Featured Image Credit: Instagram / fishlikemike/ Indiana University
Topics: New York, Science, World News, Environment
Niamh Shackleton
Topics: New York, Science, World News, Environment
While you'd think an eternal flame would need to be far away from water, this isn't the case.
There are said to be nine natural eternal flames across the globe, one of which can be found in New York.
The famous flame is located at the appropriately named Eternal Flame Falls, inside Shale Creek Preserve, a section of Chestnut Ridge Park.
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It was recently videoed by fisherman, photographer and gym teacher Mike Loughran in a clip that's generated over one million likes on Instagram.
"A rare naturally occurring eternal flame!" he captioned the viral clip.
"This flame is one of the 9 big naturally occurring eternal flames we have here on earth. Some argue there are more, but many refer to the 9 big ones.
"This flame here is one of the more famous eternal flames due to it’s location inside of a waterfall. They occur because of cracks in the earth that leak a combination of natural gases.
"They can be lit by a lightning strike or human involvement. Some say this flame was lit by Native Americans hundreds of years ago…
"Makes you wonder how many more are out there that haven’t been discovered of have just lost their flame over time… some say there are/have been over a hundred over time!"
The other eight natural flames are said to be located in Centralia in Pennsylvania, the Jharia Coal Fields in India, the 'Door To Hell' in Turkmenistan, the Olympos valley and national park in Turkey, the Guanziling hot spring in Taiwan, the Lava lake of Erta Ale in the Ethiopian desert, Azerbaijan's Absheron peninsula and, finally, Kirkuk in Iraq.
In regards to how the Eternal Flame Falls' phenomena continues to burn bright, as Mike said, the flame is fed by gas seeping to the Earth's surface from underground - a reasonably new type of geological process.
As per LiveScience, the type of gas that's keeping the New York flame alight usually comes from deeply submerged, ancient and extremely hot deposits of shale.
Typically the rocks' temperatures need to be near boiling point Arndt Schimmelmann, a researcher at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, explained, but the rocks at Eternal Flame Falls are only warm 'like a cup of tea'.
The rocks are also geologically younger than expected.
These findings have lead some scientists to believe that the gas being produced is done so by a different process and is created from organic molecules in the shale.
Schimmelmann went on to say that if gas is produced in the same way in other locations, then 'we have much more shale-gas resources than we thought'.