#fire

#fire

Turkmenistan Government Wants to Extinguish the Fire of "Gates of Hell"Deep in the middle of a remote Turkmenistan desert, hundreds of miles away from civilization, there’s an unusual tourist attraction that’s been dubbed the “Gates of Hell.” And for a good reason: it’s a large crater in the ground ringed with fire like it’s a nightmarish portal to an infernal underworld.The crater, about 190 feet in diameter and 70 feet deep, has been ablaze for more than fifty years. It’s difficult to reach, thanks to its remote location 160 miles from the country’s capital of Ashgabat. Yet, it’s popular with the small number of tourists who visit the country.Despite the supernatural name, the “Gates of Hell” is actually a collapsed crater that once swallowed a gas drilling rig in 1971. Back then, geologists concerned about escaping natural gas decided to set it on fire. They expected the fire to burn off within a few weeks - but the blaze has lasted since then.Now, Turkmenistan president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has had enough of the inferno and ordered the “Gates of Hell” to be closed. No witchcraft involved, though. Instead, he opted for science: Berdymukhamedov ordered the fire to be put out because of its ecological damage and hazard to the health of people living in nearby areas.Image:Tormod Sandtorv/Wikipedia#GatesofHell #crater #naturalgas #Turkmenistan #fire

Fire is Spherical in MicrogravityNow this is absolutely cool!In order to learn how fire spreads and behaves, scientists have created the Combustion Integrated Rack (CIR), launched to the International Space Station in 2008. The CIR is a facility that allows combustion investigations in microgravity. The experiments so far have been related to fire safety in space and understanding fire combustion. In their experiments, researchers have discovered that the flame on Earth is different from the flame in space. Thanks to a lower amount of gravitational force in space, flames tend to look spherical. It looks like those special powers or moves you have seen in anime, I know. It’s also interesting to note how gravity affects fire. According to NASA, ‘on Earth, hot gasses from the flame rise while gravity pulls cooler, denser air to the bottom of the flame. This creates both the shape of the flame, as well as a flickering effect. In microgravity, this flow doesn’t occur. This reduces the variables in combustion experiments, making them simpler and creating spherical shaped flames.’Image credit: NASA#fire #flame #gravity #microgravity #InternationalSpaceStation #NASA #combustion

The Bootleg Wildfire in Oregon is So Large It's Creating Its Own WeatherThe Bootleg fire in Oregon, which has been burning since July 6, has burnt more than 606 square miles - an area larger than Los Angeles. The fire has now become so intense that it has created its own weather.A satellite image posted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed the tremendous amount of smoke that the fire generated.Fire officials noted that the Bootleg fire has shown “aggressive surface spread with pyrocumulus development.”  Pyrocumulous clouds or flammagenitus clouds are formed by intense heating of the air from the surface due to volcanic eruptions or forest fires. The intense heat causes the air mass to rise, then moistures to condense on ash particles essentially becoming their own thunderstorms, complete with lightning and strong gusts of wind.The fire is "so large and generating so much energy and extreme heat that it's changing the weather," Marcus Kauffman said to CNN. "Normally, the weather predicts what the fire will do. In this case, the fire is predicting what the weather will do."#fire #wildfire #smoke #cloud #PyrocumulousCloud #FlammagenitusCloud #ForestFire #BootlegFire #weather

That Time When the Soviets Nuked a Gas Well That’s on Fire 🔥 for 3 YearsIn 1963, the Urta-Bulak gas well in Uzbekistan had a blowout deep underground that caused an estimated 12 millions of cubic meters of natural gas to vent uncontrollably every day and catch on fire. For the next three years, Soviet engineers tried everything they could think of to put out the fire, to no avail … so they decided to detonate a nuclear bomb to seal the well and stop the raging fire.Soviet physicists calculated that they’d need 30 kilotons of nuclear bombs - double of what was used in Hiroshima. In 1966, they drilled a borehole 1.4 km deep next to the estimated blowout region, lowered the bomb, sealed the top with concrete … and detonated it.Newspaper Pravda Vostoka of Tashkent described what happened next:“On that cold autumn day in 1966, an underground tremor of unprecedented force shook the ground with a sparse grass cover on white sand. A dusty haze rose over the desert. The orange colored torch of the blazing well diminished, first slowly, then more rapidly, until it flickered and finally died out. For the first time in 1,064 days, quiet descended on the area. The jet-like roar of the gas well had been silenced.”That was the first time a nuclear bomb was used to put out fires in a gas field, but it wasn’t the last: a few months later, Soviet engineers used a 47-kiloton nuclear bomb to seal a well and put out a fire at a nearby Pamuk gas field.#gas #naturalgas #nuclearbomb #USSR #fire #well #naturalgaswell #UrtaBulak #Uzbekistan

A Mud Volcano Exploded in the Caspian SeaNot to be outdone by the Gulf of Mexico setting the ocean on fire when a pipeline leaked natural gas that combusted into flames, the Caspian Sea decided explode a mud volcano.The explosion sent plumes of fire and black smoke into the air, as captured by this amazing video below.At first, it was reported that the explosion happened at an oil platform owned by Azerbaijan's State Oil Company or SOCAR, but that was denied. "No accidents occurred on the oil platforms or ships," said Gurban Yetirmishli, the director of the country’s seismological service, "This is a sign of a mud volcano. There are many mud volcanoes in the Caspian Sea, one of which erupted."Mud volcano is a landmass that is created by the eruption of mud, water and gases.#volcano #mudvolcano #explosion #fire #CaspianSea #eruption #volcanoeruption

'Eye of Fire': The Ocean is on Fire After a Pipeline Leak in the Gulf of MexicoThere's an 'eye of fire' in the ocean when an underwater pipe valve off the Ku Charly platform in the Gulf of Mexico. The platform, operated by Petróleos Mexicano (Pemex), is located off the coast of Ciudad del Carmen in the state of Campeche, Mexico.The fire was said to have started when fuel was leaked from a control valve of a gas pipeline 260 feet (80 m) underwater.Three firefighting boats battled the fire, which was reported to be under control.#fire #GulfofMexico #gaspipeline #ocean #MexicoVideo: Manual Lopez San Martin