Think it’s cold where you are right now? It’s not as cold as Ellesmere Island. The average temperature of its capital city Grise Fiord (population 130) is −16.5 °C (2.3 °F), according to Wikipedia. Only about 150 people (maybe even fewer) live on Ellesmere Island, and the permanent population of the town of Eureka is zero. Eureka, as you might have guessed, is predominantly a research station.
Research on Ellesmere Island in northern Nunavut (Canada) focuses largely on weather and climate research, but perhaps its most famous discovery is Tiktaalik – a fish with limbs.
In 2000, a group of Mexican miners was drilling new tunnels for the excavation of zinc, silver, and lead, when they found something even shinier than the metals they were after: an underground cave with enormous crystals, 300 meters underground. These crystals are up to 12 meter (39 ft) high, and are the largest crystals on the planet!
The crystal cave was originally filled with water (in which the crystals were formed), but the miners pumped the water out of the space, revealing the crystals. Once they’re done mining this area, they will stop pumping, and the cave will fill up with water again. In the mean time, while the crystals are exposed to the air, they’re quite fragile and can deteriorate. Either way, the crystal cave is not a permanent space.
Recognizing the short-lived nature of the cave, a group of researchers and artists set up the Naica project in 2006, with the goal of documenting all aspects of the crystals before they disappear. The scientific team of the Naica project is studying the physical and geological aspects of how the crystals were formed, and looking at microbiology and fossils within the area. So far, they have published several dozen articles. Meanwhile, the “visual rescue” team is working hard to document the caves from all angles before they’ll be lost.
Both the photographers and scientists have had to deal with extreme conditions: temperatures within the cave are about 50 degrees Celcius (Over 120 Fahrenheit). Combined with 100% humidity, humans can only survive in the caves for a few hours, tops. That means the teams have had to develop techniques to take images and measurements without exposing themselves too much to the climate within the caves. The imaging team uses robots, and everyone has to wear special suits to go down there.
It’s not a place most of us will ever got to visit, so the research and documentation efforts are a great way for everyone to learn about the caves. The cave was discovered by accident, and who knows what else is hiding below the Earth’s surface?
Images:
Cave crystals – CC-BY by Alexander van Driessche, via Wikimedia. Robot and scientists images from Naica project website, copyright Naica project.
For my last science travel outing of the year, I went to the Grant Museum of Zoology, during lunch break of my last work day of 2014.
The Grant Museum of Zoology is a natural history museum of University College London. As a university museum, it’s not very big – only spanning one room – but there is a lot to see. It has samples from 67,000 species, including one of only seven existing quagga skeletons in the world.
Elsewhere, there’s a little alcove that’s covered floor to (mirrored) ceiling in old microscope slides, which you can take a closer look at with the provided magnifying glass. It made me feel like a 19th century biologist!
The museum was founded in 1828 as a teaching museum, so some of the specimens were prepared for educational purposes, which can make them a bit creepy-looking. Monkey heads in jars, that sort of thing.
Today, the museum still has an educational purpose. It’s the only zoological university museum in London, and offers teaching support to university groups at UCL and beyond, who want to use the samples in the classroom, as well as to high school, artists, film crews, and others in need of animal anatomy samples.
The museum is currently working on continued preservation of some of its largest skeletons as part of the “Bone Idols” project. When I visited, the rhino was being worked on.
To be able to carry out this preservation task, as well as its regular maintenance, the Grant Museum is raising funds in several ways. The most visible is the “adopt-a-specimen” project, which allows you to have your name displayed next to one of the jars or skeletons, in return for a donation.
Recently, my friend Kat (who lives in Canada) received this specimen adoption as a birthday present from her other London-based friend, so I set out to find her jar. I knew it was an octopus, so that narrowed it down somewhat, but it still took me a while to find the cephalopod section. When I did, I had to search a bit among all the other adopted samples, but then I saw it, at the back!
If you also want your name on an animal of your choice, you can adopt a specimen via the Grant Museum website. Let me know if you do, and I’ll drop by again to visit it. The museum is a stone’s throw from my office and I can’t believe I had never even been before last week!
The Finch and Pea 
