Photograph credit score: 60 Minutes Australia
Method down below the sun-baked filth of Chihuahua, Mexico, hides a geological jaw-dropper that’s exhausting to wrap your head round—a cavern the place crystals shoot up like historic bushes, glowing with a spooky, see-through shine. Known as the Cave of Crystals, or Cueva de los Cristales, this underground gem, buried 1,000 ft beneath the Naica Mine, grabbed the world’s eye when 60 Minutes Australia took a uncommon dive into it for a June 2025 particular.
Stumbled upon accidentally again in 2000, this cave isn’t only a random gap—it’s proof of Earth’s sluggish, cussed creativity, a spot the place time and chemistry workforce as much as craft one thing virtually out-of-this-world. Miners Juan and Pedro Sanchez tripped over the cave whereas digging a vent tunnel for Industrias Peñoles, a mining outfit searching silver, zinc, and lead within the Naica Mountains. What they hit was a horseshoe-shaped room, full of large selenite gypsum crystals.
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These clear-as-glass pillars, constructed up over half one million years, tower over anybody who steps in, their hazy surfaces bouncing faint gentle like prisms in a grand church. The discover was pure luck, solely popping up after pumps drained the mineral-heavy water that stored it hidden. With out the water, the crystals, fragile regardless of their bulk, began breaking down within the open air.
The warmth sits round 136°F, with humidity so near 100% that your physique can’t sweat to chill off. With out gear, you’d be toast in about 10 minutes, overheating or choking as condensation fills your lungs. Explorers, together with the 60 Minutes Australia workforce, lean on fancy cooling fits. Even with that, they’re restricted to fifteen–60 minute journeys, and the slippery, moist crystals make each step a cube roll. One incorrect slip may imply a lethal fall or a nick to those priceless formations.
About 26 million years in the past, magma effervescent below the Naica Mountains warmed up groundwater caught in limestone cracks. That water, loaded with calcium sulfate, become anhydrite. Because the magma cooled over eons, the water dropped under 136°F, letting anhydrite break down and reform as gypsum, the delicate stuff in drywall and these big selenite crystals. Geologist Juan Manuel García-Ruiz’s work, shared within the journal Geology, exhibits they grew at a snail’s tempo—about 1.4 nanometers per second—over 500,000 to 1 million years, thriving in a gradual, mineral-rich stew.
When mining shut down in 2015, groundwater began creeping again in. By 2017, it was largely underwater once more, locking the crystals of their pure dwelling however slamming the door on most guests. The 60 Minutes Australia piece, shot earlier than the refill, gave a uncommon peek into this vanished realm, capturing the crystals’ wild dimension by journalist Michael Usher and crew’s lens. Paired with speleologist Carlos Lazcano’s insights—who first ventured in—it paints the cave as a spot of marvel and hazard, the place each journey looks like a countdown.
