When you buy through connexion on our site , we may earn an affiliate committal . Here ’s how it works .
Name : Hang Son Doong
Location : Quang Binh Province , Vietnam
Hang Son Doong stretches more than 3 miles (5 km) long and 660 feet (200 m) high.
Coordinates:17.54696024669416 , 106.14398574081777
Why it ’s incredible : The cave is the biggest in the earth and contain two jungles .
Hang Son Doong is the humans ’s large known cave , with enough space in some of its passages to pilot a Boeing 747 plane through them . The limestone cavern sits beneath a lush jungle in Vietnam ’s Phong Nha - Ke Bang National Park and host primeval woodland that expand thanks to gargantuan " skylights " in the rock .
A visitor explores the Son Doong cave by boat during a guided tour.
Hang Son Doong cave — the name means " Mountain River " — is immature compare with other limestone caves . It formed 2 to 3 million year ago inside the big limestone massif in Asia , a colossal auction block of sway more than 400 million years old that was born from the compressed shells and underframe of ancient sea creature . Two river — the Rao Thuong and the Khe Ry — coursed through crack in the limestone and eroded the rock , forming a gargantuan tunnel in the massif that only lately came to be be intimate as Son Doong .
touch : China ’s ' heavenly pits ' : The jumbo sink that have ancient forests growing within
Ho Khanh , a resident of Vietnam , discovered the cave by probability in 1990 while hunting in the hobo camp . " He felt a blast of wind and discover the rush of a river inside,“Howard Limbert , a British cave explorer and expert director atOxalis Adventure , a company that operate tours of Son Doong , toldCNN . " But after he left , he could n’t get hold it again , because it ’s smother by leaf . "
long time later , Khanh managed to retrace his steps . In 2009 , he lead a caving team from the British Cave Research Association that included Limbert to the cave ’s entrance . " We realized right on aside that it was major , " Limbert said .
The team surveyed Son Doong and get hold it was the largest innate cave ever register . Their measure signal a full cave mass of 1.35 billion three-dimensional foot ( 38.5 million cubic metre ) , which is spacious enough to tally nearly 15Great Pyramids of Giza .
But researchers lately discovered the cave is even bigger than that . A diving expedition in 2019 revealed that Son Doong is get in touch to another cave called Hang Thung through an submersed tunnel . This data link adds 57 million cubic foot ( 1.6 million three-dimensional meters ) to the cave ’s loudness , or two - third of a Great Pyramid .
" It would be like someone found a lump on top ofMount Everest , make it another 1,000 metre [ 3,280 foot ] higher , " Limbert enunciate . " Any cave in the humans will be able to tally comfortably inside Son Doong when it ’s connected — it ’s just outrageous in size . "
— Carlsbad Caverns : New Mexico ’s nonnatural caves with gypsum flower and ' soda pop straw ' dangle from the cap
— Hranice Abyss : The deepest fresh water cave on Earth and a conduit to a ' fossil ' sink
— Cave of crystal : The deadly cavern in Mexico dub ' the Sistine Chapel of crystals '
Son Doong is dwelling house to one of the world ’s talleststalagmite , a monster pillar dubbed the " Hand of Dog"measuring 260 feet ( 80 m ) gamey . The cave is divided into three sections — the entrance , the fossil handing over and the sloppy Passchendaele Passage ( diagnose after the World War I Battle of Passchendaele , which soldiers fought in clay - fill trench ) — that each boast dramatic formations .
As their name suggest , the fossil passages are filled with the cadaver of sea creatures that once inhabited an ancient sea in what is now primal Vietnam . The Passchendaele Passage is dwelling to a 300 - metrical unit ( 90 m ) paries of calcite sleep with as the Great Wall of Vietnam , which spelunk explorers only managed to descale on their second sojourn to the cave in 2010 .
Finally , at the heart of Son Doong , the limestone roof crumble long ago to constitute two sinkholes that take into account shaft of ignitor to shine into the cave . And under these " skylights , " two jungles have thrive for thousands of years .
El Cono : The mysterious sanctified ' Pyramids of Egypt ' hidden deep in the Amazon rainforest
Yellowstone holds potentially untapped hoard of ' carbon paper - free ' He for rockets , nuclear reactor and superconductors
celebrated grave enounce to hold Alexander the Great ’s founding father actually turn back untested man , a woman and 6 babies , study finds
