Masks protect the eyes, which can scorch in the cave's heat. Scientists entering the complex in 20 wore custom-made, 45-pound (25-kilograms) cooling suits that extend mission times from 15 minutes to an hour.Įach suit contains several ice-filled compartments as well as respirators connected to ice-filled backpacks, which send cool air to the wearer's lungs. And if at a later date it becomes important to get in there again, they could repump."Įxploring the Naica caves requires more than just industrial strength water pumps. "It might actually preserve the crystals. "It'll be economically unfeasible."īut shutting down the caves isn't necessarily a bad thing, Rakovan added. "I don't think they'll ever be able to preserve those caves," Miami University's Rakovan said. The Industrias Peñoles mining company has decided to cover the Robin Hole and has also hinted that it may shut down the expensive water pumps that keep the Cave of Crystals dry, according to the documentary. The mysteries of the Ice Palace will likely remain unsolved, however. ( Video: Climber describes discovering the Ice Palace.) In 2009 a video camera attached to a drill bit found hints of one more crystal-lined cave during the creation of the Robin Hole, a 2,000-foot-deep (600-meter-deep) ventilation shaft meant to cool mining tunnels below.ĭescending into the hole months later, in December 2009, a scientific team confirmed the new, naturally dry crystal cave about 500 feet (150 meters) below the surface.ĭubbed the Ice Palace, the new cave lacks giant pillars, but sparkles with rare crystal formations, including minerals resembling cauliflower and fiber-optic-like filaments. (The National Geographic Channel is part-owned by the National Geographic Society, which owns National Geographic News.)ĭiscovered by miners in 2000, the Cave of Crystals is just one chamber in what appears to be a network of subterranean caverns beneath Naica-some well known and evocatively named: the Cave of Swords, the Queen's Eye, the Cave of Sails. ET/PT on the National Geographic Channel. "It's a terrible and magical environment all at the same time," said Penelope Boston, an astrobiologist and cave scientist who appears in the new documentary Into the Lost Crystal Caves, which airs Sunday at 8 p.m. The combination of 90 percent humidity and a temperature of 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius) inside the cave can kill an unprepared human in just 30 minutes. The translucent columns also resemble giant pillars of ice but are warmed by superheated air leaking up from underground magma chambers. "Scientists didn't think it was possible to get large crystals that are so morphologically perfect" before the Cave of Crystals discovery, Rakovan said. "When crystals get larger and larger, they become less euhedral, typically"-and more rocklike. This jewel-like effect makes the giant crystals truly unique, according to John Rakovan, a mineralogist at Miami University in Ohio, who was not involved in the project. Individually, though, the crystals appear anything but haphazard, sporting the sharp, geometric appearance that scientists call euhedral. In the two-story-tall, football-field-size Cave of Crystals, enormous beams of gypsum-among the largest freestanding crystals in the world-sprout haphazardly from the ceiling, floor, and walls. Much of the complex would naturally be filled with scorching water, were it not for industrial pumps that facilitate the mining of silver, zinc, lead, and other minerals in the caves. Parts of the complex may soon be returned to their natural, submerged states.Ī thousand feet (304 meter) underground, the Cave of Crystals (pictures) is just one of a series of glittering caverns beneath the Chihuahuan Desert's Naica mountain (map). Outfitted with ice-cooled suits, teams have found biological mysteries, parallels with other planets, and the "Ice Palace," an unexplored cavern lined with rare crystal formations-and just in time too. It looks like Superman's Fortress of Solitude and is nearly as hard to get into, but that hasn't stopped explorers from uncovering new secrets in and around Mexico's deep, deadly hot Cave of Crystals. ON TV: Into the Lost Crystal Caves airs Sunday at 8 p.m.
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