World facts and discoveries
The Crystal Giants of Naica
The Crystal Cave of Cueva Cristales is a glittering palace covered with some of the largest crystals anyone has ever seen. The temperature was a sweltering 44 degrees Celsius, and 100 percent humidity meant that the air you breathed quickly condensed into your lungs. Two brothers were drilling in the cave when they discovered a geological miracle that had been in the making for hundreds of thousands of years. It was developed by a team of scientists from the University of California, San Diego, and the California Institute of Technology.
What was actually fatal for humans turned out to be the perfect conditions for crystal cultivation. The geologists, who wanted to explore the cave and tell the story live from the cave, put on a special suit littered with ice packs. If you took off your respirator for more than ten minutes, you would lose consciousness and die.
The monstrous structure consists of a soft mineral called selenite. The groundwater is heated by the magma chamber below and saturated with calcium sulfate. When the magma cools, the mineral water begins to change to selenium and form steadily.
When miners empty the cave to lower the water table, the crystals grow and stop growing. When the mine is no longer profitable, the owners of the Naica mine will remove the pumps, and the caves will be flooded again.
The crystals will be lost, but we can console ourselves with the knowledge that there must be more hidden miracles. Professor Iain Stewart, who is studying the caves, told the BBC: ‘We know no more about our solar system’s outer edges than the first kilometer of Earth’s crust. We can be sure that we will make discoveries that are even more spectacular than those of Naica.’
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