The Enigma of Turkmenistan’s Fiery ‘Gates of Hell’Imagine coming across a fiery pit in a lonely desert. The giant natural gas crater in the Karakum Desert had been burning non-stop since Soviet geologists accidentally ignited it in the 1970s. The story dates back over 50 years when a Soviet drilling team accidentally created the Darvaza Gas Crater, which was now popularly known as ‘Turkmenistan’s Gates of Hell.’ However, scientists were baffled by the fact that no one knew why these flames continued to burn or where they came from. According toLive Science, “For more than five decades, a massi…