THE DOOR TO HELL
Found burning in the barren wasteland of the desert of northern Turkmenistan, Central Asia, is a fiery pit called the Darvaza gas crater, commonly known as the ‘Door to Hell’. This hellish 30-metre-deep crater is believed to have been burning since 1971, although how it collapsed and was ignited remains a mystery. What we do know is that the crater remains alight due to a large amount of methane gas that’s being naturally pumped at high pressures from below the desert surface. Turkmenistan sits on the sixth-largest reservoir of natural gas in the world, and some geologists believe that there is enough fuel beneath the crater to allow the fire to rage for another 20 years.