Weird Places: Mexico's Giant Crystal Cave
SciShow explores a place that's as beautiful as it is dangerous: Mexico's Giant Crystal Cave, where chemistry has created the world's largest crystals -- but in an environment so hostile...
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About fifteen years ago, when a mining company started pumping water out of a cave 300 meters below Naica, Mexico, they were hoping to find lead or zinc or maybe some silver. Once they finished pumping the water out, though, they realized that they weren’t going to be mining anything from this cave – mostly because of the giant, twelve-meter-long spikes everywhere. The spikes were actually huge crystals, the largest ever found. And the pillars of mineral -- as big as three story buildings -- weren’t the only hazard in the cave. If you managed to make the same descent the miners did, you’d only get to see the crystals for about ten minutes, because that’s roughly how long a human can survive unprotected in the cave. The appropriately-named Giant Cryst...
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About fifteen years ago, when a mining company started pumping water out of a cave 300 meters below Naica, Mexico, they were hoping to find lead or zinc or maybe some silver. Once they finished pumping the water out, though, they realized that they weren’t going to be mining anything from this cave – mostly because of the giant, twelve-meter-long spikes everywhere. The spikes were actually huge crystals, the largest ever found. And the pillars of mineral -- as big as three story buildings -- weren’t the only hazard in the cave. If you managed to make the same descent the miners did, you’d only get to see the crystals for about ten minutes, because that’s roughly how long a human can survive unprotected in the cave. The appropriately-named Giant Cryst...
