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A cave in Romania that was sealed for 5.5M years
- ygra 10y agoThe title is a bit misleading. The cave was discovered in 1986. It's just that this article is a bit more recent.
- qaq 10y agoWhat's 30 years compared to 5.5M :)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pvg 10y agoThat's because the title was made up by the poster and not the original.
- acqq 10y ago> the title was made up by the poster And it's a linkbait and should be fixed by the mods. Also on BBC September last year: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150904-the-bizarre-beasts-living-in-romanias-poison-cave http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150904-the-bizarre-beasts-l...
- mtarnovan 10y agoThat's the same link
- fma 10y agoThe OP probably saw this posted in the TIL subreddit. This article is 9 months old, posted on reddit 12 hours ago, posted on HN 7 hours ago.
- jgrahamc 10y agoFewer than 100 people have been allowed inside Movile, a number comparable to those who have been to the Moon. BBC reporting is really kind of crappy. 12 people walked on the Moon; 22 people orbited the Moon.
- arbuge 10y agoTechnically 100 and 32 are comparable numbers.
- berekuk 10y agoTechnically all numbers are comparable.
- dexterdog 10y agoWhat about imaginary numbers?
- pmalynin 10y agoYou can still compare them, e.g two numbers could or couldn't be equal. Equality is a form of comparison
- jungans 10y agowouldn't this make all things comparable?
- taotao670 10y agoExcept apples and oranges apparently.
- DonHopkins 10y agoYou can compare apples and oranges alphabetically.
- ucaetano 10y ago"in pitch darkness and temperatures of 25 °C" Is this supposed to be terrifying? Anyone who woke up at night and walked to the bathroom faced pitch darkness and temperatures of 25 °C!
- tremon 10y agoIt is possible the authors were just trying to illustrate the remoteness of the ecosystem, without meaning to evoke emotion. Regardless, I don't think many city dwellers have ever experienced pitch black.
- rangibaby 10y agoI don't think anyone has. When it's that dark you get a free light show courtesy of your eyes. It was quite disconcerting the first time it happened to me.
- bovermyer 10y agoClearly you've never been in the (real) middle of nowhere at night when it's cloudy. Rural North Dakota, for example.
- ucaetano 10y agoI think he means the noise you see in the complete absence of light, or Eigengrau.
- Retric 10y agoStars put out quite a bit of light in remote areas, cloud cover may block ~75% of this, but it's still far from 'pitch black'. One of the stranger things about caving is it just keeps getting darker as you go deeper. PS: As a kid I used to spend a lot of time walking around in starlight. I only ever really used a flashlight inside. I moved much closer to a city and light pollution is terrible to the point where there is little need to turn lights on in my apartment unless I want to read something.
- 10y ago
- Bushra8 10y agoCave filled with mildly poisonous gas and a lake full of rotten egg smelling acidic water that has a film of toilet paper like bacteria floating around on top of it gets cracked open by humans. They find it full of creepy crawly insects that haven't seen the light of day since they were shut up inside it geologic ages ago. Then they used diving equipment to go into that pitch back lake and discover leeches as well. I'd much rather visit any cave other than this one.
- sbarre 10y agoNo kidding! I have immense respect for the scientists who are willing (and able!) to go into these places to bring back research and information for the rest of us.
- roxmon 10y agoHmm... https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4iznwi/til_romanian_sewer_workers_accidentally/d32h9b1 https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4iznwi/til_r...
- sametmax 10y agoAre you kidding ? It sounds amazingly fun. You get to go to a place no human went to, you discover entirely new animals, and you get to do acrobatic stuff in the process, using tech equipment. It's the closest thing to being an astronaut or meeting aliens.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- csours 10y agoPerhaps the Andromeda Strain will be found in a cave, not in space...
- pavel_lishin 10y agoYou might like Peter Watts' Starfish.
- csours 10y agoThanks for that, I'll take a look.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- tomp 10y agoSome interesting takeaways:: - The cave is called "Movile". - 3 species of spider, a centipede, 4 species of isopod (the group that includes woodlice), a leech never seen anywhere else in the world, and an unusual-looking insect called a waterscorpion - Movile's only snail [probably the only snail species] suggested that it has been down there for just over 2 million years. - Many animals are born without eyes, which would be useless in the dark. Almost all are translucent as they have lost pigment in their skin. - The cave seems to have no contact with the surface; Chernobyl accident had released lots of radioactive metals, which had found their way into the soils and lakes surrounding Movile Cave. However, a 1996 study found no traces of them inside the cave. - The ecosystem seems to be supported by chemosynthesis; bacteria oxidise methane, sulphide and ammonia, generating energy and organic matter.
- Someone1234 10y agoThe sad irony is that by opening it and discovered it, we've ruined the entire ecosystem. But by not discovering it we never would have known about it, and it is an educational opportunity lost. Really cannot win either way. Just have to hope there are other, undiscovered, caves like this around the globe.
- projectramo 10y agoHeisenberg!
- ghshephard 10y agoThere are almost certainly thousands, if not tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of undiscovered caves exactly like this around the globe. And even that is probably a wild underestimate. The world is a very, very big place, and humans, despite all our activity, have barely scratched the surface of most of it.
- bjblazkowicz 10y agoSee you in Lake Vostok
- 10y ago
- txutxu 10y ago> Strangely, the worse the air gets the more animals there > are. It's not at all obvious why that should be, or how > the animals survive at all. Mmmm I think it's the opposite: On more animals using the same static air balloons, less Oxygen will be there.
- Normal_gaussian 10y agoAlmost like concentrations of humans
- nxzero 10y agoLike comments like this, but just a heads up that dang has ban user who repeatedly post summaries in the comments. EDIT: Here's a recent comment from dang (the main HN mod) on the topic of summary comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11608134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11608134
- mkaziz 10y agoTakeaways are the best part of HN comments. It's always interesting for me to see what stood out to other people versus myself. Why are they a cause for banning users? That seems like stifling intellectual discourse to me.
- fouc 10y agoI agree, I enjoy takeaways because it gives me a point of comparison. Also if I suspect I'm not interested enough to check out the actual link, it's helpful to determine if the link is worth checking out after all. dang's position is that HN threads are about conversation. That's a weird constraint though, and I doubt takeaways reduce conversation in the first place since there's always going to be a difference to one's own internal summary of the post. Perhaps the conversation aspect should be measured empirically, compare threads w/ takeaways vs without ;) EDIT: I will also say that HN's main draw to me are the comments that are informative. The meta-analysis is super helpful. Takeaways could be considered at the bottom of the range of meta-analysis, so banning people for takeaways might also reduce informative comments.
- krapp 10y agoI think that takeaways do always reduce the quality of conversation. If someone is unwilling to be engaged enough to even glance at the linked article, they probably can't provide meaningful or relevant commentary on it, having read only the synopsis. The amount of effort it takes to RTFA is practically nil. I've seen entire threads spawn from a clear misinterpretation of the title alone. Encouraging people to put as little effort as possible into understanding a topic can't possibly improve the quality of the discussion around it. And that doesn't even consider the likelihood that whomever is creating the summary is consciously or subconsciously applying a bias to controversial articles. Unfortunately, it does seem like a bit of a zero sum game. Providing a summary of the article will prevent people from reading the article, and people would rather engage entirely with the comments than the article itself.
- shawabawa3 10y ago> Movile's only snail suggested that it has been down there for just over 2 million years This is a bit misleading. It should say only species of snail, not a single snail that's been alive for 2 million years
- wernercd 10y agoOf course he's been single for 2 million years... it's not like he could go out and paint the town with the door closed.
- EGreg 10y agoRotifers keep it in their pants for two million years
- jl6 10y agoI don't know, it seems like a valid figure of speech to me. But I would agree that the writing in the article is distractingly amateurish.
- dang 10y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11683260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11683260 and marked it off-topic.
- hinkley 10y agoYou can't trust a snail anyway. They lie... and eat your spinach when you're not looking.
- ommunist 10y agoThis is fascinating. Life is everywhere. This is real "pitch black", just with smaller monsters.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- sdegutis 10y agoRight, just saw this a minute ago on reddit. It seems like HN is just /r/Futurology, /r/TodayILearned, /r/Programming, and /r/Startups rolled into one.
- supergreg 10y agoI'm here for the comments
- sdegutis 10y agoMeh. I used to think more highly of HN comments, but as they started covering stuff I already knew a fair bit about, I realized the highest voted comments usually only have the appearance of knowledge / wisdom / experience / etc, but without the substance of it.
- freshyill 10y agoBut without all the toxicity.
- FloNeu 10y agoThat must be were my motivation was hiding since last week...
- mh-cx 10y agoMaybe I've missed it, but how exactly do they know it was cut off for 5.5M years?
- joemi 10y agoGood question. I've read a bunch of articles about it (haven't delved into the research papers), and none of what I've read ever mentions that. That said, I suspect it's based on the location and composition of the cave and it's surroundings.
- beefok 10y agoI would like to know this too! I'm trying to think it must be some radioisotope dating, but I don't see what they would be comparing or sampling. It would also be interesting to do some DNA dating differential method between species.
- amorphid 10y agoAre animals in a cave like this considered endangered species?
- x2398dh1 10y agoWhat I'm reading is that the cave is like a 5-million year old micro brewing process, and as with many microbrews there are some nightmarish scorpions and spiders and scary creatures associated with the cave's brand. If that allegory is correct, then by exploring that cave we have essentially opened the cork and stuck our finger in, haven't we?
- dc2 10y agoA walk-through of the cave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tOghHmhQKI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tOghHmhQKI It gets more interesting starting on the third video.
- amasad 10y agoGoes to show how resilient life is. Which makes it all the more unlikely that life is all that rare.
- Evgeny 10y agoResilience is probably not that closely linked to the probability of arising. Maybe once it exists, it is resilient, but when it is absent, chances of it arising are still very low.
- StanislavPetrov 10y agoBased on what? The only planet that we've explored extensively (Earth) is teeming with life everywhere we look.
- Evgeny 10y agoJust a thought. As you yourself say, we know only of one planet with life. However, looks like life only arise once on this planet. If life is so abundant in the Universe, why wouldn't it at least arise several times independently on the planet where the conditions are so great?
- StanislavPetrov 10y agoIt would have to die off before it could arise again. Fortunately with a Hillary Clinton administration looming, we may get to see that scenario play out.
- Scarblac 10y agoBut we didn't exactly choose this planet for our explorations randomly. We explored here because we lived here, and found there is life. Can't really extrapolate from that.
- dualogy 10y ago"Given enough time, hydrogen starts to wonder where it came from, and where it is going."
- CodinM 10y agoHoly shit my city is #1 on HackerNews.
- carlesfe 10y agoI find this fascinating! Googling a bit, it seems there is a documentary on the Movile cave: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1qpffb_the-secret-underworld-movile-sulphur-cave-life-romania-national-geographic-adventures_tech http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1qpffb_the-secret-underwor...
- censhin 10y agoSo in summary, life, ahh, finds a way.
- hinkley 10y agoCenozoic Park just doesn't have the same ring to it. Especially since all parks are technically Cenozoic Park.
- OJFord 10y ago> became roughly the 29th person to enter Roughly?
- hinkley 10y ago"We don't know for sure how many of his girlfriends Steve has snuck into the cave over the years, and frankly we're afraid to ask."
- khan20 10y agoIn the late 1980's, my aunt visited Romania along with some friends who were employed in the US State Dept. On a side-trip through a rural area, they stopped and my aunt asked a woman if she could take her picture in front of her small, but very well maintained, house. She agreed, and after the picture was taken, she started crying. They asked why, and after some hesitation, the woman explained that she and her family were being forced to relocate to Bucharest, and they would have to abandon the house that her family had lived in for several generations. My aunt got her contact info, and later sent her a copy of the picture.
- dredmorbius 10y agoBoth HN and BBC titles are rather clickbaity. Pity for what turns out to be an interesting article on non-photosynthesis-based food webs, communities, and metabolism.
- _asummers 10y agoI believe the protocol here is to not complain about the title without suggesting a better alternative for the mods.
- dredmorbius 10y agoI know. Point is there's not a particularly good option as suggests itself to me. You too?
- sengork 10y agoThose creatures have evolved on their own tangent. Quite interesting to see how different they are compared to the creatures outside of the cave. On another note an well hidden cave like that would be great for preserving man made historical artefacts.
- udkl 10y agoThis article reminded me of Terreria and the caves in it.
- akashaggarwal 10y agoMinecraft dungeon discovered!
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ensiferum 10y ago... and then humans came along and filled it with coke bottles, plastic bags, old car tyres and other rubbish.