
A cave in Romania that was sealed for 5.5M years - ForFreedom
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150904-the-bizarre-beasts-living-in-romanias-poison-cave
======
tomp
Some interesting takeaways::

\- The cave is called "Movile".

\- 3 species of spider, a centipede, 4 species of isopod (the group that
includes woodlice), a leech never seen anywhere else in the world, and an
unusual-looking insect called a waterscorpion

\- Movile's only snail [probably the only snail _species_ ] suggested that it
has been down there for just over 2 million years.

\- Many animals are born without eyes, which would be useless in the dark.
Almost all are translucent as they have lost pigment in their skin.

\- The cave seems to have no contact with the surface; Chernobyl accident had
released lots of radioactive metals, which had found their way into the soils
and lakes surrounding Movile Cave. However, a 1996 study found no traces of
them inside the cave.

\- The ecosystem seems to be supported by _chemosynthesis_ ; bacteria oxidise
methane, sulphide and ammonia, generating energy and organic matter.

~~~
Someone1234
The sad irony is that by opening it and discovered it, we've ruined the entire
ecosystem. But by not discovering it we never would have known about it, and
it is an educational opportunity lost.

Really cannot win either way. Just have to hope there are other, undiscovered,
caves like this around the globe.

~~~
ghshephard
There are almost certainly thousands, if not tens of thousands, or hundreds of
thousands of undiscovered caves exactly like this around the globe. And even
that is probably a wild underestimate. The world is a very, very big place,
and humans, despite all our activity, have barely scratched the surface of
most of it.

~~~
hyperpallium
endoplanets

~~~
bglazer
I really like this word! Did you coin it just now?

~~~
hyperpallium
Thanks! To my knowledge, yes; I haven't googled.

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ucaetano
"in pitch darkness and temperatures of 25 °C"

Is this supposed to be terrifying? Anyone who woke up at night and walked to
the bathroom faced pitch darkness and temperatures of 25 °C!

~~~
infinity0
25 °C for British people is pretty terrifying :p

~~~
dageshi
You'd be complaining about the heat at that point.

~~~
OJFord
We need to start having conversations about whether the law compels people to
go home from work and school at that sort of temperature.

------
ygra
The title is a bit misleading. The cave was discovered in 1986. It's just that
this article is a bit more recent.

~~~
qaq
What's 30 years compared to 5.5M :)

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jgrahamc
_Fewer than 100 people have been allowed inside Movile, a number comparable to
those who have been to the Moon._

BBC reporting is really kind of crappy. 12 people walked on the Moon; 22
people orbited the Moon.

~~~
arbuge
Technically 100 and 32 are comparable numbers.

~~~
berekuk
Technically all numbers are comparable.

~~~
hghdfgv
Technically incorrect:
[http://mrob.com/pub/math/largenum-2.html](http://mrob.com/pub/math/largenum-2.html)

~~~
scarmig
Would a tl;dr here be:

Is BB(26) - BB(25) greater than or less than BB(25)?

~~~
btilly
I am certain it is greater. BB(n) grows super-exponentially.

In fact I would be willing to bet serious money that BB(n+1)/BB(n) is greater
than BB(n) if 3 < n.

(This is, of course, assuming that one assumes that BB(n) is well-defined.
That is an interesting point of philosophy given the existence of Turing
machines which can't be proven to not halt.)

~~~
schoen
> In fact I would be willing to bet serious money that BB(n+1)/BB(n) is
> greater than BB(n) if 3 < n.

BB(n) grows faster than any computable function. In order for BB(n+1)/BB(n) >
BB(n) to hold, BB(n) merely has to grow faster than a sequence whose new terms
are obtained by repeated squaring (like k^2ⁿ). That's computable, indeed
primitive recursive, so BB(n) definitely grows dramatically faster than it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_recursive_function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_recursive_function)

Edit: another way of looking at this is that the Ackermann function grows
unbelievably faster than functions that easily satisfy the property you
describe, and the Busy Beaver function grows unbelievably faster than the
Ackermann function. Somehow putting it this way feels like an understatement,
though!

~~~
btilly
It is unfortunately not that easy. Consider the following function, if n is
even then f(n) = BB(n/2), else f(n) = BB(2n). Then f(n) grows faster than any
computable function, but still if n is odd, then f(n+1) < f(n).

However you have encapsulated the reason why I would be confident of this
result. :-)

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mh-cx
Maybe I've missed it, but how exactly do they know it was cut off for 5.5M
years?

~~~
joemi
Good question. I've read a bunch of articles about it (haven't delved into the
research papers), and none of what I've read ever mentions that.

That said, I suspect it's based on the location and composition of the cave
and it's surroundings.

------
carlesfe
I find this fascinating! Googling a bit, it seems there is a documentary on
the Movile cave: [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1qpffb_the-secret-
underwor...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1qpffb_the-secret-underworld-
movile-sulphur-cave-life-romania-national-geographic-adventures_tech)

------
txutxu
> Strangely, the worse the air gets the more animals there

> are. It's not at all obvious why that should be, or how

> the animals survive at all.

Mmmm I think it's the opposite: On more animals using the same static air
balloons, less Oxygen will be there.

~~~
Normal_gaussian
Almost like concentrations of humans

------
dc2
A walk-through of the cave:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tOghHmhQKI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tOghHmhQKI)

It gets more interesting starting on the third video.

------
amasad
Goes to show how resilient life is. Which makes it all the more unlikely that
life is all that rare.

~~~
Evgeny
Resilience is probably not that closely linked to the probability of arising.
Maybe once it exists, it is resilient, but when it is absent, chances of it
arising are still very low.

~~~
StanislavPetrov
Based on what? The only planet that we've explored extensively (Earth) is
teeming with life everywhere we look.

~~~
Evgeny
Just a thought. As you yourself say, we know only of one planet with life.
However, looks like life only arise once on this planet. If life is so
abundant in the Universe, why wouldn't it at least arise several times
independently on the planet where the conditions are so great?

~~~
StanislavPetrov
It would have to die off before it could arise again. Fortunately with a
Hillary Clinton administration looming, we may get to see that scenario play
out.

------
dredmorbius
Both HN _and_ BBC titles are rather clickbaity. Pity for what turns out to be
an interesting article on non-photosynthesis-based food webs, communities, and
metabolism.

~~~
_asummers
I believe the protocol here is to not complain about the title without
suggesting a better alternative for the mods.

~~~
dredmorbius
I know. Point is there's not a particularly good option as suggests itself to
me.

You too?

------
amorphid
Are animals in a cave like this considered endangered species?

~~~
samstave
Well, they are now that we found them.

~~~
soared
But were they endangered before we knew about them?

~~~
Vraxx
Their state of endangerment was a superposition of being endangered and not
until the cave was opened.

------
ommunist
This is fascinating. Life is everywhere. This is real "pitch black", just with
smaller monsters.

------
csours
Perhaps the Andromeda Strain will be found in a cave, not in space...

~~~
pavel_lishin
You might like Peter Watts' Starfish.

~~~
csours
Thanks for that, I'll take a look.

------
x2398dh1
What I'm reading is that the cave is like a 5-million year old micro brewing
process, and as with many microbrews there are some nightmarish scorpions and
spiders and scary creatures associated with the cave's brand. If that allegory
is correct, then by exploring that cave we have essentially opened the cork
and stuck our finger in, haven't we?

------
CodinM
Holy shit my city is #1 on HackerNews.

------
sengork
Those creatures have evolved on their own tangent. Quite interesting to see
how different they are compared to the creatures outside of the cave.

On another note an well hidden cave like that would be great for preserving
man made historical artefacts.

------
ensiferum
... and then humans came along and filled it with coke bottles, plastic bags,
old car tyres and other rubbish.

------
censhin
So in summary, life, ahh, finds a way.

~~~
hinkley
Cenozoic Park just doesn't have the same ring to it. Especially since all
parks are technically Cenozoic Park.

------
OJFord

        > became roughly the 29th person to enter
    

Roughly?

~~~
hinkley
"We don't know for sure how many of his girlfriends Steve has snuck into the
cave over the years, and frankly we're afraid to ask."

------
udkl
This article reminded me of Terreria and the caves in it.

------
akashaggarwal
Minecraft dungeon discovered!

------
shawabawa3
> Movile's only snail suggested that it has been down there for just over 2
> million years

This is a bit misleading. It should say only _species of_ snail, not a single
snail that's been alive for 2 million years

~~~
wernercd
Of course he's been single for 2 million years... it's not like he could go
out and paint the town with the door closed.

~~~
EGreg
Rotifers keep it in their pants for two million years

------
nxzero
Like comments like this, but just a heads up that dang has ban user who
repeatedly post summaries in the comments.

EDIT: Here's a recent comment from dang (the main HN mod) on the topic of
summary comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11608134](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11608134)

~~~
dang
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11683260](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11683260)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
nxzero
Any reason that HN doesn't have a meta and way to visualize show that a
submission/comment has meta related content tied to it?

~~~
dang
I'm not sure I follow, but the answer is probably that it would complicate
things.

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sdegutis
Right, just saw this a minute ago on reddit. It seems like HN is just
/r/Futurology, /r/TodayILearned, /r/Programming, and /r/Startups rolled into
one.

~~~
supergreg
I'm here for the comments

~~~
sdegutis
Meh. I used to think more highly of HN comments, but as they started covering
stuff I already knew a fair bit about, I realized the highest voted comments
usually only have the appearance of knowledge / wisdom / experience / etc, but
without the substance of it.

------
FloNeu
That must be were my motivation was hiding since last week...

