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"There’s a jungle inside Vietnam’s mammoth cavern."

ngon master
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ZacD ngon master
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/largest-cave/peter-photography

I'm always amazed when people find something this massive and untouched on Earth, Really awesome reference material, thought it deserved a post of its own, its like those journey into the center of the earth movies... but real.


r4Oo5.jpg

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IntE2.jpg

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  • aesir
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    aesir polycounter lvl 18
    Yea, I saw this earlier from reddit. Amazing pictures (click the link to see more people)

    I want to go...
  • Zack Fowler
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    Zack Fowler polycounter lvl 11
    Wow, that's awesome! Thanks for linking! Reminds me of when I saw the Angel Falls segment on Planet Earth, my brain immediately starts looking for signs of CG, heheh.
  • Striff
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    Striff polycounter lvl 18
    I think this is right behind Chernobyl on my list of places I must visit.
  • Anuxinamoon
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    Anuxinamoon polycounter lvl 14
    Wow I love the last shot in the album of the Cactus Garden.

    Thanks for sharing. Great reference!
  • Pix
    The last photo on the website look like out of this world.
  • Frump
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    Frump polycounter lvl 12
    As an avid minecrafter, anything to do with caves excites me, and this is no exception. Awesome photo set. :)
  • Ben Apuna
    So much awesome!

    Though not nearly as good, here's an article with pics from the first expedition.

    http://www.dancewithshadows.com/travel/hang-son-doong-photos.asp
  • 00Zero
    pffft. already saw this in minecraft.

    joking aside though. thats some really alien landscapes there. the last picture on the website looks like a still shot from an alien remake movie.
  • Joopson
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    Joopson quad damage
    Let's just hope that "The Descent" was wrong.

    But in all seriousness, that is amazing. Beautiful! I want to see it in person.
  • Zpanzer
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    Zpanzer polycounter lvl 8
    Saw a documentary about this cavern a few days ago on danish National Geographic... It's so beautiful!
  • Mark Dygert
    I saw this on the Nat Geo pic of the day a few days ago, so amazing. iGoogle has a lot of pic of the day widgets from a lot of places that are great for reference gathering. Places like NASA, Travel sites, EarthShots, bla bla bla.

    It reminds me of the giant crystal caves down in Mexico.
    http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/into-the-lost-crystal-caves-4636#tab-Overview

    Nat Geo just has so much amazing mind blowing stuff its awesome to get a taste of it every day.
  • MattLichy
  • notman
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    notman polycounter lvl 18
    And humans will destroy it in 3...2...1...
  • Pedro Amorim
  • Autocon
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    Autocon polycounter lvl 15
    the Earth is so fucking beautiful.

    I cant wait till we cut down that forest inside there to make something useful like toothpicks.
  • Bigjohn
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    Bigjohn polycounter lvl 11
    Autocon wrote: »
    the Earth is so fucking beautiful.

    I cant wait till we cut down that forest inside there to make something useful like toothpicks.

    This isn't the middle-ages. There's such a thing as Tree Farms. In reality there isn't much deforestation happening in order to produce lumber-goods. You have tree farms which have crop rotation (of sorts) that are constantly replenished on purpose. It also has a nice side-effect of sucking in more CO2 from the atmosphere than a pre-existing forest, since growing trees soak up more CO2 than old trees, and on tree-farms, trees are constantly growing.


    That said, hells yeah I'd love to go see that cave. It looks like something you'd see on an alien planet.
  • ScudzAlmighty
    Is that where they first tested the Genesis device? :poly129:
  • Mark Dygert
    Bigjohn wrote: »
    This isn't the middle-ages. There's such a thing as Tree Farms. In reality there isn't much deforestation happening in order to produce lumber-goods. You have tree farms which have crop rotation (of sorts) that are constantly replenished on purpose. It also has a nice side-effect of sucking in more CO2 from the atmosphere than a pre-existing forest, since growing trees soak up more CO2 than old trees, and on tree-farms, trees are constantly growing.


    That said, hells yeah I'd love to go see that cave. It looks like something you'd see on an alien planet.
    Something something... rain forest...
    something something... 28% of the world's oxygen turn over...
    something something slash a burn...
    something varried and unique being destroyed and replaced with single crop palm oil... so fat humans can keep stuffing their faces with fatty palm oil laden treats...
    something something... no one in that part of the world cares and people who do are tree huggin idiots who want to shut down highly profitable operations to save nats and snails.

    Who the hell cares that a lot of plants and animals are going extinct. So what if those plants could provide all kinds of cures and revolutionary treatments for things that try to kills us some of which we haven't even discovered yet...

    One thing to keep in mind is that trees also store carbon, when the tree dies or is harvested carbon gets released. So you get to pull it out of circulation for a while but its just a matter of time before it gets released again. Now imagine a forest fire... oh well all that carbon we stored well... there it goes. Now imagine pine beetles or any number of other tree killing insects, mosses, fungus or viruses. You can't bank on being able to keep creating more and more carbon and keeping it contained. Especially with countries that don't give a rats ass about long term sustainability.
  • Steve Schulze
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    Steve Schulze polycounter lvl 18
    Will be interesting to see what kinds of plants and potentially animals they can find in that jungle area. A completely isolated and sheltered ecosystem seems likely to contain some unique life forms as well as some that have long since become extinct outside.

    Amazing stuff. Thanks for posting.
  • eld
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    eld polycounter lvl 18
    I saw this on the Nat Geo pic of the day a few days ago, so amazing. iGoogle has a lot of pic of the day widgets from a lot of places that are great for reference gathering. Places like NASA, Travel sites, EarthShots, bla bla bla.

    It reminds me of the giant crystal caves down in Mexico.
    http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/into-the-lost-crystal-caves-4636#tab-Overview

    Nat Geo just has so much amazing mind blowing stuff its awesome to get a taste of it every day.

    That place just requires photos to be posted in forum:

    4636_ReturnToCrystalCave-01_04700300.jpg

    Bigjohn wrote: »
    This isn't the middle-ages. There's such a thing as Tree Farms. In reality there isn't much deforestation happening in order to produce lumber-goods. You have tree farms which have crop rotation (of sorts) that are constantly replenished on purpose. It also has a nice side-effect of sucking in more CO2 from the atmosphere than a pre-existing forest, since growing trees soak up more CO2 than old trees, and on tree-farms, trees are constantly growing.


    That said, hells yeah I'd love to go see that cave. It looks like something you'd see on an alien planet.

    Yeah that, isn't most deforestation due to farmland?

    So even if the rest of the earth is fucked, atleast this cave will stay beautiful ;_;
  • PixelMasher
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    PixelMasher veteran polycounter
    awesome, that crystal pic is like a real life fortress of solitude! *pushes up nerd glasses*
  • danr
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    danr interpolator
    Jackablade wrote: »
    Will be interesting to see what kinds of plants and potentially animals they can find in that jungle area. A completely isolated and sheltered ecosystem seems likely to contain some unique life forms as well as some that have long since become extinct outside.

    Amazing stuff. Thanks for posting.

    watched the programme about this on the National Geographic channel today, they found fuck all in the jungly bits, and the nearest they got to anything 'new' was an overly pale woodlouse. The sense of dissapointment all round was palpable. Booo.
  • Firebert
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    Firebert polycounter lvl 15
    awesome, that crystal pic is like a real life fortress of solitude! *pushes up nerd glasses*

    let's go razzle up some polar bears! :)

    pretty awesome stuff. thanks for posting ZacD!
  • Mark Dygert
    Firebert wrote: »
    let's go razzle up some polar bears! :)
    More like wrastle a cactus, they're wearing ice cooled suits and have to take breaks in a little AC shack otherwise the 136f (58c) temp would get em. Everyone that looks at the pics thinks "oh it must be cold" heh, we'll they wish it was.
  • Steve Schulze
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    Steve Schulze polycounter lvl 18
    awesome, that crystal pic is like a real life fortress of solitude! *pushes up nerd glasses*
    Or GI Joes inside a freezer.
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