Stalactites and stalagmites. How are karst caves formed? Stalactites and stalagmites, other stone formations The highest stalagmite

Greek, from stalagma, liquid that has penetrated drop by drop. Lime incrustation at the bottom of the cave has the shape of a cone with its apex up. Explanation of 25,000 foreign words that have come into use in the Russian language, with the meaning of their roots. Michelson ... ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

stalagmite- a, m. stalagmite f. gr. stalagma drop, jet. A calcareous outgrowth at the bottom of underground voids (caves, galleries, etc.), formed by drops of water containing calcium bicarbonate falling from the ceiling. ALS 1. Droppers having an addition ... ... Historical Dictionary of Gallicisms of the Russian Language

Torchun, riser, icicle on the contrary, drip, outgrowth, outgrowth Dictionary of Russian synonyms. stalagmite n., number of synonyms: 5 drip (7) ... Synonym dictionary

STALAGMITE, a sintered mineral formation consisting of CALCIUM CARBONATE crystals, rising in the form of an icicle or pillar from the bottom of CAVES in carbon-rich limestone areas. Stalagmites are formed by water dripping from the ceiling of a cave and... ... Scientific and technical encyclopedic dictionary

STALAGMITE, stalagmite, husband. (from the Greek. stalagma drop) (miner.). A calcareous build-up on the floor of a cave formed by seeping drops of lime-laden water. Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov. D.N. Ushakov. 1935 1940 ... Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov

STALAGMITE, a, husband. A calcareous outgrowth rising upwards at the bottom of the cave, formed by drops falling from the ceiling and shaped like a standing icicle. | adj. stalagmite, oh, oh. Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 ... Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov

Husband, lat. limestone incrustation, hardening, forming various patterns in the caves. Stalactite husband. lime drip, overhanging, for example. in caves, icicles from above. new, related to one or another Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary. IN AND. Dal. 1863… … Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary

Miner. a sinter formation (usually calcareous) that occurs at the bottom of caves during the evaporation of mineralized water dripping from above and grows from bottom to top. Geological dictionary: in 2 volumes. M.: Nedra. Edited by K. N. Paffengolts et al. 1978 ... Geological Encyclopedia

stalagmite- Spill formation in the form of a cone or pillar, rising from the bottom of a karst cave, arising from the constant supply of carbonate in the form of calcite from seeping groundwater falling down from the stalactite. → Fig. 310 ... Geography Dictionary

M. Sintered limestone formation in the form of large icicles at the bottom of underground voids (caves, galleries, etc.), formed by drops of water saturated with calcium and carbon dioxide falling from the ceiling. Explanatory Dictionary of Efremova. T. F. Efremova. 2000... Modern dictionary Russian language Efremova

Why do caves appear

The earth's surface has a structure that is complex in composition and configuration. At one time, when the formation of land and oceans took place, various minerals were also formed. For example, basalt appeared at high temperature and pressure as a result of volcanic activity. Granite also arose under the same conditions. But limestone, marble, chalk, gypsum and salt, which can be stalactites and stalagmites, were formed by a different mechanism, under less extreme circumstances. All of them dissolve in water - this is their distinctive property. When water washes these elements out of the composition of rocks, voids appear inside. They are called caves.

Geological processes

Empty space inside any body is karst. In accordance with this term, most of them began to be called karst. known to people caves. I must say that caves can also be formed as a result of other processes occurring in the earth's crust, but this is a topic for a separate discussion. It is important to emphasize that stalactites and stalagmites appear precisely in karst formations. In these voids, natural processes do not stop even for a moment, although they continue for many millions of years. Scientists have calculated that stalactites and stalagmites grow by about 1 cm in 100 years.

Some statistics

According to experts, the largest karst cave on the planet is located in the United States. Kentucky is famous for its Mammoth Caves, whose stalactites and stalagmites attract both tourists and scientists. These caves communicate with each other. The total length of underground halls and passages is 560 kilometers. On the island of Crete there are almost one and a half thousand caves. The most interesting of them is Sfedoni. Its age is estimated from seven to fifteen million years. It has modest dimensions, only 145 meters. However, its interior (so to speak) is remarkable for its amazing proportions and beauty. It looks like it was made by human hands.

What's the Difference

At first, acquaintance with the caves, some people have a question about how stalactites and stalagmites differ? Speaking in everyday language, stalactites are "icicles" that hang from the ceiling. Water seeps through soil and rock, eroding along the way those minerals that dissolve in it. Getting into the cave room, water evaporates, and minerals remain in the dry residue. The icicle gradually grows and increases in size. In the case when the mineral solution is formed weakly saturated, its drops fall from a height and reach the floor. In this place, an "icicle" is also formed, only with the tip up. This is a stalagmite.

Mysteries remain

Experts and lovers of underground routes do not get tired of being surprised by the variety of caves on the planet. It would seem that everything has already been studied and explained. However, new facts make us return to the same questions again and again. It is well known that stalactites and stalagmites are formed as a result of the evaporation of moisture that penetrates from the outside. However, research recent years showed that this is not always the case. From what has been said, it follows that the caves have not yet revealed all their secrets. Curious and energetic researchers have yet to break their heads over their solution.

How are formed karst caves? Stalactites and stalagmites - what are they? The main rock of the Crimean mountains is limestone. Cracked rocks easily absorb moisture. Rain and melt water with dissolved carbon dioxide flows through them deep into the mountain. This very weak carbonic acid interacts with limestone (calcium carbonate) converts it into a soluble state (calcium bicarbonate), for many millennia it washes and cuts its own channel. This is how a growing watered cave is formed. Over time, the underground river can find a new crack and go down another one, two, three, or even all six floors, as in Kizil-Kobe (Red Caves). The lower "wet" caves continue to grow, the upper ones retain their shape.

Stages of formation of karst caves

1. Rain and melt water seeps through the capillaries through the soil with rocks, absorbs carbon dioxide. Small streams through cracks gather into an underground river.
2. Water (weak carbonic acid) continues to wash its course. The limestone becomes soluble and is washed out of the rocks, making the water hard.
3. In the middle of the cave, the water goes into a crack, begins to create another channel for itself. Stalactites grow in an abandoned cave (already free from the river).
4. The river washes a completely new course. Large stalactites grow in the cave.

How are stalactites formed?

Hard water drips from the vaults of the caves. These are sediments transformed into rocks, which seeped from the surface of the earth through the “roof”, and their own cave condensate. A reverse reaction takes place on the surface of the stone. Calcium bicarbonate dissolved in water turns back into carbonate, releasing carbon dioxide. In everyday life, a similar process leads to the appearance of plaque on the bathrooms, scale in pots and radiators.

First, a ring appears on the rock, then a growing tube. Until the hole is clogged, water drips from it, and gradually a sharp, straight stone icicle grows - stalactite. If the watercourse is good, if there are no neighboring drops, the stalactite will be single and may grow large. Where there has been constant rain for centuries, a whole forest of stalactites grows, usually of different lengths and thicknesses, sometimes of different colors. If the drops are very small, dense thickets of “straws” may appear, more than a meter long and several millimeters thick, transparent, shining in the light of a lantern, like an exquisite underground chandelier.

What are seasonal stalactite rings?

Outwardly, they look like growth rings of wood. They can also be used to determine the age, weather conditions at times distant from us by thousands and even millions of years. To do this, determine the isotopic and chemical composition desired ring. It is important not to make a mistake, After all, there are so many rings!

A modern ion mass spectrometer allows you to take samples from layers one hundredth of a millimeter thick - this corresponds to an analysis accuracy of one year.

How long do stalactites grow?

The growth rate of cave stalactites can be very different. It depends on the amount and composition of water flowing from the "ceiling", on the temperature and humidity of the air in the cave. It is difficult to even talk about some average values. In some caves, meter-long stalactites grow in a thousand years, in others - in five thousand years. But in any case, a broken “stone icicle” is an irreparable damage to nature. A trace of a moral crime, like killing an animal for fun.

Stalagmites, stalagnates and other sinter formations

What other forms are sinter formations in caves? In the place where the drop falls, first a speck appears, then a tubercle of insoluble salts (mostly the same calcium carbonate). The bump grows into a stone stump, sometimes pointed, but more often flat or rounded by the erratic splashing of hard water. This is how it is formed stalagmite. Usually it is larger, thicker and stronger than a stalactite, because water flows down its walls and all the released carbonate goes to construction. And also because the stalactite sooner or later breaks off under its own weight, but the stalagmite never.

If the movement of water is not disturbed, the stalactite fuses with the stalagmite. The strongest underground column is formed - stalagnate. From now on, nothing but earthquakes threatens her, so stalagnates can grow to gigantic sizes.

Flowing down the sloping vaults of the cave, hard water leaves behind not specks, but strips of calcium carbonate. These strips grow in thickness and eventually turn into thin flat sail. They are even and wavy, like the edges of a tablecloth, they can cover the entire wall to the ground, or they can remain in the form of pasties, forming a “cornice” or “chandelier”, and then grow like ordinary stalactites. Everything depends on the movement of the whimsical, capricious, “lazy” water drop, which always chooses the easiest and most profitable path for itself. Usually scallops tinkle when you tap them with a stick, so walls overgrown with scallops are called xylophones or authorities.

The most interesting and unusual of karst deposits are helictites, or eccentrics. Starting to grow like stalactites, they bend strangely and bizarrely. Sometimes these are second-order stalactites, they grow like branches on a tree trunk. Why do stalactites begin to grow sideways, like drusen of crystals, or even twist into a spiral, turning into helictites? Science does not give an exact answer. The mechanics and chemistry of helictite growth are boundary phenomena between two forms: sintered and crystalline. Helictites were found in the caves "200 years of Simferopol", Nizhny Bair.

Helictites form in places where the air is still; there, the same calcium bicarbonate passes into a solid state, dissolved not in water dripping from the vaults, but in the moisture of the air.

Underground waterfalls also leave behind traces of limestone. It grows in a dense natural layer and will remain an ornament for tens and hundreds of thousands of years. Even after the unlucky river leaves the upper floors of the cave, we see frozen stone waterfalls…

Drops and streams flow into the baths, along the edges of which a limestone roller grows - goura dam. Gur baths go on with their own lives: stone “water lilies” and “lotuses” grow with rounded “buds” and flat “leaves” lying in the water.

Ripens in some baths cave pearl. Is not gem, but the composition of sea and cave pearls is the same. It is generally accepted that a grain of sand that has fallen into a bath rotates with a water stream and is gradually enveloped in limestone (which is transparent like glass in its pure form). But pearls are formed in very quiet backwaters ...

Wet, soft, shapeless mass of white, sometimes with a bluish tint, called moon milk. It's the same calcium carbonate. Moon milk decorates the caves in its own way, and when dried, it crumbles into a fine powder when pressed. How moon milk, the true secret of karst caves, is formed, only obscure assumptions are made about this. Nothing in nature, except for calcite, exists in this state. Moon milk is dry and wet, liquid and dense, viscous and fluid. In reality, this substance is neither solid nor liquid, it is generally incomprehensible what kind ... Scientists bypass this topic, leaving exotic lovers a clear field for thought and fantasy.

Aragonite crystals

When the water leaves, the growth of the cave stops, but its interior decoration continues to be enriched with new decorations. Humidity in deep stone cavities approaches 100%. Water vapor is saturated with calcium bicarbonate ions, and crystals grow on stones (more often along cracks).

The bizarre, capriciousness of aerosol crystallization figures is incomparable with any streaks: created according to the laws of the microcosm, they depend on the composition and concentration of ions, on the ways of moving water molecules, on the rules for constructing crystal lattices with all their additions and deviations. Aragonite It is a hard variety of calcite. It is formed at fairly low temperatures, most often underground - in caves, ore deposits, in cold springs.

In the caves you can find the smallest crystals of aragonite. When there are a lot of them, they glow in the beam of a lantern, like heavenly stars. Sometimes large acute-angled crystals grow, and nearby - small ones, collected in "twigs", in "fluffs", in "snowflakes". These can be sharp-sharp “hedgehogs”, “thriving” stalactites of various shades, individual and collected in inflorescences “cave flowers” ​​of different colors and unimaginable shapes.

The most interesting and varied underground ornaments grow as a result of the combined action of liquid water and ion-rich aerosol. Graceful anthropomorphic figurines, little animals, "hairy Agos", "jellyfish" with a fringe of "tentacles" around the edges, "anemones" ... In a word, get your camera ready, open your notebook, fantasize! But everything will be poor, everything is not right: we are mere mortals, and the caves were created by Her Majesty Nature. Unequal.

στάλαγμα - drop) - sinter mineral formations ( for the most part calcareous, rarely gypsum, salt), growing in the form of cones, pillars from the bottom of caves and other underground karst cavities towards stalactites and often merging with them, forming a stalagnate. One of the highest in the world and the largest in America is the stalagmite found in the cave "Martin Infierno" (Spanish. Martin Infierno), province of Cienfuegos (Cuba). Its height is 67.2 m. In Europe - 35.6 m (Buzgo cave in Slovakia).

Stalagmite in the Sablinsky caves

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An excerpt characterizing the Stalagmite

- She loves you.
“Don’t talk nonsense ...” said Prince Andrei, smiling and looking into Pierre’s eyes.
“He loves, I know,” Pierre shouted angrily.
“No, listen,” said Prince Andrei, stopping him by the hand. Do you know what position I'm in? I need to tell everything to someone.
“Well, well, say, I’m very glad,” Pierre said, and indeed his face changed, the wrinkle smoothed out, and he joyfully listened to Prince Andrei. Prince Andrei seemed and was a completely different, new person. Where was his anguish, his contempt for life, his disappointment? Pierre was the only person before whom he dared to speak out; but on the other hand, he told him everything that was in his soul. Either he easily and boldly made plans for a long future, talked about how he could not sacrifice his happiness for the whim of his father, how he would force his father to agree to this marriage and love her or do without his consent, then he was surprised how on something strange, alien, independent of him, against the feeling that possessed him.
“I would not believe someone who would tell me that I can love like that,” said Prince Andrei. “It's not the same feeling I had before. The whole world is divided for me into two halves: one is she and there is all the happiness of hope, light; the other half - everything where it is not there, there is all despondency and darkness ...
“Darkness and gloom,” Pierre repeated, “yes, yes, I understand that.
“I can't help but love the light, it's not my fault. And I am very happy. You understand me? I know that you are happy for me.

From the surface of the earth, water seeps into the earth's interior. And where soluble rocks lie in them - limestone, chalk, gypsum - there gradually water and time create an underground miracle - a cave.

Caves are different. Huge, stretching underground for many kilometers, and small. Ice and no ice. With underground lakes and rivers that you can sail on a boat, and without them...

Caves are no joke. In no case should you go there without an experienced escort. There is nothing to get lost and lost forever.

And yet, researchers, tourists and just curious people often visit the caves. Once in the cave hall, a person experiences surprise and admiration. Stone icicles - stalactites - hang from majestic vaults. Some of them are very small, others are large and very old. Gray, snow-white, white-pink, these stone icicles are a real decoration of the cave.

Water is constantly running down them. And various substances are dissolved in it. At the very end of the icicle is a drop of water

delayed. The time that a droplet spends on the tip of a stalactite is enough for some of these substances to remain on its hard edge. So, very slowly, for many centuries, a stalactite grows.

The drop breaks off and falls down. And there, from the floor of the cave, a stalagmite, a stone tower, grows towards the stalactite. Many years will pass, they will meet and grow together, forming a column.

In the mysterious world of caves, you can see absolutely amazing stalagmites. In one of the caves there is a stalagmite "Candlestick". This snow-white stone marvel is really very reminiscent of a candlestick.

In addition to stalactites, stalagmites, columns, there are lush stone curtains, stone flowers and other amazing formations in the caves. All of them are creations of tireless water...

When you are in a cave and admire it, it is especially unpleasant to suddenly find a can of soda water, a candy wrapper or something else like that. You involuntarily think with annoyance: oh, even here people have already been here who do not respect nature, do not appreciate its mysterious, unique beauty.

Yes, there are caves different people and not only those who cherish the stone earthly beauty. Among them, to the greatest regret, there are those who do not have to break off the stalactite and destroy the stalagmite. Or make some kind of inscription on the wall of the cave. Or leave trash here.

Sometimes people even build a fire in the cave. For the cave, this is harmful, because the temperature regime that has developed here for centuries is violated. For the unfortunate tourists themselves, this can end tragically: they can suffocate and die in the smoke.

Caves - "underground palaces", are created by nature over many millennia, and it is possible to break, spoil the underground wonder in a matter of minutes.

Therefore, no one, ever and nowhere, can break stalactites, stalagmites and other natural “decorations” in caves. You can not make any inscriptions, burn fires and throw garbage. It is necessary to respect the caves, these unique creations of nature, to respect and protect.

If you ever find yourself in a cave, then try not to forget about it.

AND THE STONE WORTH RESPECT

On a school trip, the mischievous Lyosha began to bring down the edge of a small cliff with his foot. In this place, layers of clay and sand were visible. Once local hills were formed from them. The cliff was with a small overhanging ledge-cornice. That's what the boy was trying to bring down.

He did not think that he himself could fall. And he didn’t think at all that the cliff and its cornice were beautiful in their own way and that this simple beauty should also be protected. The boy did not even think about the fact that there might be someone's minks on a steep slope, for example, shore swallows or some insects, and that these minks would be destroyed. Fortunately, Lyosha did not have time to do anything wrong - the teacher stopped him. But after all, a teacher is not always next to the guys ...

What makes up the beauty of our planet? Flowers and trees, birds and butterflies, seas and rivers - this is only part of its beauty. Everything that nature has created is beautiful in its own way. And this little break too. And here is the stone-boulder that lies nearby.

Imagine that we have come to such a boulder. It may be the size of a soccer ball, or it may be larger than an adult. A smooth, rounded stone warmed up on the sunny side, and cool on the shady side. How nice to put your hands on it. Looking at this mighty stone, touching it, you feel some kind of majestic, exciting wisdom of the ages. Well, that's the way it should be. After all, a boulder lying quietly somewhere in a forest or on a river bank is not just a stone. He is peculiar natural monument left behind by a very long time ago.