In the desert area of Nevada (southwestern USA) there is a hole in the ground, and in it is an underground reservoir. It has not yet been possible to measure its depth, despite all attempts. According to an Indian legend, at night an evil spirit emerges from the hole and kills everyone who is nearby …
This unique super-deep sinkhole measuring 1.8 by 5.5 meters, located in the national park with the meaningful name of Death Valley, is called the Devil's Hole by locals and avoids approaching it. And the indigenous inhabitants of these places - the Paiuto Indians - claim that if you fall asleep near the Hole, you will never wake up. According to their legends, an evil spirit crawls out of the Hole at night.
Scientists began studying the failure relatively recently, after several proven cases of a sharp deterioration in well-being in people near it. According to geologists, the cave was formed about 500 thousand years ago. Surveys of deposits on its walls allow us to assert that it is not evil spirits that are responsible for the negative impact on people, but methane emissions from a reservoir in the depths of the mine. Where the methane comes from, experts still find it difficult to explain. “First you need to study what exactly is contained in the depths of the reservoir and what processes are taking place there,” says John Rockstone, a scientist at the Denver Institute.
And the processes, according to the researchers, are extremely strange. To begin with, gases do not come out of the Devil's Hole all the time. The pattern in their occurrences has not yet been established. According to Indian shamans, “an evil spirit feels when there is someone near the hole who can be strangled, and then he leaves his lair. The rest of the time he slumbers underground."
A bottomless abyss filled with water
The average distance to the water in the reservoir is 91 meters. Average because the water level in the reservoir fluctuates, and quite significantly. According to some reports, these ebb and flow depend on the gravitational influence of the moon.
The water temperature in the reservoir is about 33 degrees Celsius. The first attempt to measure depth was made at the beginning of the 20th century. She did not give a result. But a more solid attempt in 1999 ended in the same way. The end of the metal cable caught on something, apparently hitting the crevice, and had to part with it. The same fate befell the second lowered cable. Such a result of measurements looks so discouraging that there was a rumor that some large animal lives at the bottom of the reservoir, it is it that interferes with the researchers in their work.
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It seems that nothing remains but to believe the Indian legends about the evil spirit living in the Hole and that the Hole really stretches all the way to hell …
Plunging into darkness
In 1999, a controlled television camera was lowered into the reservoir, and with it - powerful searchlights. The experts who conducted the filming refrained from commenting, therefore, the press reported this dully. Only four years later, journalists managed to find out the details from the participants in that experiment.
At a depth of about 80 meters, the walls of the underwater well began to expand. After another hundred meters, the reservoir became so vast that the walls could not be seen at all.
At about 220 meters, the searchlights went out for some inexplicable reason. Further work of the movie camera took place in the dark.
At a depth of 230 meters, the camera began to twist and swing from side to side, as if it were caught in a whirlpool. When they began to lift her, for 15 seconds she fixed a bluish glow coming from somewhere below.
“It is possible that some forms of life, unknown to us, may exist in warm water saturated with methane, - says Professor Rockstone. - Surely there are geothermal outlets in the reservoir, which means that the probability of finding life there is very high. However, the depth and relief of the mine are such that its study is fraught with great technical difficulties. But it also promises a lot."
Anomalous zone
Most scientists agree that the Nevada Gap is a section of an ancient crack in the lithospheric plate, where parts of the plate have moved slightly from each other.
In areas of such cracks more often than in other places, ghosts, ball lightning, UFOs, disappearances of people, time shifts and similar phenomena are observed, experts on anomalous phenomena say. Perhaps it is the presence of a lithospheric fissure extending to a great depth that is the reason for the frequent appearance of UFOs over the Nevada desert. And so frequent that it led to the creation of the famous top-secret "Area 51" here, where, according to press reports, the wreckage of crashed alien vehicles and the bodies of aliens are stored.
