Hidden treasures.A team of scientists and cave explorers recently made a dazzling discovery: a two-mile-long "river" of crystal. Nicknamed Snowy River, the formation lies deep within the twisty hollows of New Mexico's Fort Stanton cave. Fort Stanton cave is made of limestone, which is composed mainly of the mineral calcite calcite (kăl`sīt), very widely distributed mineral, commonly white or colorless, but appearing in a great variety of colors owing to impurities. . Its cavernous interior was sculpted sculpt v. sculpt·ed, sculpt·ing, sculpts v.tr. 1. To sculpture (an object). 2. To shape, mold, or fashion especially with artistry or precision: when carbon dioxide carbon dioxide, chemical compound, CO2, a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas that is about one and one-half times as dense as air under ordinary conditions of temperature and pressure. gas from the atmosphere mixed with rainwater and groundwater to form carbonic acid carbonic acid, H2CO3, a weak dibasic acid (see acids and bases) formed when carbon dioxide dissolves in water; it exists only in solution. . This weak acid dissolved the area's limestone, chiseling out the earth. Snowy River formed as loads of calcite from the hollowed cave entered the groundwater. "When the calcite precipitated (separated chemically from a solution into a solid) from the water, it formed crystals," says Penny Boston, the director of the Cave and Karst Karst (kärst), Ital. Carso, Slovenian Kras, limestone plateau, W Slovenia, N of Istria and extending c.50 mi (80 km) SE from the lower Isonzo (Soča) valley between the Bay of Trieste and the Julian Alps. Studies Program at New Mexico Tech. The result: the world's longest known continuous calcite formation. "I've been in many different caves, but I've never seen anything even remotely like Snowy River," says Boston. "It's just gorgeous." |
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