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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday May 02 2019, @10:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the journey-to-the-center-of-the-earth dept.

Step Inside This Massive Cave Labyrinth Hidden Under Borneo:

Beneath the island's rainforest, explorers search for new discoveries deep within some of the Earth's largest, longest, and wildest caves.

Late on a sweltering morning in April, two slim British cavers named Frank and Cookie lowered themselves into a slick, humid pit deep below Borneo's rainforest.

Climbing down past an ancient heap of bird guano and pushing through a gallery of gleaming pillars the color of old bone, the pair were hoping to make history. They had crawled into Cave of the Winds, deep inside a cave system known as Clearwater, where they would search for a passage to Racer Cave, part of the Racer-Easter system.

Connecting the two would create a "super system," one of the longest subterranean labyrinths on the planet. As the men wormed down, drilling and hammering bolts into the slick rock to hold their climbing ropes, their odds of success seemed good.

Already they knew Clearwater stretched for 140 miles and that some of the caverns were lined with turbulent rivers, while the Racer-Easter system contained chambers so enormous that a jetliner could fit easily within its walls with plenty of room to spare. In other words, the limestone underlying this region, beneath Malaysia's Gunung Mulu National Park, is riddled with some of the biggest holes, widest tunnels, and most mind-blowing voids anywhere on Earth.

Now imagine them down there, Frank and Cookie, mud smeared and grinning, on the verge of joining two cave systems into a single, immense whole. Not your thing? Well, for cavers, it's the thing. And it's rare that such superlative connections are made. In the often obscure world of underground exploration, which is governed by international bodies with names such as the "Longest, Largest, and Deepest Committee," such a feat would be a very big deal.

Elsewhere far below the Earth's surface, in the entrails of Racer Cave, another team was slithering into place. They too carried hammers and a drill, and soon the two teams would begin banging on the cave walls and drilling into the rock, listening for each other, hoping noise would lead them to a connection and a spot in the record books.

What follows is the gripping tale of their explorations as well as stunning photos of absolutely gigantic caverns such as the Sarawak Chamber: nearly 500 feet (150 meters) tall, 2,000 feet (600 meters) long, and 1,400 feet (430 meters) wide. It has a volume of over 346 million ft3 or nearly 100 million cubic meters. By comparison, The Big Room in Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico (the largest cave chamber in the U.S.) would fit into Sarawak Chamber ten times!


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @12:20AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @12:20AM (#838201)

    Is it up to date for android with working adblock?

  • (Score: 2) by Hartree on Friday May 03 2019, @02:51AM (1 child)

    by Hartree (195) on Friday May 03 2019, @02:51AM (#838268)

    Can't help you there. MoonChild stopped Android development years back.

    • (Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Friday May 03 2019, @05:18AM

      by Fluffeh (954) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 03 2019, @05:18AM (#838316) Journal

      Hide Elements:
      fancybox-overlay __web-inspector-hide-shortcut__
      and
      fancybox-wrap fancybox-desktop fancybox-type-html fancybox-opened __web-inspector-hide-shortcut__

      You'll then be treated like a reader - not a invalid credit card.