The ancient Greek myth according to which the "breath of Hades" will kill anyone who passes through the "Gateway to Hell" has received a scientific explanation. The gate is actually a small cave, big enough for one person to pass through, beyond which there is a staircase leading down to a carbon dioxide gas reservoir.
The deadly gas leaks from a deep crack in the rock through which a strong stream of hot water passes. All the animals that enter the plutonium find their death immediately. Those who are led to it, fall and die there, and they immediately breathe their last. The only ones who survived the entrance to the cave were the "Gali," eunuch priests who descended into the plutonium for the purpose of making sacrifices. Because carbon dioxide is a deadly gas, their exposure to this deadly gas results in their death within minutes. In 2018, a team of researchers led by Prof. Hardy Panz, a geologist from the German University of Duisburg-Essen, carried out a series of tests. The professor came to the conclusion that the phenomenon occurs due to active activity under the cave floor. At the time of the highest concentration of the poisonous gas, a person who breathes the air can find his death in just one minute. He added that at the time the "Gali" priests used to lead their victims inside, usually oxen and goats, and remain standing on high stones to avoid breathing the dangerous gas, which shows that they too knew that death was not really caused by the "breath of Hades" but because of gases at the bottom of the cave. In the tests, it was found that the gas inside the cave is so thick that it forms a kind of lake about 40 cm deep. The most dangerous time to enter the cave was when the carbon dioxide levels rose at sunset.