Today we discuss how a fiery pit in Turkmenistan has been burning for more than 50 years, new clues to the origins of cancer, and how ancient cities are hiding beneath the cover of forest canopies!
Today we discuss how a fiery pit in Turkmenistan has been burning for more than 50 years, new clues to the origins of cancer, and how ancient cities are hiding beneath the cover of forest canopies!
Gates of Hell
Cancer Clues
Hidden Jungle Cities
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Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/gates-of-hell-cancer-clues-hidden-jungle-cities
[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH]
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today, you’ll learn about a fiery pit that has been burning for more than 50 years, new clues to the origins of cancer, and how ancient cities are hiding beneath the cover of forest canopies!
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Calli, I’ve got a story today about one of the wildest places on earth.
CALLI: I know it's not Shark Week anymore (sad) but are we going back to the sea? The bottom of the ocean somewhere?
NATE: Not this time! Instead, we are going to…Turkmenistan! This former Soviet country borders Afghanistan and is home to a fascinating place known as…“The Gates of Hell”! Its a two hundred and thirty foot wide, 65 foot deep pit. Now that might not sound so impressive. But the entire pit is… on fire. And it’s been burning for more than 50 years! Recently, there’s been interest in trying to put the fire out, but that is going to be quite the challenge
.
CALLI: Oh that’s wild. Is this a naturally occurring thing?
NATE: It's a combination of natural phenomenon, and a whole lot of human intervention. Turkmenistan has a lot of underground natural gas deposits, and in 1971 the Soviets had a drilling rig there to try to extract these resources.
CALLI: This sounds like the start of an 80s action movie.
NATE: We’ll get to the action. The Soviet rig accidentally hit a giant subterranean gas crater. This destabilized the earth around the rig, causing the ground to collapse to make the pit, sucking the drilling rig down with it.
CALLI: Ok so that explains the pit, but why is it on fire? Did it catch instantly?
NATE: Well, the Soviets didn’t really want anyone to know about this accident, they thought it might be a bit embarrassing. So they started looking for a way to cover it up And well, someone suggested just…lighting it on fire.
CALLI: You’re telling me humans started this underground 50 year fire?
NATE: Oh yeah they did. It sounds odd at first, but they thought a fire would get rid of the rig, and maybe burn for a few weeks at most, no one thought it would burn for 50 plus years. There's been interest in extinguishing the fire in the years since, but no one has gotten even remotely close to extinguishing it. Even worse, we might not…be able to put it out. Explorer George Kourounis became the first person to reach the bottom of the pit in 2013, and what he found was a bit concerning.
CALLI: What kind of gear do you need to get into a burning pit? Is it like firefighting equipment?
NATE: Close, he used a lot of fire-resistant materials. He had a heat-resistant suit, self-contained breathing equipment, like a scuba diver would use, and fire resistant ropes and harnesses for repelling. He successfully made it to the bottom of the pit and started taking soil samples. But when he dug soil out of the ground, new fires sprung up. The holes he dug created new pathways for the gas to make it out of the ground.
CALLI: But what if we just put all those small fires out?
NATE: Well, maybe we could, but this suggests that the gas would just find another way to the surface, and if that were to happen, all it would take was one small flame or spark for the whole pit to light back up again!
CALLI: This has to be terrible for the environment.
NATE: Oh definitely. Researchers say the pit is leaking methane into the atmosphere, a harmful greenhouse gas, burning a ton of natural gas, and on top of all that, the pit spews toxic fumes into a nearby town.
CALLI: Oh I feel awful for those townspeople.
NATE: Interestingly enough, it's kind of become a bit of a tourist attraction. There aren’t any road signs advertising it, but a cottage industry has popped up with big tents for hosting visitors, and guides that will take you to the edge of the pit, but even the outside of the pit can be unbearably hot.
CALLI: How does the country feel about a drilling accident site becoming popular with visitors?
NATE: Well there has been talk in the past about developing it as a tourist attraction. In 2019 the country’s president even released a video of him driving a rally car around the pit, doing donuts beside the flames. But it might have more value if they can figure out a way to put it out. The country has the world's 4th largest known reserves of natural gas, and much of their economy is based on its production.
CALLI: So not only are there environmental and social benefits, there are economic benefits to putting it out?
NATE: There might be, but while many are looking for a way to put the fire out, no one has figured it out yet. And even if someone does, we don’t yet know if it is still possible to drill and harvest natural gas there.
CALLI: So for now, the Gates of Hell are still open.
NATE: It looks that way, but hopefully we’ll figure it out sometime in the next 50 years.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Nate, new research has come out giving us better insight into the causes of cancer! New research by a team of scientists in the UK has given us a ton of insights into the cellular mechanisms at the root of many cancers. The team did a genome analysis of more than 12,000 NHS cancer patients and found 58 unique mutations that can lead to cancer.
NATE: Genome sequencing? Haven't we been doing that for a while? What’s the new angle that is giving us so much more useful information?
CALLI: We’ve been using Next Generation Sequencing, or NGS, since the early 2000s. It helps us understand how genetic variations contribute to diseases. In oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer, it’s allowed us to study tumor cells. But until recently, we have only been looking at part of the picture.
NATE: If we are looking at the genome, the entire instruction manual for our bodies, what is there to miss?
CALLI: Well, NGS has two categories. Whole-genome sequencing and whole-exome sequencing. In the past, we’ve focused on whole-exome sequencing, which just looks at sections of the genome where the instructions for making proteins are.
NATE: Well that is the exciting part of the genome right?
CALLI: Right, and it's been super helpful in identifying cancer causing mutations. But there are thousands of other mutations in our genome outside the protein building areas. We’ve long ignored them because they don’t directly cause the disease. But new research shows that these mutations can lead to cancer.
NATE: How did we find these more complicated links to cancer?
CALLI: With whole-genome sequencing. Researchers cataloged all the other mutations in the genome that come from things like our own biology, our environment, and our lifestyle. How much sun do you get? Do you smoke? These mutations can help us understand what led to the actual cancer-causing mutations.
NATE: So who did we do all this research on?
CALLI: This recent study relied on the 100,000 Genomes project. It's a UK initiative to sequence genomes of 100,000 NHS patients all across the UK. Including more than 12,000 patients with rare diseases and cancers.
NATE: So what did we find in this specialized group?
CALLI: When researchers did the sequencing they were able to identify genetic patterns, what they call mutational signatures, that have a role in causing cancer. Researchers found 58 of them in these cancer patients, and they say these are kind of like fingerprints at a crime scene. They could give us clues into the origins of cancer.
NATE: So what kind of things cause these?
CALLI: Some mutations they could attribute to chemotherapy, meaning the cancer treatment itself may have caused the mutation, others came from external exposure to acids that can damage DNA, and they found some in specific organs that might be more sensitive to certain drugs than the rest of the body.
NATE: So now that we have this info, what can we do with it?
CALLI: Researchers still have a lot of work to do. But in the future, genomic analysis may be an early part of cancer treatment to learn what led to those other cancer-causing mutations. Researchers created a computer tool called fitMS which can help clinicians identify some of these mutational signatures, and aid in their treatment of cancer.
NATE: Wow, and the more of these we find, the better equipped we can be to fight cancer.
CALLI: Exactly, and there is still a lot of work to be done to find even more.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Calli I’ve got a pretty cool story about things hiding in the jungle, things you wouldn’t think could hide between some trees.
CALLI: Did someone discover a new animal species lurking in a distant jungle?
NATE: Not an animal. Think bigger: we’re talking entire cities. In May 2022, scientists in Bolivia’s Amazon Rainforest used helicopter-mounted lidar, a light-based sensing technology, to digitally peel back the dense canopy of the forest. What they found beneath shocked them: the ruins of a fully urbanized city hidden in the jungle since its last resident left more than 600 years ago.
CALLI: That’s incredible! I’ve heard of lidar before remind me how exactly it works.
NATE: I’ll explain. So the team took lidar equipment up in the air, both in aircrafts like I mentioned, and also mounted high in the trees to get a bird’s eye view of the territory. Then, the lidar fired down a grid of hundreds of thousands of infrared beams each second. Every beam shoots down, strikes something on the earth’s surface and bounces back up. This allows researchers to measure the distance the light travels to create a sort of 3D scan of the area and landscape. Using computers, the researchers were then able to digitally deforest the high resolution images and see what the world beneath looked like.
CALLI: So what exactly did they find? How many structures or streets were there?
NATE: They discovered city centers from the Casarabe Culture. They found miles of streets, and concentric rings of settlements that spread out like suburbs from the central city connected by raised causeways. They found a robust water system of reservoirs and canals that moved water throughout the area. Even 70-foot tall pyramids, and civic and ceremonial buildings that all pointed north-northwest, which researchers think was of cosmological importance.
It’s enough evidence to prove that these older Amazon civilizations from hundreds of years before written history arrived in the area, were far more advanced than previously thought.
CALLI: Nate, I keep wondering, though, why they were looking for a city in a jungle that was believed to be completely untouched by humans?
NATE: That’s actually an old European myth, Calli. Early colonizers saw a huge jungle and just assumed that the land was either uninhabited, or at best, inhabited by uncivilized indigenous people, a harmful stereotype. It’s very similar to the “noble savage” stereotype early American settlers gave to the indigenous people of the continental US.
CALLI: So then some of the European explorers like Percy Fawcett who went off in search of the Lost City of Z may not have been too off the mark!
NATE: Maybe not! What got some researchers really excited though was the advanced infrastructure and architecture that they found. Things like massive platforms and huge U-shaped temples. They really prove that this was not a collection of villages or a small town, it was a fully urbanized area.
CALLI: So is this a unique city? What do you think the odds are that there are similar ancient settlements hiding in the jungle?
NATE: Very good, Calli, VERY good. The researchers who discovered this city believe that within the next ten to twenty years, there are going to be a lot of similar discoveries.
CALLI: And will lidar be the way we find them?
NATE: It will, but we’re gonna have to act fast. The Amazon has been changing rapidly for decades as a result of deforestation, ranching, energy production, and the creation of roads and dams. As this continues, many currently lost cities are at risk of becoming permanently lost, without us ever knowing what we are paving over.
CALLI: Oh no! Is there anything we can do to prevent this?
NATE: Researchers are advocating for expanded Lidar testing of the Amazon through a project called The Earth Archive. The Earth Archive is a US-based non-profit that believes Lidar testing could help us address some of the pressing issues of the climate crisis. They’re working to map the most vulnerable areas first as they create a full scan of the planet.
CALLI: Saving history and the planet, I can get behind that.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up.
CALLI: A blazing pit known as “The Gates of Hell” has been burning nonstop in Turkmenistan for more than 50 years. But even with recent hopes to extract the natural gas beneath the pit, no one has figured out how to extinguish the flames.
NATE: New genetic analysis is helping us identify the mutations in our genomes that can lead to cancer. Analysis of tens of thousands of NHS patients is helping us understand the cellular changes and external factors that can lead us to develop cancer. Understanding these mutations can help us avoid and fight them in the future.
CALLI: With the help of light based radar technology, researchers have begun to discover long lost ancient cities in the Amazon that are far more advanced than we thought possible. If we want to continue finding these lost civilizations, though, we need to act fast. Deforestation and modernization of the amazon are quickly closing the door to finding these lost cities.