Horizon

Season 40, Episode 10

Episode Title: The Secret Life Of Caves

Air Date: 2003-04-03

Overview:

Set against the back drop of awe inspiring geological beauty, a strange scientific adventure sets out to discover how a mineral clad cave network - the height of a 30 storey building and the length of six football fields - came to exist deep below the Guadalupe Mountains in North America. But this journey soon unravels a multitude of inexplicable phenomena and obscure geological formations, leading to the discovery of extreme rock-eating microbes - a testimony from primordial Earth and a glimpse of life elsewhere in the Solar System. Geologists believed that all limestone caves were formed by rain and underground water percolating through cracks in the rocks. Absorbing carbon dioxide from the soil, this water becomes weak carbonic acid, nibbling away at limestone, etching out networks of subterranean caves.