Build your own crystal palace

Mother Nature’s secret recipe for cooking up the staggeringly huge, pillar-like crystals of Mexico's newfound Cave of Crystals has been worked out by mineral researchers.

It turns out that with just the right pinch of minerals added at the right times for a few million years to a warm subterranean broth, you too can grow gypsum crystals 35 feet long and as thick as tree trunks.

From Discovery News. News on exploration of the Cueva de los Cristales here. The environment within is appallingly unfriendly; as another site notes about the mine in which the cave (and the also-spectacular Cueva de las Espadas, found in 1910) is located:

This mine is no show mine, but a still working and producing mine. It is very hot and has a huge underground well of 52°C hot water. The air of the mine is cooled down by a ventilation system to about 40°C, but the humidity of the air is about 100%. . .

As the temperature inside the cave is 60°C and the humidity 100%, a visit of the cave always includes a perfect steam bath. But for work in the cave it is really problematic. First it was absolutely impossible to take any picture of the cave as cameras first steamed up, and when they reached the temperature of the cavern, the electronic was dead. The researchers developed special techniques for the temperature, but more than 10 minutes are not possible inside the cave. Typically two or three minute visits are applicable.

A mine worker who tried to steal some crystals died in the cave: the temperature and the bad air causes dehydration and after a few minutes he was too weak to leave the cave and suffocated. When he was found, his body was cooked (well done to be exact).

A more visitor-friendly crystal cave was found in Spain in 2000, and was written up (with photos) by the BBC. At last check, it was in the record books as the world's largest geode.

Posted by David on April 7, 2007 4:20 PM