Residents of a village in the Chhatarpur district of India's Madhya Pradesh state were in for a shock after a hand pump started spitting fire and water simultaneously.
A video of the occurrence went viral on social media. The translation of the social media post's caption reads: "Fire and water coming out of a hand pump. Location - Kachchar village of Bakswaha, Madhya Pradesh."
The district's officials have been informed about the incident, but are yet to comment on the matter.
As Twitter users began calling hand pump a "miracle", Dr. Gyanendra Pratap Singh, a professor at a Govt Motilal Vigyan Mahavidyalaya college in Bhopal, explained that the phenomenon has been caused by highly-flammable methane gas coming out of the ground.
"The release of flammable gas along with the water from the hand pump is not a miraculous event," Singh told Hindi media publication Dainik Bhaskar on Thursday. "The remains of plants and trees in sedimentary rocks (sandstone, limestone, and shale) are deposited in a swampy area with a depression (fine sand) to produce methane due to a chemical reaction. Heating or burning causes the gas to reduce in density, which also causes the water to rise," he explained.