
The Mystery of Devil's Kettle Falls - oskenso
http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/eco-tourism/stories/the-mystery-of-devils-kettle-falls
======
Animats
There are mine communication devices that can punch a signal through a few
hundred meters of solid rock. Here's a simple one.[1] VLF can get through,
with enough power, a simple signal, and a smart receiver.[2]

There's been a lot of work on "down-hole communication" for oil and gas
drilling. Modern drilling involves com links to the sharp end, with info
coming up and commands going down. Some of the techniques work through the
drill string, but some are VLF radios.

There are also high-powered ultrasonic pingers, with a range of several
kilometers in water.[3]

If you could get info for the first kilometer or two, you'd at least know
where to look for the rest of the path.

[1] [http://radiolocation.tripod.com/](http://radiolocation.tripod.com/) [2]
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010RS004378/full](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010RS004378/full)
[3]
[http://www.sonotronics.com/?page_id=96](http://www.sonotronics.com/?page_id=96)

~~~
iSnow
But that only would work if the hole leads to an open tunnel. If there's a
gravel bed on the bottom, your equipment just sits there.

~~~
acveilleux
But at least you get a clue there might be a gravel bed.

------
cossatot
For the record lava tubes can happen in flood basalts; I've been to some at
Hell's Half Acre in Idaho, and I'm sure there are others. But these are not
like karst-type cave systems; they're much shorter.

It's really unlikely that the water goes anywhere other than the lake. It just
might travel through a fracture network and seep out of the lake bottom miles
away, but groundwater tends to flow broadly following the topographic slope
(driven by the gravitational loading of groundwater surface called the
'hydraulic head') and there typically aren't isolated tunnels where some water
can flow unimpeded by regional groundwater flow.

------
rmason
I'm reading this and wondering why you couldn't build a waterproof beacon? At
least by tracking it you could prove that it didn't exit into Lake Superior.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_locator_beacon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_locator_beacon)

[http://www.rjeint.com/aviation-underwater-locator-
beacons](http://www.rjeint.com/aviation-underwater-locator-beacons)

~~~
stenl
You should drop synthetic DNA in it and then sample all nearby lakes and do
PCR. Even aftera trillion-fold dilution it should be detectable. Would be
cheap, easy and very likely to work. A cool weekend project for your kids!

~~~
RaSoJo
Pardon my ignorance on this - but wouldn't dropping Synthetic DNA into the
water be polluting it in some form?

~~~
unwind
The article mentioned locals claiming to have pushed down a car one night ...
No idea what volume of synthetic DNA would be sensible here, but I can imagine
it'd mass less than a car.

------
quarterto
Wow. So many armchair geologists, both here and in the comments on TFA. Do you
really think people haven't already thought of a dozen reasons why GPS
beacons/synthetic DNA/blah blah etc wouldn't work?

Should we get some geologists in to comment on your issue tracker and propose
solutions for your bugs?

Ninja edit: [https://xkcd.com/793/](https://xkcd.com/793/) applies to
programmers, too

~~~
soylentcola
Alternately, it can be entertaining and mentally stimulating to brainstorm
ideas and then pick apart why they wouldn't work.

It would be one thing if it was a funding pitch based on uninformed proposals
but as a forum conversation on a Friday afternoon, it doesn't seem too awful.

------
jqm
Use a long thin cable on a motorized spool. Rig up a waterproof reinforced box
with sensors that detect speed and direction (mercury switch type deals?... I
don't know but I bet there is something). Hook them up to a board with some
storage. Drop the box in and start reeling the cable off. If the cable goes
slack the thing has probably stopped. Maybe it's hung up. Pull it back a bit
and try again. If it keeps stopping in the same place it's probably all the
information possible by this method. Retrieve the box, get the speed/direction
information, do some distance calculations and graph it. Ideally the box will
go all the way to the exit point and you will have a profile showing where the
water ends up. But even if it doesn't, you will have a good idea of direction
and depth the water is traveling for a certain distance at least. This will at
least make better guesses in the future.

------
mirimir
I've boated the Brule. That is a definite portage ;)

Better photos here: [https://roadtrippers.com/stories/revealing-the-mystery-
behin...](https://roadtrippers.com/stories/revealing-the-mystery-behind-
minnesotas-devils-kettle-falls)

------
peterwwillis
They don't have to dam the whole thing but they could redirect the water going
in the kettle to go over the falls on the right, so the hole is free to be
explored via winch & harness, or remote camera.

------
simcop2387
Why don't we block it off for a few months and see if it dries up?

~~~
cdubzzz
Lake Superior?

~~~
jerf
No, I believe the idea is that if water wasn't flowing through the pathway
that we would have a lot more options for exploring where it goes with various
equipment.

------
jamesfisher
Has anyone attempted to map the first few hundred meters of the kettle? That
might give us a good idea of where to look. Drop a sonar on a very long,
strong wire to map out the contours?

------
joshontheweb
It could just go down into an underground aquifer, no?

------
forlorn_hope
Sounds like a great place to dump a body...

~~~
reitoei
I know right? If that hole could talk...

------
JoeAltmaier
Dump radioactive waste in, see where the Geiger counter picks it up?

------
FranOntanaya
Maybe they could use radar sounding and a big bag of passive reflectors
floating upright.

------
Shivetya
are there any short life radioactive materials that can be used?

~~~
ars
Iodine-123 maybe, but you'd have to make it on the spot.

The half-life is 13.22 hours, and it makes some detectable gamma rays.

------
Gravityloss
Why not lower a camera equipped robot with a wire there?

~~~
nkrisc
How will you stabilize it to get a decent picture?

------
roflchoppa
why not just cut it open and see where it goes?

~~~
CamperBob2
Last time this was posted, I suggested dropping a nuke with a 12-hour timer
down the hole. I got downvoted too. :(

~~~
PietdeVries
Well, cutting open is perhaps a bit drastic, but how about just stopping the
river for a day or so? After all, the OP mentions that this hole appears at
the split of a river, so diverting the water to the other arm of the river
might not be that hard...

~~~
gambiting
I've learned years ago that even the "interesting" things have little chance
to happen if they cost money. While visiting one of the most interesting caves
in Poland the guide said that geologists strongly suspect that there's an
entire tunnel system underneath it, and have suspected it for 40-odd years. So
I asked - well, it should be fairly easy to check with the right equipment,
no? And he said that yeah, it should be fairly easy, and even though multiple
universities expressed interest in doing it, no one is willing to cough up the
money for it. I guess this is very similar - of course it would be extremely
interesting to find out where that water is going,but redirecting the flow of
water would be very costly, and apart from satiating some scientific curiosity
there's little reason to undertake such large engineering project.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Just tell them you think there is a train full of Nazi gold in those tunnels
:-). Something we don't have enough of these days are "gentlemen explorers"
folks who are independently wealthy and spending their days exploring
interesting places.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Bear Gryls?

------
EwanG
Ground penetrating radar?

~~~
kaybe
Does not work very well in a wet environment (the energy is absorbed pretty
fast). And if you use longer wavelength to get better penetration the spatial
resolution goes down hard. It might help to map the part above though..

(No idea for longer wavelenghts, but we use GPR to measure ground water
content in the MHz range. Normal penetration depth is at most a few meters.)

------
doyoulikeworms
Wow, that looks dangerous as hell!

