Crystal Caves for Dummies

Naica crystal cave

If you ask us, it appears that the process followed by a substantial number of self-described "Hubbies" (people who wrote for HubPages.com back in the day, not all of whom are also husbands) was simple: read something somewhere and then spray your own version of the information across the internet. No one ever told them that they needed to be accurate, which is why so much of the content there is... pretty much bogus. In the case of "The Naica Crystal Caves in Mexico," a post by returning DotD Melvin Porter, we think his errors arise from ignorance. 

Porter barfed up almost 1000 words of content, a good portion of which is (basically) correct, albeit of teeth-grindingly poor grammar. There's enough bogosity, however, for us to toss a flag on the play. Some of Porter's pronouncements? Read on...

"The Crystal Caves or 'Cueva de Las Cristales' located below a desert area in northern Mexico about 150 miles south of the United States border[sic]. They are the most usual [sic] and most unique caves in the world."

That was just to give you an example of Mel's prose, which left the staffer in charge of this nomination with a raging headache. Much of the rest is due to his rather tenuous connection to facts. Take, for instance, these statements:

• "[The caves are very hot .] The source of the heat is a fault line that the caves are situated on..." – No, the source of the heat is hydrothermal fluids that rise along that fault from an underlying magma chamber. Faults aren't hot, nor are they "lines."
• "The crystals in the Crystal Cave were formed about half million years ago from crystals the size of a grain of salt into the large 50 ton crystals we see today." – That's a rather weird way to describe crystal growth, Melvin. Don't you claim to be a chemist?
• "The crystals are made of gypsum, a mineral commonly used in drywalls [sic]. Since gypsum is a slow growing crystal, these giant gypsum crystals, found only in Mexico, took a half million years to form in hot water saturated with gypsum." – Gypsum crystals are found only in Mexico? Duh... Oh, and Melvin? The water is saturated with calcium and sulfur as sulfate, not with gypsum (CaSO₄) – gypsum is a mineral.
• "Other minerals have been found such as Selenite..." – Sorry, Mel, selenite is a variety of gypsum...

Most of the rest of Porter's problems are just lousy proofreading, but what we've cited above is evidence of the sort of garden-variety ignorance that has already won Melvin two Dumbass of the Day awards. Perhaps his most ignorant claim is in the comment section, where he makes the bizarre claim that, "[When] the Mexico authorities [sic] turn off the pumps to allow these caves to be flooded with water... the crystals will slowly dissolve into the water and vanish."

Ummm, no, Melvin, they crystallized from a solution saturated in calcium and sulfur, the same water that will flood the caves. If anything, the crystals will grow, not "dissolve."

SI - MINERALS