Do you remember those massive crystals mentioned by Jules Verne in his book Journey to the Center of the Earth ? Well, it turns out they are real. Beneath the Chihuahua desert in present-day Mexico there are selenite crystals as tall as a 4-story building and as heavy as a whale. The exact origin of the massive crystals remains a mystery, as does the existence of ancient organisms embedded within the crystals that are genetically distant from any known living microbes on Earth.
When Jules Verne wrote the Journey to the Center of the Earth, he spoke of something that might well have seemed unthinkable: a cave whose walls were covered with crystals of delusional sizes, much larger than a human being, and even larger than a building.
This was thought to have been nothing more than science fiction for years. After all, how could nature produce something like this? At the time, Verne’s idea was as fictional as the world of prehistoric beasts that the characters described in his book would eventually encounter on his incredible journey. However, what Verne could not have imagined at the time, is that what he was describing in his best-selling book was, in fact, a reality that existed on the other side of the world. His cave of wonders exists and is in present-day Mexico.
The Naica mine and the crystal cave
136 years passed since the book was published until the brothers Juan and Pedro Sánchez discovered the Cave of the Crystals or Crystal cave ), in April 2000. They were drilling in the mine when they discovered, by accident, a wonder of nature. Inside the cave, they found a gigantic collection of crystals whose words of beauty and size could not describe.
Through tunnels and crevices they came to a place that almost seemed to have been produced by Verne’s imagination, and what was there exceeded any expectations. The crystals inside the cave were not the size of a person, and in fact, there was no point comparing them to a person because of their size. Some of the giant crystals were the size of a four-story building. Others had grown in width, thickening up to four meters in diameter.
The largest crystal discovered to date is 12 meters long, 4 meters in diameter and weighs over 55 tons, similar to that of a Great Whale.
Inside the cave, magic exists. It is not just imagination. It is a reality that some others Verne might have dreamed of. Crystals burst from the cave walls in all directions, creating the forest of transparent geometries that Verne had described in his book more than 100 years ago.
The Naica mine and its crystal cave are a true wonder of geology. The cave and its contents may sound like something that can only exist in some of the best science fiction books ever written, but science and fiction are not far from science and reality nonetheless.
Despite the fact that the cave was found 20 years ago, it remains largely unexplored. As of 2015, the cave is no longer accessible as the mine had been flooded again and the cavern was once again filled with the mineral-rich water necessary for crystals to grow.
Naica is located in an ancient fault above an underground magma chamber that exists about 5 kilometers below the lowest cave, the cave of crystals. There are other caves above the crystal cave.
The Cueva de los Cristales is a cavity in horseshoe shape in limestone. Its floor is covered with perfectly faceted crystalline blocks. Gigantic crystal rays protrude from both the blocks and the floor. Crystals were found to deteriorate in air. That is why the Naica Project attempted to visually document the crystals before they deteriorated further. To preserve this wonder of nature, the cave has been flooded again.
In addition to the huge crystal cave, other caverns, although much smaller, were also discovered in 2000. Until now, we know the Cueva de los Cristales, the cave of swords, the Cueva del Ojo de la Reina and the Cueva de las Candles. In addition, another chamber was found in a drilling project in 2009. The new cave, called Ice Palace It is 150 meters (490 ft) deep and is not flooded, but its crystal formations are much smaller, with small “cauliflower” formations and fine threadlike crystals.
The cave of swords is located at a depth of around 120, above the cave of crystals. Although it also features impressive examples of crystals, these are much smaller compared to the massive examples found an additional 150 meters below the surface. Scientists say that the crystals inside the sword cave are much smaller because, at this level, the transition temperatures may have dropped much more quickly, causing the crystals to stop growing. The temperature was much higher in the crystal cave.
The closest thing to extraterrestrial life
In addition to the beautiful and massive crystals at Naica, the scientists who ventured into the cave to study the crystals were stumped after discovering organisms that are unrelated to anything in known genetic databases.
The doctor. Penelope Boston , a speleologist and geomicrobiologist specialized in organisms Extremophiles He took samples of some of the crystals to see if they contained the presence of some form of ancient bacteria encapsulated within them. Although it was not extracted DNA of ancient bacteria, reported at the 2017 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the researchers discovered bacteria within inclusions embedded in some of the cave’s crystals.
Scientists also reported that through the use of sterile methods, they were able to extract and even reanimate organisms that turned out to be quite strange to us; The scientists concluded that the organisms were not closely related to anything known in genetic databases, making foreign organisms the closest thing to aliens that we have found so far.
As revealed by the researchers and based on the growth rate of the crystals, they (organisms) were likely isolated in the fluid bags for between 10,000 and 50,000 years.
