Mother Nature's Jewelry Box - Cave of Giant Crystals


REDUCING MY CARBON FOOTPRINT
STEP 3: Buying Local
                I don’t know about you, but I love fresh cherries, those sweet, juicy plump little morsels. Once, when I was a kid, my folks even took me to a real cherry orchard. Imagine! A whole forest of trees that grow these yummy treats! The other day in the grocery store I saw a couple of bags of cherries. They looked delicious, but I they were from a far off orchard. The further your produce has to travel, the harder it is on Mother Nature as energy is spend on fuel for trucks or planes, electricity for refrigeration, the creation of travel-friendly containers and so on. Locally grown produce is infinitely better for the Earth. So I left those cherries in the store. It won’t be long before I’m biting into those sweet, sweet cherries from closer by.

                Picture this.  A huge, sprawling sandy desert under the sizzling sun. From out of the burning sands rises a distinct mountainous formation with an intriguing opening on one side. Inside, a passageway leads down, down for twenty minutes, down into the Earth, finally opening into the Cave of Swords, sparkling with cool, jagged  edges on every wall. Beyond lies a tangled labyrinth of twisted tunnels. Those who find their way through will be rewarded for there, 1000 feet below the earth’s surface, they will stumble across the breath-taking and mysterious cave of giant crystals.
                Sound like a scene from a wild action movie or the setting of a video game? Guess again. Only Mother Nature could have authored an adventure this fantastic.

                The desert, known as the Chihuahua desert, lies in rugged terrain of Mexico. The desert is so large that it spreads to other Mexican states, and parts of New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, but the labyrinthine mountain lies in the heart of the desert, in the Mexican state of the same name. This is the Naica mine, valued for its rich deposits of lead, zinc and silver.

                In 1910, miners stumbled upon the Cave of Swords. They called it this because of the stunning deposits of yard-long or meter length crystals protruding from every wall. They resembled daggers, it was thought. This cavern is found 400 feet (120 meters).beneath the surface. That’s relatively close to the surface.

                As they continued to zig-zag through the mountain’s interior looking for more mineral deposits they could mine, they also made other fascinating discoveries. Cavern followed cavern and each was given a name to reflect its beauty. Currently known caverns at Naica include Queen's Eye, The Candles Cave, and The Ice Palace.

                Then, in 2000, at a depth of a thousand feet (300 meters), two miners punched through a new wall and made one of the most astounding, amazing discoveries in the history of the world.

                The Cave of Crystals.

                Huge, sparkling, semi-translucent milky-white crystals criss-crossed and scattered across the room like so many glass tree trunks. Full-grown men look like ants dancing around on this giant game of pick-up-sticks. These formations are up to 36 feet (11 meters) long and weight as much as 55 tons.

                Quite simply, they had discovered the world’s largest known naturally formed crystals!

                So how did these megaliths get there? How did Mother Nature pull this one off?

                About 26 million years back, volcanic activity created that mountain and filled it up with anhydrite, which is water-free form of a mineral called gypsum. Crystallization occurs when substances have molecules that click together in very regular, geometrical patterns, as opposed to random patterns. Diamonds, snowflakes and common table salt are all forms of crystals. Deep in the cavern that was to become the Cave of Crystals, once the volcanic activity ended, temperatures, humidity levels and mineral-laden waters all combined in just the right amount to cause that gypsum to solidify and crystalize.

                But why are the crystals so big? One scientist explains that the cavern has to have held the right temperatures steady for hundreds of thousands of years. They say there’s no real limit to how big crystals can grow, it’s just very unusual for them to have the right conditions, space and time to get this huge. But it just so happens that these ones are located right near a still active magma chamber that continues to keep the crystals at just the right temperature.

                Now, it must be noted that, while it’s sorely tempting to go out there and explore this wonder of wonders and see what it’s like to crawl amongst these magnificent things, the bottom line is, this is not  a tourist attraction. The cavern is so far down, so hot and so dangerous as to make it impossible to let people go down just to explore. At a steady 136 degrees Fahrenheit (58 degrees Celsius), it’s just too hot for even the strongest, most tolerant human body to stay for more than a few minutes. The 100% humidity level keeps the crystals thriving, but it makes it difficult and dangerous for a human being to breath. Scientists wanting to study the crystal cavern have been forced to create their own refrigeration suits with an oxygen supply, just so they could survive. So most of us regular people will have to satisfy ourselves with amazing pictures.
 

                There’s one last little conundrum. The reason the crystals were discovered and have been explored, is because the mining company pumped all the water out of there, looking for deposits. The problem is, they need that water to survive. They’re doing no more growing as long as the water is going, and, in fact, they began the deterioration process as soon as the air touched them. If they leave the chamber drained, scientists can see and photograph the crystals, but they’ll soon decay to nothing. If they fill the chamber back up, the crystals will live on, but will be out of reach of everyone forever.

                If it were up to you, what would you do?

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