Cave of the Crystals
Cueva de los cristales
Interesting facts
- Measured in the laboratory, the giant crystals grow by less than half a nanometre a year, the slowest crystal growth rate ever directly measured.
- At that pace, the largest beams are thought to have needed around a million years to reach their size.
- The chamber was found in April 2000 by the brothers Juan and Pedro Sánchez, who were drilling a new tunnel through the mine.
- The same tunnelling work in 2000 also opened two other crystal-filled cavities, named the Queen's Eye and the Candles caves.
- Another chamber, the Ice Palace, was found in 2009 at about 150 metres depth and named during a National Geographic expedition.
- Microbes revived from fluid trapped inside the crystals turned out to be unlike anything in known genetic databases, according to geomicrobiologist Penelope Boston.
- Humidity in the chamber ranged from 90 to 99 percent, so sweat could not evaporate and the body had no way to cool itself.
- The largest crystal holds roughly five cubic metres of gypsum, and the whole cavity has a volume of about 5,000 to 6,000 cubic metres.
- Mineralogist Paolo Forti of the University of Bologna led a detailed scientific exploration of the cave in 2006.
Why it is worth it
Some 300 metres below the mining town of Naica in Chihuahua, miners cutting a new tunnel for the silver, zinc and lead workings of Industrias Peñoles broke into a chamber in April 2000 that turned out to hold some of the largest natural crystals ever recorded. The horseshoe-shaped cavity in limestone, roughly 109 metres long, is crossed by translucent beams of selenite, a form of gypsum; the biggest measures about 11.4 metres and is estimated to weigh around 12 tonnes. A smaller chamber higher up in the same mine, the Cave of Swords at about 120 metres depth, had been found as early as 1910, but its crystals reach only about a metre.
The giants owe their size to heat and patience. A magma body a few kilometres down kept mineral-laden groundwater warm for an immensely long time, and as the temperature slowly fell below about 56 °C, gypsum began to crystallise out of it. Uranium-thorium dating puts the crystals at up to about half a million years old, and laboratory measurements of their growth rate are among the slowest ever recorded for any crystal. The same conditions made the chamber almost lethal: air around 58 °C with near-saturated humidity meant that an unprotected person could last only about ten minutes. Scientific teams in the 2000s worked in refrigerated suits with ice-filled backpacks, giving them roughly half an hour at a time, and in 2017 researchers reported reviving dormant microbes sealed inside fluid inclusions in the crystals.
The cave was never open to the public, and it is not accessible today. Access depended entirely on the mine's pumps; when Peñoles suspended operations in October 2015 because of flooding it could not control, the chambers were allowed to fill with mineral-rich water again, and the crystals are once more submerged in the conditions that grew them. The place is best appreciated through the extensive scientific photography and documentary footage made while it was dry.
Getting there
Naica lies in the municipality of Saucillo, about 38 km from Ciudad Delicias, the nearest sizeable city. The nearest airport is General Roberto Fierro Villalobos International Airport (CUU) in Chihuahua, about 105 km away. The cave itself sits inside a private, flooded mine and cannot be visited; there is no public access to the workings.
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From the encyclopaedia
Cave of the Crystals, also known as Naica Cave or the Giant Crystal Cave, is a cave connected to the Naica Mine at a depth of 300 metres (980 ft), in Naica, Chihuahua, Mexico. It takes the form of a chamber within the limestone host rock of the mine, and is about 109 metres (358 ft) long with a volume of 5,000 to 6,000 cubic metres.
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