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| Science & Technology |
| This Mysterious Fire in Australia Has Been Burning For at Least 6,000 Years |
| 2022-01-04 |
| [Science Alert.com] In a national park a four-hour drive north of Sydney in Australia, a fire is smoldering out of control — and it's been doing so for at least 6,000 years. Known as 'Burning Mountain', the mysterious underground blaze is the oldest known fire on the planet. And some scientists estimate it may be far more ancient than we currently think. Located under Mount Wingen in the state of New South Wales (Wingen means 'fire' in the language of the local Wanaruah people, the traditional custodians of the land), this underground smolder is a coal seam fire — one of thousands burning at any one time around the globe. Once ignited, these subterranean fires are almost impossible to put out. Slowly but intensely, they travel through the coal seam, a layer of coal that naturally occurs beneath Earth's surface. "No one knows the size of the fire under Burning Mountain, you can only infer it," Guillermo Rein, a professor of fire science at Imperial College London in the UK, tells ScienceAlert. "It's likely a ball of around 5 to 10 meters in diameter, reaching temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius [1,832 Fahrenheit]," he explains. Rein visited Burning Mountain in 2014 — which was on his field trip bucket list. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #10 /\ One of my personal fav's. That buck sergeant was having no problem enjoying the skit for sure. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2022-01-04 15:15 |
| #9 It's hot it's damn hot; |
| Posted by: Dale 2022-01-04 15:09 |
| #8 Put some tanks etc. on one side and it will tip over and put out the fire. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2022-01-04 14:56 |
| #7 So just tow the whole country out to sea and submerge it briefly. It's an island, for cripe's sake! |
| Posted by: SteveS 2022-01-04 14:10 |
| #6 Pyrolytic combustion |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2022-01-04 11:17 |
| #5 Where do such fires get their oxygen? I often need a bellows just to keep my trash fire burning. And wouldn't the output gas be more CO than CO2? How does CO compare as a greenhouse gas? |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2022-01-04 11:09 |
| #4 To the eco-fanatic, Gaia is a conscious, living entity. So, either Gaia wants this, or can't do anything about it. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2022-01-04 11:00 |
| #3 Crusader, actually, it CAUSES global warming. And, it's Trump's fault, of course. |
| Posted by: Rambler in Virginia 2022-01-04 10:46 |
| #2 I blame global warming. |
| Posted by: Crusader 2022-01-04 10:40 |
| #1 Seems like it could be a model for a powerplant. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2022-01-04 10:14 |