Earth’s Biggest Natural Crystals: The Naica Mine, Mexico
The huge, horse shoe shaped cave is constantly being pumped free of water so that the Naica explorers can visually document the crystals. They degrade in air so at some point (probably when the Naica cave above stops being profitable) the cave will be allowed to reflood to keep them in their glorious state. A Discovery channel program on the cave hinted that there may be further caves attached to the Cave of Crystals, but to get to it would require destruction of some of the crystals pictured here, so we may never know if there really are any bigger one’s chilling out down there.
The crystals were formed because the vein sits atop a magma chamber. The mineral rich water was kept at a stable temperature for around 500,000 years and crystals were allowed to form unhindered and unchecked.
Here’s a quote from an adventurer/ storm chaser, George Kourounis who has been privileged enough to enter this crystal womb of doom:
Each minute you stay inside, the more unbearable it gets. You begin to breathe heavy, your hear rate jumps up and sweat is pouring down your hands. I was actually concerned that the sweat was going to short circuit my camera. It becomes easy to get confused and disoriented from the heat and your higher cognitive functions start to shut down. When you finally leave the cave, your body is so weak that all you want to do is lie down and drink. Dehydration is an obvious concern and I was amazed at how many liters of water I drank.
