Journey Into Amazing Caves

Our universe seems

a barren place ...

full of extreme conditions

hostile to living things.

Our own planet has such

extreme environments.

Places where, until recently,

we believed nothing could survive.

Yet life is tenacious if

it can just get a foothold.

We call the tiny organisms living in

such inhospitable places extremophiles ...

microbes which thrive in

the harshest of conditions.

Caves, long dismissed as

dark and lifeless deserts,

turn out to be ideal homes

for these hardy life forms.

Their scientific

potential appears vast.

This underground frontier ...

holds an irresistible attraction

for two courageous young women.

The Arizona desert,

bone-dry and scorching-hot.

Perfect for extremophiles.

Nancy Aulenbach and Hazel Barton ...

are part of a small team

exploring unmapped caves ...

near the Grand Canyon.

The rest of the team,

Gordon Brown and Scott Davis,

search for other caves.

Hazel and Nancy are almost certainly

the first cavers to explore this cave.

To get here they rappeled

Nancy Aulenbach from Georgia is

the team's technical specialist.

As an instructor in

cave rescue techniques,

Nancy's rope skills

are finely honed.

At 98 pounds, she is well suited for

rescuing cavers stuck in very tight places.

In unexplored caves

we always do surveys.

Later my husband will use our data to

draw the very first map of this cave.

He is a caver.

In fact, I come from an

entire family of cavers.

Hazel Barton, a native of

England has a PhD in Microbiology.

I found crystals which

only form in still water.

This cave probably formed

millions of years ago.

While Nancy studies the cave

wall with a magnifying glass,

Hazel collects samples

of tiny organisms ...

which could help cure

serious diseases.

You are never sure what speck of dust

might contain the secret to a new medicine ...

that could save lives.

Often, the most dangerous part of

exploring caves is just getting to them.

Gordon will vouch for that.

What turns this river so

blue is dissolved limestone.

The limestone is

gradually re-deposited ...

to form travertine dams ...

which are first cousins to

the stalagmites we see in caves.

All this blue water and travertine ...

is visible proof that caves

are forming upstream right now.

I got time-off from my job

as a teacher's assistant ...

because I promised to e-mail field

reports back to my second-grade students.

Here is how Hazel described her

research to my second-graders:

The tiny organisms called

microbes that live in caves ...

might contain special chemicals

that we could make medicine from.

You know caves are not

only a place to visit,

they are a place where you

can do a lot of research,

you can survey, you can

do biological inventories,

you can find new species that

people have never seen before.

I look for medically useful

organisms everywhere,

even in scum ponds,

after all a rather useful

medicine called penicillin ...

was found in the same mould

that grows on rotting cheese.

You know, just collecting some more

boogers, the smellier the better.

While we were on Navajo land,

Nancy and I heard

about a medicine man ...

making a sand painting.

Through these sand paintings,

the Navajo believe that they can tap

into the healing powers of the earth.

Of course that's what I do too,

I go deep into the earth

in search of unknown cures.

We are using kayaks

on this expedition ...

because the river is

a good vantage point ...

for spotting unexplored

caves on the cliff walls.

As my husband, Brent, says,

"if you aren't wet

you aren't caving".

Some rivers run through caves for miles

before bursting on to the surface,

but that's of little concern as

you approach a precipice wondering ...

"is this a good idea?"

Unlike canyons, which are

carved by fast moving rivers,

caves are formed by a subtler,

but equally effective, force.

Most limestone caves start when groundwater

picks up carbon dioxide in the air and soil.

As the mildly acidic water leaks

through cracks in the earth's crust,

it dissolves the surrounding

rock, leaving pockets,

caves.

That's how a chamber 300 ft. high

can be carved from solid stone ...

in less than a million years.

Walls are decorated when trickling

water-deposits dissolve stone ...

to form stalagtites, stalagmites

and other flow-stone formations.

Since the purest water on earth

is found deep in pristine caves,

sometimes we use rafts to explore,

which cause less contamination

than swimming.

Cave decorations are as

delicate as fine crystal,

easily shattered and

impossible to repair.

That's why good cavers are trained

to move gently underground.

When water leaves a

residue of minerals,

they crystallise and

gradually build up ...

to become delicate cave formations.

As Hazel and her colleagues

in the lab have found,

extremophiles are tough.

We suspect that, because of the

environment in which they live,

extremophiles produce

potent chemical weapons.

If we can isolate these

chemical compounds,

we can use them in the

fight against disease.

Only the hardiest

extremophiles could survive ...

deep in the ice of the North Pole.

To collect them,

Hazel and Nancy have joined

an Arctic expedition ...

to Greenland.

Greenland's ice cap is massive.

If melted, it would raise

the world's oceans 18 ft.

When I first saw camp and saw all these

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes