Technically, fire doesn’t exist as a simple, solid thing — what you’re really seeing is a process of combustion.

For fire to exist, it needs three things: heat, fuel, and oxygen. Without one of these elements, fire cannot form. This is known as the fire triangle.

The hottest flames you’ll typically see are blue, which are much more intense than red or yellow flames.

As a state of matter, fire behaves more like plasma than a solid, liquid, or gas. And it can be literal plasma if hot enough.

The reason you hear a bonfire crackle is that moisture inside the wood is turning into steam.

Fire can actually exist in space, and without Earth’s gravity, it burns in the shape of a perfect sphere.

The hottest flame ever recorded reached 4,990°C (9,010°F), created using oxygen and dicyanocetylene.

Ironically, certain plants rely on fire to grow. For example, some seeds, like those of pine trees, require heat to germinate.

Magnesium fires can burn underwater because they burn so hot that they even emit ultraviolet (UV) radiation.

Substances like methanol burn with flames that are cool enough to be nearly invisible or very hard to see.

Fireworks rely on metallic salts to produce colors. The hardest flame color to achieve is purple, which typically uses potassium.

Firewalkers perform the seemingly impossible stunt of walking on hot coals by moving quickly across a layer of insulating ash, exploiting basic physics.

There is a coal seam in Australia called Burning Mountain that has reportedly been burning continuously for around 6,000 years.

When wildfires affect nature, certain animals escape by simply burrowing underground.