When you buy through links on our site , we may earn an affiliate commissioning . Here ’s how it works .
Name : Marble Caves
Location : Aysén Region , southern Chile
Interior of the Marble Caves in southern Chile. The caves are accessible only by water.
Coordinates:-46.65859921219354 , -72.62753285805485
Why it ’s incredible : The marble walls meditate the turquoise colour of the water in the cave , tinting them blueish .
The Marble Caves are innate sway constitution with twist walls covered in swirling mineral patterns . They sit down on the shores of General Carrera Lake , a arctic lake in southern Chile . The lake floods the caverns with turquoise waters , which fill the cave with blue luminance and give them an aerial visual aspect .
Entrance to the Marble Caves.
The Marble cave are so smooth , they look like they ’ve been hollowed out with an ice cream soap . But the caves formed due to the dull action of lake water , which dissolve minerals in the rock candy until the walls crumbled . Researchers cogitate this come over the past 10,000 to 15,000 years , after glaciers retreated from the region and exposed its stone to weathering .
Related : Cave of crystal : The deadly cavern in Mexico dubbed ' the Sistine Chapel of crystals '
" After the glacier retrograde , the lake was make , and that was when the process of grave the [ caves ] began,“Francisco Hervé Allamand , a professor of geology at Andrés Bello National University in Chile and an honorary fellow of the Geological Society of America , assure the BBCin 2019 .
The Harlan Stone in the caves was originally limestone , a sedimentary rock made of calcium carbonate . But it transformed into marble , which is a metamorphous stone , under high heat and pressure before the cavern opened , Hervé Allamand pronounce . limestone are some of the most soluble rocks in the man , he said , meaning they are passing susceptible to erosion from water .
The original limestone form closer to the equator than Chile sits today and stray south millions of years ago astectonic platesshifted around Earth , Hervé Allamand said . This grinding journeying jumbled up Earth ’s gall and buried rocks so deeply that they became display to scald temperature of 570 to 750 level Fahrenheit ( 300 to 400 degrees Celsius ) . Together with the pressure from plate movement , this hotness recrystallized the limestone into milky - gray marble and create wavelet of brown and yellow rock where impurity were trapped in the limestone .
" When a rock undergoes transfiguration , unexampled minerals are formed , " Hervé Allamand said , referring to browned and jaundiced veins within the marble .
— Hang Son Doong : The public ’s biggest cave , which is so ' unconscionable in size , ' it fits 2 jungles and the ' expectant Wall of Vietnam '
— Hranice Abyss : The deepest freshwater cave on Earth and a conduit to a ' fossil ' sinkhole
— Carlsbad Caverns : New Mexico ’s nonnatural cave with gypsum flower and ' soda pop straw ' swing from the ceiling
Reflections off the water in the Marble Caves give rise to stunning image that shift depend on the light and H2O level . The water owe its brilliant cerulean semblance to arctic silt , which is also known as " rock candy flour . " This fine I. F. Stone powderabsorbs the forgetful wavelengths of light — the purples and Indigofera tinctoria — and reflects mainly light - blue and gullible visible light back to the Earth’s surface , give the body of water a turquoise shade . ( water supply take over long wavelength of light that give rise to red , orange and lily-livered . )
The turquoise urine may look like a tropic sea , but its frigid origin means it ’s freezing .
The Marble Caves are approachable only by water supply , and they are best explored with kayaks , which enable visitant to hoist in and out of the curved wall , according to the travel websiteSwoop Patagonia .
attain moreincredible places , where we highlight the fantastic history and skill behind some of the most striking landscape on Earth .
