Naica Mine - Giant Crystals Secret Recipe

[L Roebuck]

Giant Crystals Secret Recipe Found

Mother Nature’s secret recipe for cooking up the staggeringly huge, pillar-like crystals of Mexico's newfound Cave of Crystals has been worked out by mineral researchers.

It turns out that with just the right pinch of minerals added at the right times for a few million years to a warm subterranean broth, you too can grow gypsum crystals 35 feet long and as thick as tree trunks. Gypsum, incidentally, is the same stuff that’s ground up to make plaster of Paris.

A team of researchers from Mexico and Spain have hit on the factors that created the otherworldly crystal "beams" that were discovered by miners in 2000 in a cave of the Naica Mine in northern state of Chihuahua. By studying the crystals in the cave and testing some fluid mixtures in a laboratory, it appears that the crystals formed in delicately balanced mineral water that stayed within a narrow range of temperatures for a very long time.

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[Azurerana]

Darn it! I grew copper sulfate crystals on my bedroom window sill as a 8-9 year old for about 3 months. I turned them over every few days, and kept making and adding saturated CuSO4 solution-- I ended up with bright blue crystals which were about 1/2 inch in each dimension.

I guess I quit too soon. If I had continued for the next 41 or 42 years, I bet I could have had that bedroom full by now!

[Brian Roebuck]

Of course you would have had to know the secret temperature and pressure ranges to get the really huge blue crystals to fill your room! Alas science projects have their drawbacks. Think of all the time you would have invested in making those crystals versus going caving instead!

[Azurerana]

drbeaner said:

Of course you would have had to know the secret temperature and pressure ranges to get the really huge blue crystals to fill your room! Alas science projects have their drawbacks. Think of all the time you would have invested in making those crystals versus going caving instead!

I learned the secret temperature and pressure ranges in a book by Julian May, called "There's Adventure in Geology"...I still have the book if you want to borrow it.

Homeland Security would have had a fit if it knew kids books were encouraging children to play with an aquatic herbicide toxic to fish.
There were explicit directions how to grow the crystals. Seriously. Who needed an Internet?

I don't think it would have cut down much on my caving, as I didn't even know there were cavers until I was almost 30. But my sister would have had to found another place to sleep.

[L Roebuck]

Um ..... as a child I only made sugar crystals --- but they tasted great! ;D