’s a bigger problem at hand – climate change. Burning gas 24/7 isn’t a great look in 2024.The Gate to Hell has been open since the 1980s – but it might finally be running out of gas. Do you think that the “Gate to Hell” occured naturally ?
