New cave found in Vietnam: "A skyscraper could fit"

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

by cwan • 16 years ago

318 47 16 years ago

ngm.nationalgeographic.com

veb• 16 years ago

Oh wow at the Jungle inside it... that's pretty amazing. I don't think I've ever seen such a beautiful cave.

rrival2• 16 years ago

This isn't reddit

tptacek• 16 years ago

New scientific discoveries are virtually always germane to HN.

secretasiandan• 16 years ago

A link to the article text rather than the photo gallery might be more appropriate

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2011/01/largest-cave...

rrival2• 16 years ago

Love new scientific discoveries, just haven't seen a lot of gallery links here and recall that that's a leading indicator of content noise ratio increase.

Thanks for posting the direct article link.

frou_dh• 16 years ago

That's gorgeous. Reminds me of the kind of scenes you see in adventuring video games, only more intricate.

cubicle673• 16 years ago

I just hope no one in Hollywood sees these and decides that'd be a cool location for a movie

CamperBob• 16 years ago

Does anyone even bother to shoot on location anymore?

jcfrei• 16 years ago

I wonder how they took the pictures. Was there enough light in the cave thru some holes in the ceiling? Did they install huge lamps or did they use a very long exposure (seems unlikely by looking at the people).

either way stunning and surreal photographs!

ramidarigaz• 16 years ago

I think a really bright flash is sufficient.

pmjordan• 16 years ago

Not for that sort of size. Light intensity drops at inverse square of distance, reflected light intensity falls off at up to 1/r^4. I suspect a combination of massive floodlights and long/multiple exposure.

xtacy• 16 years ago

For long exposures, depending on the exposure time, the people could just walk away to avoid excessive ghosts. In one of the pictures (7th pic), one could see a translucent backpack, which in fact suggests long exposure.

jonknee• 16 years ago

Different techniques depending on the photo, but for any of the shots with vegetation you know there is decent light at least some of the day.

misotakacs• 16 years ago

I watched a movie[1] about exploring some (huge!) caverns in Venezuela and IIRC they used many strategically positioned remotely controlled charges/flares. The guy was cavern-photographer and it seemed to be the standard way of doing it.

[1] http://www.k2studio.sk/?cube=text&c=559&lg=en

jonhendry• 16 years ago

You can see hotspots by each person in some of the pictures, along with other hotspots to the sides. Likely each person had a remote-controlled slave flash, and they positioned other such units for fill.

In particular, note the shot of the row of people under the low ceiling. Each person has a hotspot that illuminates the ceiling and silhouettes them; the person is in between the bulb and the camera. In other words, the lights are all oriented the same way, which suggests to me they were set for the shot, rather than being the chance arrangement of the cavers' utility lights at that moment.

They might have used long exposures, but the people aren't blurred, so the exposures can't have been all that long.

Then again, flash would probably be murder on the eyes for cavers, so maybe these were less-bright-than-flash lamps, with a slightly-long exposure.

Mithrandir• 16 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2054401

joshfraser• 16 years ago

Beautiful. This is the first time I've ever wanted to visit Vietnam.

bbgm• 16 years ago

It's a beautiful country. You should definitely visit. I lived there in the 80's and driving from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi and back was quite a fabulous journey

prawn• 16 years ago

Get over there - worth seeing. Don't miss Halong Bay:

http://www.google.com.au/images?q=halong+bay

kylelibra2• 16 years ago

Isn't this part of the plot of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon

benatkin• 16 years ago

Close enough. :)

WildUtah• 16 years ago

That was in the Philippines. Totally different.

kylelibra2• 16 years ago

I remembered it was somewhere in southeast Asia and then I remembered there was something about Vietnam. I didn't put the whole thing together until a while after I posted the comment. Great book though.

tsotha• 16 years ago

Also... no gold :(

wyclif• 16 years ago

There are a lot of caves in the Philippines that were used by the Japanese when the Imperial Army was routed by US/Filipino forces. Recently I was on the island of Bohol where we went mountain climbing and found a cave with Japanese pottery shards still on the floor.

harscoat• 16 years ago

Even after reading the text version, wondering how come these caves were not discovered before, especially after such a military focus on the region.

smhinsey• 16 years ago

I'm confused because I have seen old episodes of Explorer and similar shows about them. I'm trying to figure out if it was the same chain of caves or not, but I remember a show dedicated to one cave system that had been turned into a massive fortress that the US basically had no choice but to ignore during the Vietnam war.

yummyfajitas• 16 years ago

In the caption of the 5'th picture, they say the Viet Cong hid in the caves.

rickmode• 16 years ago

A real-life "Center of the Earth"!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Journey_to_the_Center_of_the_...

rue• 16 years ago

There's also the cave-related https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/The_Descent_(... which I quite enjoyed.

TGJ• 16 years ago

It's almost painful to see them drilling holes into the rock face. I understand the need but a part of me wants to get all greenpeace and kick the human invaders out.

sliverstorm• 16 years ago

Don't worry. When we're talking cave time & scale, a few holes drilled in the rock is a drop in the bucket. It's really only when you have unusually numerous human visitors, particularly the oils from their hands, that kill caves.

I understand your sentiment, but caves are a geologic phenomenon, and on that scale this is not even a geologic blink. So breathe easy, and save the torches & pitchforks for when they want to turn it into an amusement park :)

shimonamit• 16 years ago

Yes, it was a sour-face moment when I saw that. In fact I came back to HN to see if anyone else saw it. The hidden majesty and serenity of nature, suddenly revealed, is defiled by our invasive devices.

alex_stoddard• 16 years ago

And yet that majesty and serenity only really exist when we can see it and access it. As others have said it would be bad to turn it into a theme park but simple exploration demands some "invasive" measures.

erreon• 16 years ago

It's amazing and kind of freaky how often explorers still find new things on Earth. I cannot wait for more money to be spent on undersea exploration.

epochwolf• 16 years ago

The photo gallery requires flash which my iPad does not have. :(

cubicle673• 16 years ago

nor does mine, but this is one of those cases where it's worth the effort of dragging yourself across to a machine that does (and I'm sure you've got one). trust me.

B79• 16 years ago

Try these jpg files:

shkb• 16 years ago

Nice 3D fly-through. Nat geo also made a documentary about surveying the cave (World's Biggest Cave).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-iZ6WJeqhE

slacker2• 16 years ago

I would love to find the set of pictures in hi-res.

chanux• 16 years ago

Brings back memories. I've been in a similar (very) small scale limestone cave in Sri Lanka.

The entrance, the great wall, the waterfall and the cactus garden were some very similar to what I see in photos. Unfortunately I couldn't take any good pics with the point and shoot and the flash light I had at the time. Above the cave was a forest with huge trees. There was a stream going through the cave and in rainy season it makes it impossible to go inside the cave, just like in 'Hang Son Doong'.

Sorry for the useless rant. I was too excited :)

Some not so detailed pics of Wawulpana I found in the Internet. http://pics.kathe13.de/thumbnails.php?album=40

And some more information http://www.srilankanwaterfalls.net/waterfalls/wawulpana.htm

jarin• 16 years ago

Amazing natural wonder. Although I will say that a small part of me wants to see it transformed into a real-life version of Ironforge.

andreyf• 16 years ago

Although I will say that a small part of me wants to see it transformed into a real-life version of Ironforge.

One would hope that labor laws would prevent you from building something of the sort via manual labor, but what about robots of some sort?

t3rcio• 16 years ago

It's like a Prehistoric cenaries

New cave found in Vietnam: "A skyscraper could fit"

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