Giant Crystal Cave

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Giant Crystal Cave

A team of international scientists explore a Mexican cave filled with giant crystals. With temperatures near 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and over 80 per cent humidity, the cave is one of the deadliest environments on earth. Without specialized suits and equipment, the scientists would die in minutes. Their mission: to unlock the secrets of the mysterious ancient crystals, some of the largest ever discovered.

Giant Crystal Cave , Unlocking the Secrets , NASA scientist Chris McKay uses a Raman spectrometer to scan the crystals for clues to life on distant planets.

Giant Crystal Cave , A Dangerous Beauty , For scientists seeking to unlock the secrets of the crystal cave, the beauty of their subject is matched only by its danger.

Giant Crystal Cave,Main street in Chihuahua, Mexico where the Naica Mines are located.

Giovani Badino collects topographic information from

Giant Crystal Cave,Giovani Badino, Associate Professor in the Dipartimento di Fisica Generale of the Torino University, collects topographic information from "The Valley" in the Crystal Cave.

Chris McKay uses his spectrometer to search for life inside the rock

Giant Crystal Cave,Chris McKay, a planetary scientist with the Space Science Division of NASA Ames Research Center, uses his spectrometer to search for life inside the rock.

Giant Crystal Cave,Two explorers inside the Crystal Cave.

Giant Crystal Cave,Scientist and researchers performing topographic measurements inside the Crystal Cave.

Tullio Bernabei descending to the deepest part of the Crystal Cave

Giant Crystal Cave,Tullio Bernabei, head caver and a founding member of La Venta Geographic Association, descending to the deepest part of the Crystal Cave.

Francesco Lo Mastro advances to the deeper end of the cave.

Giant Crystal Cave,Francesco Lo Mastro, a scientific advisor and a member of the La Venta Exploring Team, advances to the deeper end of the cave.

Staff working on the lighting inside the Crystal Cave

Giant Crystal Cave,Saul Villasante, Robotics Designer, and Alejandro Macias, Digital Media Assistant, working on the lighting inside the Crystal Cave.

Dr. Giuseppe Giovine explores in the Crystal Cave during a medical investigation

Giant Crystal Cave,Dr. Giuseppe Giovine, scientist from the Naica Project, explores in the Crystal Cave during a medical investigation.

Crystals in Naica, Mexico from the National Geographic Channel show Giant Crystal Cave

SECRETS OF THE CRYSTAL CAVE
Hidden deep beneath the surface of the Earth is one of the greatest natural marvels on the planet: a giant crystal cave with crystals up to 36 feet long and weighing 55 tons. But this scorching cavern could kill humans after just 15 minutes of exposure.

-The giant crystals found in the caves at Naica are softer than a human fingernail.
-The largest crystal found at Naica is 500,000 years old.
-The stunning crystal pillars are made from the same common mineral as drywall – it's called gypsum.
-The Naica cave's deadly heat comes from the depths of the Earth. Naica sits on a set of fault lines. A magma chamber a mile and a half down warms the water that flows throughout the mountain.
-The Naica principle cave "Cueva de Los Cristales" is 45°C and 100% humidity.
-The Naica facility pumps 16,000 gallons of water per minute out of the mine and runs 24-7.
-The water pumped from the Naica mine formed a lake in the arid Chihuahua desert and is also used to irrigate a golf course.
-Naica is one of the most productive lead mines in the world, and a huge supplier of the world's silver as well.
-The Naica cave actuality footage was shot on solid-state memory HD video cameras (tape-less) wrapped in plastic bags and pre-heated for three hours prior to entering the cave.
-The Naica Project team created a stop-motion robot and fitted it with a Nikon digital still camera powered by a custom software to capture beauty-shot sequences of the cave with 10-megapixel resolution.

Cave of Crystal Giants

By Susan Pettit

NEXT: Hotter Than Hades »

Crystals from representing National Geographic Channel show Giant Crystal Caves

By all accounts, it looks like Superman?s fabled Fortress of Solitude, a gigantic crystal cave deep below the surface of the Earth with 50-ton crystals the size of telephone poles. But only a Man of Steel could survive here. Mere mortals would die after just 15 minutes in this prismatic wonderland. Superman’s fictional cave is somewhere in the frozen Arctic, but this real-life version is further south.

In 2000, two miners found the cave more than 1,000 feet below the town of Naica in Mexico’s mineral-rich Chihuahuan desert. The Naica mine, run by the Penoles Group, is one of the most productive lead mines in the world, and a huge supplier of the world’s silver. Mining here is one of the toughest jobs on the planet. Temperatures in the tunnels hover around 95 degrees Fahrenheit.

Brothers Eloy and Javier Delgado were excavating a tunnel when they stumbled upon the entrance to the cave. “What we first saw when we went in was a bar, as if ice,” Eloy Delgado said. “And I went in, I shined the light on it, and it reflected everywhere!”

The miner’s light illuminated a cavern the size of a football field filled with the largest natural crystals in the world.

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Cave of Crystal Giants

Hotter Than Hades

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The fragile, icy-looking selenite crystals belie the cave’s deadly heat. In the few steps from the tunnel to the opening of the cave, temperatures go from miserably warm to hotter than Hades — 150 degrees with 100-percent humidity, making it impossible for humans to survive more than a few minutes. According to Giuseppe Giovine, an Italian physician who attended a group of scientists allowed to explore and document the cave, when temperatures rise above 113 degrees, the body tries to shed heat. But in 100-percent humidity, sweat cannot evaporate. The heat is trapped inside the body. Within five minutes, Giovine said, cells start to die. One after another, organs fail.

“The heart cannot withstand the elevated blood pressure and heart rate levels that are reached,” Giovine said. Hallucinations are common, then loss of consciousness and, eventually, death.

The cave’s heat comes from volcanic activities below the Earth. Naica is a mountain that sits on a set of fault lines. A magma chamber four miles down warms the water that flows throughout the mountain. This hot water was critical to the formation of the crystals. The water trapped in the cave was saturated with gypsum that covered the walls and floor and eventually crystallized in the constant temperature, growing over thousands of years into the crystal cave. The crystal cave was underwater until it was discovered. Giant pumps working around the clock keep the entire mine clear of water for business operations.

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Mineralogist Paolo Forti of the University of Bologna, who studied the Naica crystals onsite, says gypsum takes a long time to grow into crystals and needs constant conditions of water and heat. He says the giant crystals are unique because the natural world is almost never constant.

The mining company is still deciding how best to preserve the caves. The caves are restricted to the public for safety reasons, but the National Geographic Channel followed an international team of scientists – all wearing high-tech protective gear – as they entered the cave to examine the ancient megacrystals.

Among the questions the team sought to answer is: Is there life in the crystal cave? If so, what can it tell us about the origin and evolution of life on Earth — and the possibility of extraterrestrial life on planets like Mars?

“Secrets of the Crystal Cave” premieres Sunday, October 12, at 9:00 PM ET.

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The Naica crystal caves are too dangerous for public access, but show caves across the United States offer a dazzling variety of subterranean adventures for people of all ages and abilities. Show caves are managed caves that feature lighting, walkways and guided tours.

Gary Berdeaux, president of the National Caves Association and managing partner at Kentucky’s Diamond Caverns, says most U.S. caves are limestone and no two are alike. “Each is as unique as a fingerprint,” he said. “Some of the most incredible ones are off the beaten path, but all have a special beauty, whether it’s spectacular sculptural formations or the interplay of light and shadow or a particular geographic setting. And every cave has a story.”

Here are some of Berdeaux’s favorites across the continental United States:

Luray Caverns
Located in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley about 90 miles west of Washington, D.C., these caverns feature cathedral-sized chambers with soaring ceilings, towering columns and breathtaking stalactites in colors ranging from bright white to rich reds and yellows. The caverns are noted for the “Great Stalacpipe Organ” that plays symphonic-quality music from a four-keyboard electronic console using stalactites for pipes.

Penn’s Cave
America's only all-water cavern is located in Central Pennsylvania's Penn State country about two hours east of Pittsburgh. Tours are by flat-bottomed motorboat on an underground stream. Along the limestone passageways, stalagmites, stalactites, flowstone cascades and draperies decorate the interior rooms.Used by Seneca Indians and early explorers, Penn's Cave is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Mammoth Cave
Mammoth Cave National Park, about 75 miles from Louisville, is home to the world's longest cave system, with more than 365 miles of connected tunnels and waterways. It is a relatively dry cave so it has few stalactite and stalagmite formations, but Mammoth’s rich history is its major claim to fame. Mummies have been discovered there along with 4,000-year-old petroglyphs. More than a dozen tours to different parts of the cavern range from 20 minutes to 6 hours. Popular tours take in the Frozen Niagara, which features waves of stone that mimic falling water, and show the cave by lantern light the way Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jenny Lind and other 19th-century notables saw it. There are even remnants of a long-vanished tuberculosis "hospital" 160 feet underground.

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Caverns of Sonora
About 200 miles west of San Antonio is a national natural landmark noted for its stunning array of calcite crystal formations, especially helictites, the most delicate and most beautiful of cave formations. National Speleological Society co-founder, Bill Stephenson said, after seeing Caverns of Sonora for the first time, “Its beauty cannot be exaggerated, even by Texans.” National Cave Association president Gary Berdeaux says entering the caverns is “like stepping into a Faberge egg.” The most famous helictite here is called the Butterfly a after its characteristic form. Even rarer are the anthodites found in this cave.

Kartchner Caverns
This state park about an hour from Tucson boasts one of the world's longest soda straw stalactites – over 21 feet – and the tallest and most massive column in Arizona, Kubla Khan: 58 feet tall. Both are located in the Throne Room. The Big Room features the world's most extensive formation of brushite moonmilk. The caverns contain many other unusual formations such as shields, totems, helictites, and rimstone dams, as well as a nursery roost for more than 1,000 cave bats.

Wind Cave
Wind Cave National Park, located about 50 miles from Rapid City, South Dakota, features one of the world's longest and most complex cave systems. It is best known for it incredible display of boxwork, a rare cave formation of thin calcite fins that resembles honeycomb. Wind Cave is more than 300 million years old, making it one of the oldest in the world. It gets its name from the strong airflow in the cave.

Carlsbad Caverns
Twenty miles southwest of Carlsbad, New Mexico, is a series of enormous rooms that forms one of the world’s largest caves. James White, a Carlsbad-area cowboy, discovered the caverns in 1900, but no one believed his fantastic descriptions of house-size stalagmites and eerie stalactite icicles, pagodas and palaces of improbable beauty. His tales caught the attention of public land officials who assigned federal geologists to explore Carlsbad Caverns. The reports filed by these geologists impressed President Calvin Coolidge, who declared the caverns a National Monument in 1923. The following year, White led a National Geographic expedition into the caverns and the subsequent publicity made the caverns so famous that they were declared a National Park in 1930.

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