WOW, THIS IS JUST PLAIN COOL! A real life Superman Cave with HUGE crystals. This cave is extremely hot inside instead of cold, but gypsum crystals look a lot like ice and WOW is it spectacular!
If you want to watch, the show is called, Journey \"Into the Lost Crystal Caves\" and it's on tonight, 10/10/10 on the National Geographic channel. This will be the last time humans will be able look inside the caves, maybe forever, because the mining company is going to re-flood the cave to preserve the crystals.
Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2010 4:07 pm
by Heretic
Wow that is awesome.
Posted: Mon Oct 11, 2010 8:34 am
by woodchip
I watched and was impressed at the diameter of the bore hole they went down. I'd like to see the drill that does the boring. All in all was a interesting show. I have to wonder at how many small crystals they destroyed by walking on them.
Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2010 10:31 am
by Tunnelcat
Yeah, I was cringing every time they walked or crawled on even the large crystals, let alone squash any small ones. Gypsum is soft enough to mar or break with boots or gear. At least once they re-flood the mine, the crystals will resume growing again.
That bore hole is similar to the one that's been drilled at that Chilean mine where those miners are trapped and just about to be rescued today. They have to drill large holes that size in stages, with larger and larger bits. The bit that drilled the Robin Hole at the Crystal Cave mine must have been HUGE! And they don't just use drill bits alone on hard rock. Percussion is sometimes used in conjunction with the bit to fracture the rock as they drill, just like a hand held hammer drill does for drilling concrete. They're starting to use lasers now to fracture rock for drilling as well. That I'd like to watch.
Re:
Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2010 12:24 pm
by Krom
tunnelcat wrote:They're starting to use lasers now to fracture rock for drilling as well. That I'd like to watch.
I wonder how many nanoseconds you could "watch" that before it would be permanently seared into your retinas...
Sounds interesting, I wonder how it works.
Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2010 7:31 pm
by woodchip
Be nice to see a video of a drill head crunching rock
Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2010 10:22 am
by Tunnelcat
Ha, ha Krom. You know what I meant. Here's a good site on laser drilling. They have a bunch of PDF's and The History Channel's Modern Marvels video of the process, plus a couple of others too.
I've got to keep an eye out for that particular show. It's not that old either.
Woodchip, you've seen videos of tunnel boring machines haven't you? It essentially the same process, fracture and break up the rock with rotating tungsten carbide-tipped bits and remove the pieces from the borehole. There's just more waste rock to deal with and dispose of when using the larger bit and it's a vertical, not horizontal, process.
