The Giant Crystal Cave of Naica
It’s 50oC and has a humidity of 100%, less than a couple of hundred people have been inside and it’s so deadly that even with respirators and suits of ice you can only survive for 20 minutes before your body starts to fail. It’s the nearest thing to visiting another planet – it’s going deep inside our own.Where: Beneath the town of Naica in the Chihuahuan Desert, Mexico
Geological Features: The cave is also known as Cueva de los Cristales. It contains the largest natural crystals ever found, which are composed of selenite. The largest is 11 m (36 ft) in length, 4 m (13 ft) in diameter and 55 tons in weight.
How it was formed: Naica lies on an ancient fault and there is an underground magma chamber below the cave. The magma heated the ground water and it became saturated with minerals. The hollow space of the cave was filled with this mineral rich hot water and remained stable for about 500,000 years allowing crystals to form and grow to immense sizes.
“Cueva de los Cristales is the incarnation of our most awesome science fiction imaginations - Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. At about the same time as humans first ventured out of Africa, these crystals began to slowly grow. For half a million years they remained protected and nurtured by a womb of hot hydrothermal fluids rich with minerals.
When mining began here over a hundred years ago, the water table was lowered and the cave drained. The crystals seemingly interminable development was frozen forever leaving them as aborted relics of the deep earth. It wasn’t until 2001 that miners, searching for lead, eventually penetrated the cave wall and brought it to light. The very act of discovering and witnessing them has triggered their slow decay and now no one knows what their fate will be. They are a testament to the hidden forces of the planet, forces which operate on scales far beyond our own.”
Who knows what other wonders lie hidden deep inside the earth.
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THE HYBRID OR
The hybrid room is equipped with multiple high-definition cameras and video monitors that give surgeons better views of the operating field during minimally invasive surgery. Using technology developed by Karl Storz Endoscopy-America, the audiovisual system links with electronic lab records and hospital information systems and can support live, on-demand teleconferencing. The system allows surgeons to use a laptop device to access live and stored surgical video files through an Internet link, watch live cases as they are being performed, and communicate between ORs.
“This combines the operating room and catheterization laboratory into one, giving us the capability to perform procedures like coronary or aortic graft stenting and open heart surgery at one time,” said Starnes, chair of the Department of Surgery and surgeon-in-chief of the USC hospitals. “This opens a whole new portal for us, in terms of the types of therapy we can provide to our patients.”
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Word Of The Day: Petrichor , the scent of rain on dry earth. The term was coined in 1964 by two Australian researchers, Bear and Thomas, for an article in the journal Nature.[1] In the article, the authors describe how the smell derives from an oil exuded by certain plants during dry periods, whereupon it is absorbed by clay-based soils and rocks. During rain, the oil is released into the air along with another compound, geosmin, producing the distinctive scent. In a follow-up paper, Bear and Thomas (1965) showed that the oil retards seed germination and early plant growth. The human nose is extremely sensitive to geosmin and is able to detect it at concentrations as low as 5 parts per trillion.[6]
Chemistry….so beautiful. Interesting that humans can detect the “smell of rain” at such low levels](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2wuxhEK9z1qiurrho1_250.png)
Word Of The Day: Petrichor , the scent of rain on dry earth. The term was coined in 1964 by two Australian researchers, Bear and Thomas, for an article in the journal Nature.[1] In the article, the authors describe how the smell derives from an oil exuded by certain plants during dry periods, whereupon it is absorbed by clay-based soils and rocks. During rain, the oil is released into the air along with another compound, geosmin, producing the distinctive scent. In a follow-up paper, Bear and Thomas (1965) showed that the oil retards seed germination and early plant growth. The human nose is extremely sensitive to geosmin and is able to detect it at concentrations as low as 5 parts per trillion.[6]
Chemistry….so beautiful. Interesting that humans can detect the “smell of rain” at such low levels
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