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đź’ŽBeautiful crystal caveđź’Ž
đź’ŽBeautiful crystal caveđź’Ž
Gypsum: It's the main ingredient in drywall and frequently added to the water when brewing pale ale and India pales. Humans have been using this mineral for literally thousands of years. But at the turn of the 21st century, the world renewed its appreciation for the stuff when miners discovered some spectacularly big crystals that were — in essence — massive gypsum pillars.
They're buried 984 feet (300 meters) beneath the Sierra de Naica Mountain in Chihuahua, Mexico. Anchored to the walls and floor of a sweltering cave, the crystals went through at least half a million years of uninterrupted growth. Many are long and wide enough to walk across, and honestly look like Superman's Fortress of Solitude.
Don't bother packing your bags, though. Visiting these crystalline wonders is pretty much impossible now. That honestly might be a good thing; for all its splendor, the Giant Crystal Cave once had the makings of a death trap.
Regional fault lines pass right under the Sierra de Naica Mountain. About 26 million years ago, magma started pushing its way toward the Earth's surface through those faults.
Ultimately, that process led to the mountain's formation. It also explains the massive crystals.
Giant Crystal Cave is a U-shaped cavity in the limestone below the Sierra de Naica. Roughly 98 feet (30 meters) long by 33 feet (10 meters) wide, it was filled with groundwater for tens of thousands of years. The water was originally driven upward into the opening by a magma chamber that's located deeper in the Earth. This intrusive water contained the mineral
anhydrite.
The magma underneath Giant Crystal Cave kept the water in the cave nice and hot. Eventually, however, the H2O's temperature dipped slightly below 136 degrees Fahrenheit (58 degrees Celsius).After that happened, the anhydrate started breaking down, filling the water with calcium and
sulfate. The particles slowly began recombining into a kind of gypsum known as selenite.
Granted, the crystals didn't turn into giants overnight. A 2011 study argued that, under the conditions that were available in this cave, it would've taken anywhere from 500,000 to 900,000 years to grow a selenite crystal measuring 3.2 feet (1 meter) in diameter. Nevertheless, over time,
a lot of these things attained breathtaking sizes. Many are 13.1 to 19.6 feet (4 to 6 meters) in length. The very largest, meanwhile, are up to 36 feet (11 meters) long and 3.2 feet (1 meter) thick.
In 1794, prospectors discovered silver on the Sierra de Naica Mountain. Before long, troves of lead, zinc and gold turned up as well — and by the mid-19th century, the first mining operations broke ground along the slopes. One day in 1910, the Peñoles Mining Company discovered a wondrous cave just 394 feet (120 meters) below the surface. Much like Giant Crystal Cave, the chamber — dubbed "The Cave of Swords"
— was lined with selenite crystals. But these were significantly smaller, only about 8.2 feet (2.5 meters) long at the most.
They probably formed in the same way the bigger crystals down below formed. However, the Cave of Swords
apparently cooled down at a much faster rate. This put a cap on how large its selenite spikes could get.It soon became clear that Giant Crystal Cave was an inhospitable place. Not only did the air temperature
climb as high as 113 degrees Fahrenheit (47.1 degrees Celsius), but the humidity levels were also close to
100 percent. The place was so humid that a visitor who lingered too long risked having fluids condense inside his or her lungs. That can be fatal.
The removal of water from this cave was a boon for the scientific community. Unfortunately, it may have bad news for the actual crystals. In 2017, Peñoles stopped the pumping and allowed groundwater to refill
the cave.
✍Credits: Mark Mancini 🌿Research: Vitor hugo Lizardi Leonardi
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