Sơn Đoòng – World’s Biggest Cave
The biggest chamber in Sơn Đoòng is 5 kilometres long, 250m high and 150 wide. That’s larger than a sizable drawing room.
Sơn Đoòng cave was created by erosion of the limestone by the cave’s internal river a couple of million years back. Some parts of the roof have collapsed giving the cave some handy natural lighting and allowing the plant life to flourish.
Some of the biggest cave pearls in the world have been discovered in the guts if this hollow leviathan. Cave pearls are spleothems and are made by the concretion of calcium salts that form like layers of an onion around a nucleus, like a grain of sand for instance. If they are in contact with running water they become shiny and shimmery as the name suggests.
Just to round this cave based jazz off, here’s one last fact: the largest cavern cave chamber in the world is called the Sarawak Chamber in Borneo. Get this – it’s three times the size of Wembley stadium….. wow.
Here is some impressive drone footage recently taken inside Sơn Đoòng. It helps put this mighty beast into perspective:
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