New cave found in Vietnam: "A skyscraper could fit" | Hacker News Reader

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

ngm.nationalgeographic.com

318 pointscwan47 comments

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.

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

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

Does anyone even bother to shoot on location anymore?

I was thinking of the movie "The Beach" when I wrote that. As I remember, hollywood execs decided the idyllic location (a remote Thai beach) wasn't idyllic enough, and bulldozed large sections of it to improve it

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.

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 :)

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.

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.

A real-life "Center of the Earth"!

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

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

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

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

Close enough. :)

That was in the Philippines. Totally different.

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.

Also... no gold :(

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.

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!

I think a really bright flash is sufficient.

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.

Actually, they _are_ probably using multiple really freaking bright flashes, or rather flash bulbs. There are still some around that blow away anything else you can get down into a cave for a power/size ratio. Think streetlight sized bulbs filled with magnesium.

There's probably some light painting going on as well with (bright) flashlights and long exposures.

The 1/r^4 really only applies if the light is coming from the camera position, and is unfocused. If you're illuminating the subject from another location, the only worry you really have is the 1/r^2 from the source to the lit object.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Try these jpg files:

It's like a Prehistoric cenaries

This isn't reddit

New scientific discoveries are virtually always germane to HN.

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

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

Link that doesn't try to print the page: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/largest-cave/jenki...

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.

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