A video has been circulating on social media showing what appears to be a spring in Mecca, from which water and fire emanate at the same time. A video with a burning fountain spread on the Internet, and pilgrims approached the place of its appearance. At the same time, in the comments to the news, it is reported that such a “compatibility of two incompatible elements” is allegedly described in the Qur’an as a sign of the approaching end of the world. What could be the reason for such natural phenomena? Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yury Kostitsyn answered this question to Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
This “mystical” phenomenon is based on the most common geological processes. Groundwater permeates the entire earth’s crust, and if ultrabasic rocks are found at a certain depth, then under certain conditions and temperatures (100-400 degrees), they enter into a chemical reaction. A serpentinization process occurs: the primary minerals of ultramafic rocks, olivine and pyroxene, are replaced by secondary ones, serpentine. In this case, hydrogen is released, and if there is carbon scattered in the rocks, then methane, said the academician of the Russian Academy. of Sciences Yury Kostitsyn (Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry named after VI Vernadsky RAS – For the curious: during this reaction, iron is oxidized in the composition of olivine and pyroxene, for this, in simple words, it is “taken ” oxygen due to the splitting of water molecules, and as a result, free hydrogen and methane are formed, both gases are combustible, and therefore there is nothing special about the fact that they ignite when they reach the surface of the Earth. Hydrogen is also formed, but in smaller quantities. A well-known Russian petrologist, an employee of our institute, Leonid Vladimirovich Dmitriev, and his colleagues described this phenomenon a quarter of a century ago. The publication in the “Russian Journal of Earth Sciences” it is dated November 1999. So I can assure you that there is no need to fear the end of the world due to the appearance of such a “source”.
