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Wanna Come to My Bat Cave? Batman Tumbler - $7.95
We all know that Batman has a way with women. Now with the Wanna Come to My Bat Cave? Batman Tumbler from the NeatoShop you too can channel Batman’s animal magnetism. The ladies will be in awe of your choice of glassware.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fantastic Glassware & Drinkware!
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There is a cave on the side of the side Gellert Hill near Budapest, Hungary, in which it is said that a monk, possibly St. Istvan, lived his life. It later became a place of worship run by the Pauline monks. In 1951, the communist government arrested the monks and sealed the cave with a wall of concrete. The wall was torn down in 1989, and once more the cave is used as a church. Read more about it at Atlas Obscura. Link
This animation is a 3D rendering of Mortimer’s Cave, one of many available at the Nottingham Caves Survey. You’ll also find photographic virtual tours of caves, movies, images, and a Google map to find more of the 450 specific caves in Nottingham. You could get lost in here! Link -Thanks, John James!
See that little bitty guy in the center, with the light shining from his helmet? Yeah, it’s hard to see one man in a cave chamber that big -but we have a bigger version of the picture to help you out. National Geographic is covering an expedition to Vietnam last year that unearthed what may be the world’s largest cave -Son Doong, hidden in the thick jungle but big enough to stuff cities inside! There’s a television special, and a full article about Son Doong in the January issue of National Geographic Magazine. AND best of all, Neatorama has a collection of gorgeous photographs of the cave and its surroundings on our Spotlight Blog, courtesy of our friends at National Geographic. Link
(Photo Credit: © Carsten Peter/National Geographic)
Explorer Bart Hogan stands at an entrance to the Cheve cave in Mexico. Author James M. Tabor writes about a 2004 expedition through the Cheve supercave in his new book Blind Descent. Photo: Frank Abbato
Add this to the list of why I’m afraid to go spelunking:
Drowning, poisonous gas inhalation and electrocution are perils of journeying through a supercave. Tabor says there are more than 50 ways for a person to die during these explorations.
There’s also a danger of developing an illness known as "the rapture" — an extreme reaction to darkness and depth. Those who have suffered from it describe it as being similar to an anxiety attack while on methamphetamines.
"At some level, everyone’s brain will start to say, ‘I don’t belong here. This is a very dangerous place.’ It’s an ancient primordial instinct and it just says, ‘You have to get me out of here, right now,’" Tabor explains.
Guy Raz of NPR’s All Things Considered has a fantastic interview with James Tabor about his new book Blind Descent
They are beautiful, otherworldly, full of secrets, and can kill you. It takes bravery and special training to venture into the hydrogen sulfide atmosphere of the Bahama caves known as inland blue holes. Those who dare are looking for the chemistry of how our earth supports evolving life.
Offshore flooded caves, so-called ocean blue holes, are extensions of the sea, subject to the same heavy tides and host to many of the same species found in the surrounding waters. Inland blue holes, however, are unlike any other environment on Earth, thanks largely to their geology and water chemistry. In these flooded caves, such as Stargate on Andros Island, the reduced tidal flow results in a sharp stratification of water chemistry. A thin lens of fresh water—supplied by rainfall—lies atop a denser layer of salt water. The freshwater lens acts as a lid, isolating the salt water from atmospheric oxygen and inhibiting bacteria from causing organic matter to decay. Bacteria in the zone just below the fresh water survive by exploiting sulfate (one of the salts in the water), generating hydrogen sulfide as a by-product. Known on land as swamp or sewer gas, hydrogen sulfide in higher doses can cause delirium and death.
These strange but natural environments are threatened by both rising sea levels and people who use them for garbage dumps. Link
(Image credit: Wes C. Skiles/National Geographic)
Photo: Carsten Peter, Speleoresearch & Films
A geological wonder of immense proportions and intense beauty can be found in the Chihuahuan Desert of Mexico… 1000+ feet below the surface. Mentioned on Neatorama before for the photographic wowness, the Cueva de los Cristales - the Giant Crystal Cave – is also one of the most deadly environments on the planet.
For his BBC series How Earth Made Us, filmmaker Paul Williams discovered firsthand the scorching heat and toxic setting that has kept humans away from the crystal phenomenon. ”The coolest part of the caves is your lungs and so moist air starts to accumulate in them… leading to respiratory difficulties.”
Cueva de los Cristales is the incarnation of our most awesome science fiction imaginations – Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. At about the same time as humans first ventured out of Africa, these crystals began to slowly grow. For half a million years they remained protected and nurtured by a womb of hot hydrothermal fluids rich with minerals.
It wasn’t until 2001 that miners, searching for lead, eventually penetrated the cave wall and brought it to light. [...] My hope is that Gonzalo will prevail in his mission to secure funding and to preserve this site as a world heritage monument. To me they are a testament to the hidden forces of the planet, forces which operate on scales far beyond our own.
Link to Story. Experience the caves in this Video. (via Dark Roasted Blend)
Diver Anatoly Beloshchin shot this footage in an underwater cavern at Cenote Angelita, Mexico. The illusion of a river is most commonly attributed to a layer of hydrogen sulfide.
Photo: Dr. Ian Redmond
Kitum Cave in Kenya used to be a lot smaller than it is, but over hundreds of years it has been dug out deeper and deeper. In theory, the excavators turned out to be area elephants; along with other mammals the pachyderms gather in the cave to partake of its natural saltlick properties. In the process, they have been using their tusks to scrape and remove the cave’s walls throughout time. Atlas Obscura has the story, along with another piece of trivia.
The Kitum cave is more recently famous for a very different sort of lifeform, a deadly virus. In 1980 and again in 1987 visitors to the cave contracted Marburg virus, a deadly virus very similar to Ebola. The cave and Marburg virus rose to notoriety when it was featured in bestseller “The Hot Zone.” It is believed that the bats in the cave may carry the virus and that their powdered guano may act as the disease vector.
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Scientists have always thought that colorful mineral deposits in caves are the work of geology, not biology – but they were wrong: unusual deposits may actually be microbial poop!
"We’re finding that you need to look at things you might write off as not being biological—they might be biological," said Penelope Boston, a cave scientist at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro.
The microbes were found on the walls of lava tubes in Hawaii, New Mexico, and the Portuguese Azores islands, a volcanic archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean (see map).
The finds include "a lovely blue-green ooze dripping out of the [cave] ceiling in Hawaii; a vein of what looks like a gold, crunchy mineral in New Mexico; and, in the Azores, amazing pink hexagons," said Diana Northup, a geomicrobiologist at the University of New Mexico.
"That’s the waste—the bug poop, if you will."
Link (Photo: Kenneth Ingham)
Photo: RevolverOcelot
In the Pacific Ocean and parts of the Red Sea, bubble coral can be found in varying species, colors and forms. They maintain their egg-like appearance during the sunlit hours (maybe an egg-like disguise?), then deflate at dark, manifesting finger-tentacles that feed on plankton, etc.
See more of this beautiful creature at Environmental Graffiti.
Previously on Neatorama: Great Barrier Reef: Gone in 20 Years
Photo: Stephen Alvarez / National Geographic
NatGeo photographer Stephen Alvarez took this amazing shot of the Stephens Gap Cave in Alabama. As you can see, you’d need to rapel down the sunlit entrance to the left, or simply walk down the dark entrace to the right.
Mark Jenkins of National Geographic went spelunking for this fascinating article:
I’m about to back out when my shovel breaks through. I feverishly round out the hole and cram my head through. There is a low, triangle-shaped crawlway ahead of me. Surging with adrenaline, I try dragging myself into this new passage, but my chest gets stuck.
From the beginning I have been hyperfocused on digging in order to stave off dark, horrifying feelings of claustrophobia. But now, stuck like a rat in the throat of a snake, a sickly anxiousness sweeps over me. I violently kick my legs, but to no avail: I’m swimming in dirt. I realize that by not using the drag tray to remove the dirt, I’ve buried myself.
I try to calm my racing thoughts, but my mind is preoccupied with the millions of tons of rock above me. I’ve been told that caves seldom collapse, and yet here I am, trapped at the bottom of a breakdown, in a cave that obviously did collapse. I try to slow my frantic breathing because I’ve also been told that hyperventilating expands one’s lungs and only tightens the squeeze, which is exactly what’s happening. Suddenly I’m thrashing shamelessly, kicking and clawing and writhing. I manage to knock off my headlamp, and everything goes black.
Photo by Flickr user MelitaThis dreamy cave is Modra Spilja, The Blue Cave, located off the coast of Croatia. One of those hard-to-get-to locales, it is very much worth the effort to see the Bisevo/Balun Cove. The effect is caused by sunlight filtering in through an underwater opening from the sea, and reflecting off the limestone floor.
It has been there for ages, but wasn’t always accessible by raft:
Though Croatian fisherman have known of the blue cave since ancient times, it wasn’t until 1884 that a (relatively) easy entrance was blasted out with dynamite. Before this small hole in the side of the rock was opened, the only entrance into the cave was to dive underneath the rock wall in just the right spot.
Link with video.
Jill Heinerth has spent the past 14 years exploring underwater caves all over the world. Wired has a gallery of beautiful photographs she’s taken in underwater caves, lava tubes, and glaciers. This picture was taken at Devil’s Eye Spring off the coast of northern Florida. Link -via Digg
In a cave in the nation of Georgia, American, Israeli, and Georgian scientists discovered the oldest human-worked fibers ever known. The flax remnants date to about 30,000 years ago:
Flax was growing wild at the time. And it turns out not only to be a source of edible grain, but of fiber. These fibers were twisted — a sure sign that the flax had been spun.
Flax fibers woven together make linen, but in this case, linen doesn’t mean crisply pressed summer suits. Bar-Yosef says the fibers they found in the cave were probably braided together, macrame style.
“You can make headgear, you can make baskets, you can make ropes and strings, and so on,” he says.
Bar-Yosef didn’t find any of those objects in the cave — that’s too much to hope for 30,000 years later. But the researchers report in Science magazine that they did find evidence that the fibers were knotted and dyed — black, gray, turquoise and even pink. That’s consistent with other artifacts that show an artistic flair among these early people.
Photo: Eliso Kvavadze/NPR
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Researchers have found in Vietnam what they believe to be the world’s largest cave:
By contrast, explorers walked 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers) into Son Doong, in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, before being blocked by seasonal floodwaters—and they think that the passage is even longer.
In addition, for a couple of miles Son Doong reaches more than 460-by-460 feet (140-by-140 meters), said Adam Spillane, a member of the British Cave Research Association expedition that explored the massive cavern.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.
When the United Nations decided to redecorate the Human Rights Hall of their Geneva headquarters, they called upon renowned Spanish artist Miquel Barcelo to provide his own unique take on the redesign.
Using 77,000 pounds of paint and a multi-million Euro budget, the artist created a textured and engaging grotto complete with multi-colored stalactites.
A $23 million ceiling painting featuring hundreds of dangling icicle shapes that has been criticized for its hefty price tag was unveiled Tuesday at the United Nations.
The 16,000-square-foot (1,500-square-meter) elliptical dome full of bright colors and torn aluminum took over a year to produce.
Spanish abstract artist Miquel Barcelo used more than 100 tons of paint with pigments from all over the world, and worked with architects, engineers and even particle physics laboratories to develop the extra-strength aluminum for the dome.
“On a day of immense heat in the middle of the Sahel desert, I recall with vivacity the mirage of an image of the world dripping toward the sky,” Barcelo says. “Trees, dunes, donkeys, multicolored beings flowing drop by drop.”
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by whitespace.
I hate snakes – it’s the one animal that really gives me the ooies. But I have to admit, they’re endlessly fascinating.
Here’s a YouTube clip of Brady Barr of National Geographic’s Dangerous Encounter coming back to a snake cave where he got bit a year ago. (Posted on Neatorama here):
… Brady’s back in Indonesia, dodging deadly vipers, trudging through waist deep guano and heading into the cave where he was bitten a year ago in search of a monster python. He’s going deeper, braving the dangers of the cave and using new techniques to try to capture one of the biggest snakes he has ever captured in his career.
Coming back? After the whole "I got a really baaaaad bite" thing? You’re so crazy, Brady!
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – Thanks Minjae Ormes!
