Environment - Secret Life Of Caves

Set against the back drop of awe inspiring geological beauty, a strange scientific adventure sets out to discover how a mineral clad cave network - the height of a 30 storey building and the length of six football fields - came to exist deep below the Guadalupe Mountains in North America. But this journey soon unravels a multitude of inexplicable phenomena and obscure geological formations, leading to the discovery of extreme rock-eating microbes - a testimony from primordial Earth and a glimpse of life elsewhere in the Solar System. Geologists believed that all limestone caves were formed by rain and underground water percolating through cracks in the rocks. Absorbing carbon dioxide from the soil, this water becomes weak carbonic acid, nibbling away at limestone, etching out networks of subterranean caves. However, the intricate cave structures beneath the Guadalupe Mountains in the Carlsbad Caverns of New Mexico are coated in glistening white, gypsum-clad walls. 400m under a desert, the worlds largest gypsum chandeliers adorn a cavern called Lechuguilla Cave. There, dazzling white crystals create delicate branches up to 6m in length. Gypsum is soluble in water, so the water flow theory doesnt fit here. Gypsum has been left copiously encrusting the walls, when it should have been dissolved in the cave formation process.