“Vietnam’s Son Doong Cave is so vast that you could fit 15 Great Pyramids of Giza inside and fly a Boeing 747 through some of its passages”.
Back door of Hang En Cave. Photo: Linh Huynh.
This is the observation made by Live Science, a science, archeology, and natural world publication based in New York, on November 1. Sascha Pare, a writer with a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Southampton (one of the top research institutions in the UK), noted that Son Doong Cave is relatively young compared to other limestone caves.
“The cave was formed between 2-3 million years ago, containing the largest limestone structure in Asia, a massive rock over 400 million years old, created from the shells and skeletons of ancient marine life,” reported Live Science.
According to Sascha, the cave’s underground water system originates from the Rao Thuong and Khe Ry rivers near the Laos border. Water flows through cracks in the limestone, eroding the rock to form a colossal tunnel within the mountain.
Garden of Eden in sinkhole 2, Son Doong cave complex. Photo: Linh Huynh.
This is the largest natural cave ever recorded. Measurements by a team from the British Cave Research Association indicate that the cave has a total volume of 38.5 million cubic meters, large enough to hold nearly 15 Great Pyramids of Giza.
But recent research has revealed that the cave is even larger.
A diving expedition in 2019 uncovered that Son Doong is connected to another cave called Hang Thung through an underwater tunnel. This link adds an additional 1.6 million cubic meters to the cave’s volume, equivalent to two-thirds of a Great Pyramid.
“It’s like someone found a bump on the top of Mount Everest, making it over 1,000 meters taller. Any other cave in the world would be dwarfed inside Son Doong,” said Limbert from the British Cave Research Association.
@Znews