Superman's Fortress of Solitude Found

Credit: AP CREDIT: AP

Superman's fabled Fortress of Solitude has been depicted in films as a vast complex comprised of enormous crystal beams. Fans know that it built itself from a single crystal in the far north.

Imagine the surprise of miners when they actually found it! Not in the frozen north, but buried a thousand feet below Mexico's Naica mountain in the Chihuahuan desert.

This has been quite a year for Superman fans; the deadly remnants of planet Krypton were discovered in a mine in Serbia this past April (see Kryptonite Discovered By Scientist).

Actually, of course, the Cueva de los Cristales is a purely natural formation consisting of enormous beams of gypsum. Some of the crystals are as long as 36 feet (see photo).

Geologist Juan Manuel Garcia-Ruiz has described the probable origin of the crystals in the journal Geology. The cave was drained by mining operations; for millennia, however, the crystals grew in mineral rich, 136 degree Fahrenheit water.

Via National Geographic.

(This Science Fiction in the News story used with permission from Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction.)

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