World’s ‘Most Beautiful’ Eternal Flame Reveals New Gas Source
Nestled behind a waterfall in western New York state is an eternal flame whose beauty is only surpassed by its mystery. It is one of a few hundred “natural” eternal flames around the world, fed by gas seeping to the Earth’s surface from underground, said Arndt Schimmelmann, a researcher at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind.
But even within this rarefied group, this flame is special. Perhaps lit by Native Americans hundreds or thousands of years ago, it is fed by a new type of geologic process that hasn’t been recorded before in nature, Schimmelmann told OurAmazingPlanet.
Typically, this type of gas is thought to come from deeply submerged, ancient and extremely hot deposits of shale, a kind of rock. Temperatures have to be near the boiling point of water or hotter to break down the large carbon molecules in shale and create smaller molecules of natural gas, Schimmelmann explained.
A curiosity “nobody believed in”
In this case, though, the rocks that feed the flame are only warm — “like a cup of tea” — as well as geologically younger than expected, and shallow, Schimmelmann said. Those findings suggest the gas is being produced by a different process, whereby some sort of catalyst is creating gas from organic molecules in the shale, he said.
“This mechanism has been proposed for many years, but it was a curiosity that nobody believed in,” Schimmelmann said. “We think there’s a different pathway of gas generation in this location and that there probably is elsewhere as well.” If that’s true, and gas is naturally produced this way in other locations, “we have much more shale-gas resources than we thought,” he added.
Originally, Schimmelmann and his colleague Maria Mastalerz, of the Indiana Geological Survey, were tasked by the U.S. Department of Energy to estimate the total amount of methane that seeps out of the ground in parts of the eastern United States. To help, they recruited Giuseppe Etiope, a researcher at the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Italy, and world expert on natural gas seeps and eternal flames, Schimmelmann said.
A flame eternal
Etiope guided the researchers to the aforementioned eternal flame in Chestnut Ridge Park in western New York, calling it “the most beautiful in the world,” Schimmelmann said. They also looked at a “permanently burning pit” in Cook Forest State Park in northwestern Pennsylvania, although this eternal flame is not as special because it’s supplied by an old gas well, Schimmelmann said. The team reported their findings on the New York eternal flame in a studypublished in the May issueof the journal Marine and Petroleum Geology.
Their results were consistent with estimates that about 30 percent of all methane emitted worldwide comes from natural sources such as these gas seeps. When possible, it can actually be beneficial to set fire to these gas seeps to create “eternal flames.” Fire converts methane to carbon dioxide, whichtraps about 20 times less heat than methane in the atmosphere, Mastalerz told OurAmazingPlanet.
However, “macro seeps” that can be lit and form eternal flames remain rare. In most cases, gas percolates through soil — where methane-eating bacteria convert it into carbon dioxide, Schimmelmann said — or it comes out in a location that can’t sustain combustion. In the case of the New York flame, gas percolates in a naturally hollowed-out chamber, where the flame flickers eternally.
The New York gas seep also features the highest concentration of ethane and propane of any seep in the world, according to the study.
http://www.livescience.com/29510-eternal-flames-natural-gas-source.html
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After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.
Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she
Did this.
I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?
The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used—
She stopped crying.
She thought our flight had been canceled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late,
Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her—Southwest.
She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.
Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.
Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.
She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.
She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag—
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.
To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.
And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers—
Non-alcoholic—and the two little girls for our flight, one African
American, one Mexican American—ran around serving us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.
And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands—
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,
With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.
And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.
Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped
—has seemed apprehensive about any other person.
They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.
Not everything is lost.
"Smeared Skies by Matt Molloy
Matt busted out into the art scene with his smeared sky photos. Stacking 100 to 200 photos into one, he gave a new way to enjoy the view above us.
Oh my fuck.
I am sitting at my computer screen with my mouth open, because I just cannot fathom how someone writes something this amazing.
beautiful
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Cosplayholy crap, this is just gorgeous!
Ohhhh Link~~ my hero!
I ART THIS
We aren’t the biggest fans of winter weather, but we are obsessed with this rainbow igloo. While visiting his girlfriend’s family in Canada, engineering student Daniel Grey created this colorful work of art in their backyard. The ice bricks were created from filling over 500 milk cartons with water and food coloring. This chilly project took over 150 hours to complete, but the end result looks totally worth it. Talk about an impressive house guest!
Awesome dream catcher nails by Elena S.!
