Caves

Blue Holes & Cenotes

This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series Blue Holes Theme Week

Blue Holes & Cenotes Typically, the matter beneath our feet is a matter of no concern. It’s literally rock solid, and we move about our lives without paying it much attention. Not all Earth is equal, though. Some soils make fantastic bedrock, while others are subject to dissolution and erosion. Sometimes, when chemical processes or […]

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Nevada Has a Glacier

This entry is part 9 of 10 in the series Nevada Theme Month

Nevada Has a Glacier As we’ve learned over the past month, Nevada boasts remarkable natural splendor. With huge mountains, spectacular canyons, world-class lakes, and expansive deserts, the state has more beauty than its reputation might suggest. Visiting the Silver State, one leaves with the notion that this area is an unheralded jewel. Following this trend,

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PaleoBurrows

Paleoburrows The science of paleontology relies heavily on fossils. This statement is a bit inane, as paleontology is defined as the study of prehistoric life, broadly covering anything that lived before the Holocene epoch (our current age, which stretches to a point a little more than 10,000 years ago). Obviously, to glean anything about organisms

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500 Days in Timecave

500 Days in Timecave “I said: ‘Already? Surely not.’ I hadn’t finished my book.”  –Beatriz Flamini On 21 November 2021, mountaineer and endurance athlete Beatriz Flamini descended into a Spanish cave. Russia had not invaded Ukraine. Queen Elizabeth II wasn’t dead. The James Webb Space Telescope had not yet probed the cosmos. When Flamini emerged from the cave

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Home of the Bat

This entry is part 3 of 10 in the series New Mexico

Home of the Bat I thought it was a volcano—but then I’d never seen one…I had seen plenty of prairie whirlwinds during my life on the range, but this thing didn’t move. It seemed to stay in one spot near the ground—but the top kept spinning upward. I watched maybe a half-an-hour, and being about

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Yoda Cave

Yoda Cave   The otherworldly landscapes of Iceland provide fantastic backdrops for films and television series. The gorgeous island seems to appear to the human eye as something simultaneously gorgeous, yet unrecognizable. Just in the past two decades, blockbuster movies such as Batman Begins, Die Another Day, and Interstellar have employed the beauty of Iceland. Perhaps most famously, large

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Cheese Cave

Cheese Cave During our previous investigation, we explored the Cheese Caves, vast underground networks of old limestone quarries that today store, amongst various other things, billions of pounds of cheese. The notion of a “cheese cave” significantly predates these storage spaces. Humans began crafting cheese long before the advent of recorded history. Some historians believe

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The Cheese Caves

The Cheese Caves Every so often, a story spreads around the internet about the government, cheese, and caves. The claim regards billions of pounds of government cheese being stored in vast underground networks. While this tale has roots in reality, only portions of it are correct. People of a certain age will recall “government cheese,”

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The Great Blue Hole

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series Blue Holes Theme Week

2025 Version Original Version The Great Blue Hole The Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, stretching from the tip of the Yucatan Peninsula to Honduras, is the world’s second-largest, after Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. A 190-mile (300-kilometer) section eponymously takes the name of the nation whose coast it lines. Tourists and diving enthusiasts come from around the

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