What is it?
1) Microscopic salt crystals.
2) A Hollywood sound stage in a futuristic saga?
3) A Fly's POV of a landing strip atop a grey-haired man.
4) None of the above.
If you answered 4, you're right. I found this online today and was awestruck. This cave in Mexico is deep and very hot (near magma) and was filled with boiling hot water before miners discovered there was lead and silver to be mined. So they pumped out the water and look what they found!
Naica Crystals! Weighing hundreds of tons! Apparently this stuff is gypsum, the same stuff they use in drywall. But this has been 'cooking' for millions of years into this amazing display of crystal. A real crystal cave!
A filmmaker decided this was too good to miss, so he went down and filmed the exploration of this chamber. (coming soon to a PBS station near you.) They had to wear cooling suits just to be in that room, which averaged 120* F. So there was a limited exposure allowed.
Isn't that crazy beautiful?
Sadly, whenever they finish mining that silver, they'll stop pumping out the water. It'll fill up again and disappear.
But you have to wonder: If something this beautiful exists deep in the earth, what other hidden wonders have we not yet discovered? What have we blundered over or destroyed without even noticing?
How delicate it all is.
