The Mystery of the "Devil's Kettle": where the water disappears in the strangest waterfall on the planet

"Devil's Kettle" is located in the US state of Minnesota in a natural park. A waterfall several meters high is formed by the Brul River, which is fantastically divided into two streams. But if everything is clear with the first, then the second stream falls into a stone well and disappears in the bowels of the earth. Underground rivers are not something mysterious and are often found in some regions of the planet, especially in places where karst caves and voids spread. But any underground river has a beginning and an end, and in most cases it is easy to detect the exit of an underground stream to the surface. But in the case of the Brul River, it is not at all clear where part of the water from the Devil’s Kettle waterfall disappears.

In order to determine where the groundwater of the river comes to the surface, scientists conducted several experiments. Special food colors were added to the well and hundreds of small plastic balls were poured out so that it would be possible to track where the mysterious water stream came out. But this did not produce any results: scientists never saw balls or colored water again in the nearby region. Then the researchers decided to launch a GPS device into the funnel in order to determine where the water flow was moving by the signal. But here, failure was waiting for them - after a while, the devices stopped transmitting signals, without revealing the secrets of the “Devil's Kettle”.

A few years ago, the American hydrologist D. Green also tried to explain the mysterious disappearance of the water stream. He measured the flow of water in the Brul River just before the waterfall, and then compared this figure with the data obtained downstream. It turned out that the numbers are the same, that is, according to D. Green, the underground river in this section is connected to the main channel. But in what exact place this happens, the scientist could not answer. Critics of his theory also point out that coloring pigments were not detected downstream of the river. And if plastic balls and GPS-beacons could settle in some funnel along the path of the underground river, then the dissolved coloring matter should come to the surface sooner or later. But this does not happen either downstream of the river or in another reservoir of this region. Thus, the mystery of the “Devil's Kettle” is still considered unsolved.