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World's Largest Crystals
el_guapo writes: "OK, this is just cool. From here, a mining company in Mexico opened up a couple of chambers containing the world's largest known crystals. From the article 'Walking into either of these caves is like stepping into a gigantic geode.'" Looks pretty impressive.
According to the article, the mining company will install airconditioning to make the caves more tolerable to tourists. One thing they must consider when choosing airconditioning is the effect of a steady stream of tourists through an enclosed space. Humans continuously give off a steady stream of water vapour, carbon dioxide and other metabolic wastes, and this may have an adverse effect on the stability of the crystals. The airconditioning must not only lower the temperature of the cave, but must also remove these metabolic wastes, particularly the water vapour.
There are ancient Egyptian sites that have been closed to tourists because the water vapour from the tourists was dissolving the relics, which had been preserved because of the dryness of the site.
I hope the mining company carefully monitors the effect of the airconditioning and tourists on the caves and crystals. They may need to shut down or limit the tourist access if tourism is having an adverse effect on the crystals or cave system.
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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
It sounds nice at first, but it may be more destructive than it sounds. I've been spelunking and studying geology as a hobby for several years now, and it is quite possible that the act of opening the caves to the public alone can destroy some crystals.
What, then, would you have us do? Sure, we could preserve the caves indefinately by sealing them up forever. But then they would benifit no one.
As the article says, the choices, as far as the mining copmany sees it, is tourism and mining. Obviously mining the caves for the crystals in much more destructive than letting people take a look.
Even saying that we could avoid this dichotomy, what are the alternatives? Just let "seriosu" spelunker down there? That seems rather elitist to me. I'm not a seriopus spelunker, but I have a healthy respect for and awe of mother nature, and to be told that I can't go spreading around my water vapor, only "serious spelukners" just seems wrong to me. Shouldn't everyone be given equal access to the gaves, in anyone is giving access? Then everyone can enjoy them, and some regular guys might become interested in serious spelunking.
To me, this seems to paralell the ideals behind free software. Everyone is given equal acess to the finite software resiource (coders can only work so hard), and everyone can appreciate it, all in the sense of irony. And if a microsofty can be one over for Linux or BSD, everyone wins.
Stupid like a fox!