Places That Could Have a Portal to Another World
One of the coolest inventions the sci-fi genre has ever produced is the concept of a portal to another world or dimension. These literal gateways to the unknown have made their way into everything from movies to video games, allowing for characters to travel incredible and sometimes seemingly impossible distances. It truly is a shame that such a concept has never seen the face of the Earth. Then again, we haven’t explored everywhere on the Earth.
The great thing about the unknown is that you can’t be proven wrong, and that’s exactly what I intend to take advantage of. There are places on the Earth that are incredibly hard to explore, while some are seemingly impossible to even reach. These places instill a sense of wonder and discovery in to many who learn about them and are excellent places for aliens or ancient civilizations to hide a portal to another dimension or world. Most of these places are in extreme environments that require costly technology to arrive in, while some of them are just a road trip away. Regardless, they are places that have yet to be proven to not hold a magnificent gate to another world.
Mariana Trench, Pacific Ocean
Again, you’ve probably heard of this place. Famous for being the deepest point in the ocean, having only been visited by three people ever, and for being mistaken with a band of a similar name on many of my Google searches, Mariana Trench is a natural wonder just off the coast of Guam. The lowest point, the Challenger Deep, is so deep underwater that it could hold Mount Everest and still have 2km of water still above it. You may also remember the Mariana Trench, and specifically the Challenger Deep, as the location of (SPOILER) a portal to another world in the movie Pacific Rim (2013).
The Trench is located on a subduction zone, specifically in the Izu-Bonin-Mariana subduction system along the lines of the Pacific plate and the Filipino plate. A subduction zone is where two of the Earth’s tectonic plates meet, and when a solid continental plate, like the Filipino plate, meets a softer oceanic plate, like the Pacific plate, the oceanic plate usually crumbles and is pushed down below the continental plate. This creates underwater valleys known as trenches. The Mariana Trench is estimated to be 180 million years old, meaning there has been ample time for aliens or secret societies to drop a portal down there.
While not impossible to get to, the Mariana Trench and Challenger Deep are deep enough in the ocean that special submarines have to be built in order to withstand the incredible pressure created by the surrounding water. This is why only four descents into the Trench have ever been made, two by humans (Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard in 1960, James Cameron – yes, the director – in 2012) and two by robots (Kaiko in 1996, Nereus in 2009). In these four descents, we have explored very little of the Trench’s floor, despite it being discovered back in 1957. Meaning Pacific Rim could be more fact than fiction after all…
Devil’s Kettle Falls, Minnesota
Now we are getting into the territory of places you may not know about. As the Brule River flows from Northern Light Lake through Judge C.R. Magney State Park in Minnesota, just 2km before it meets Lake Superior the water hits a fork in the river. While half the water flows one way, down a normal waterfall, the other half of the water flows into a large pothole. Named because of the idea that the water flows down in to Hell to brew the Devil’s tea in a kettle, Devil’s Kettle Falls has become nothing short of a mystery. Or at least until 2017 it was.
Devil’s Kettle gained notoriety due to the mystery of where the second half of the water went after falling into the ominous hole beside the average falls. While it’s hard to know who did the first amateur experiment, scientists have documented their tossing of various objects such as ping pong balls, dye, and logs into the pit only to never see them again. Various explanations arose, such as the Falls leading to a lava tube (which isn’t possible in the national park) or an underground gravel drainage pit (which would have backed up from the sheer volume of everything that has been thrown in).
In early 2017 though, scientists from the Department of National Resources, or DNR, surveyed the amount of water flowing both before the falls and further downstream from the falls and found that there was only an incredibly minor difference. Their explanation is that the water simply re-enters the river underground downstream. To confirm their theory, the DNR planned to conduct another dye test in the Fall and monitor various locations to see where the water rejoined the Brule, but decided not to in order to preserve the mystery and wonder of the Falls. Which means it could still be a portal to another world that just has a second portal to replace the lost water.
Devil’s Hole, Nevada
Adding more mystery to the idea of the unknown is Devil’s Hole, located in the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Nevada. In addition to not being completely explored, Devil’s Hole is the location of a missing person’s case from 1965 where two teenage boys went swimming with their friends and were never seen again.
The story goes that four teenage boys decided to go for a swim in the crystal clear, constantly 33*C waters of Devil’s Hole one night. After crawling under a fence enclosing the area, Paul Giancontieri, David Rose, and Bill Alter crawled down into the pit for a swim while Alter’s younger brother, Jack, stayed behind just in case of an emergency. A little after midnight, David and Bill returned and waited for Paul. After realizing he wasn’t resurfacing, the two boys jumped back in to look for their friend. Unable to keep up, Bill lost sight of David and turned back. Despite diving rescue teams searching as far as 325ft down, Paul and David were never seen again, though a snorkel and fin were recovered.
The pit goes down 160ft before opening up in to a chasm that is 40ft wide and 260ft deep. This room narrows again into a tube and continues to go down. While divers have reached as far as 436ft down, research teams have lowered over 900ft of cable without touching the bottom. They have also reported a light current flowing in the lower depths of the Hole.
The sheer absence of a bottom to this pit advocates for its potential to house a portal somewhere inside. Being only 85 miles from Area 51 only adds to this potential, meaning there is even less reason for someone to deny the possibility.
Lake Vostok, Antarctica
Finally is a place that, literally, nobody has ever been to. Located below 2km of ice in the Eastern Antarctic is the incrediblly large Lake Vostok, rivalling the size of Lake Ontario at 230km long, 50km wide, and 2.6km deep. Discovered in 1996 by a British/Russian research team, Lake Vostok is supplied by the melting ice sheets above it and could be a body of water called a rift lake. While the earlier mentioned Mariana Trench is a place where two plates collided, a rift lake occurs when two plates separate, leaving a deep rift that is usually filled by water. The cold, -3*C water doesn’t freeze like the ice above it due to the extreme pressure the ice places on the lake. Despite the lack of sunlight under the 2km of ice, scientists have found bacteria thriving in the extreme conditions, giving them hope that similar life could be found on planets or moons such as Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
While it is highly suspected that geothermal vents may be the source of life in Lake Vostok, many people (and by many I mean me) pose the possibility of an otherworldly portal being down there, offering a passage to another, life-inhabited area. While such theories cannot be proven, they also cannot be unproven. So like all the other areas, until this is proven otherwise, let’s keep the wonder and magic alive.
