> Oxygen levels run at roughly half of what our lungs expect. Carbon dioxide is present at concentrations enormously higher than in the outside atmosphere. The air is laced with hydrogen sulfide, the compound responsible for the smell of rotten eggs, and with methane and ammonia.
So it was not truly sealed. A truly sealed cave would have had no oxygen, it would have all been consumed in reactions with methane.
dyauspitr•29m ago
Yeah it has significant groundwater inflow (like 5L/s). Nothing about this is sealed.
john_strinlai•25m ago
>Yeah it has significant groundwater inflow (like 5L/s).
where did it say this? i did a double-take because the article says the opposite, and i checked the wikipedia and didnt see it there either. is there another source of info? or am i being blind?
statictype•32m ago
Interesting that being sealed for 5 million years did not yield any life forms more complex than insects.
Maybe sun and space are importance factors for intelligence.
weaksauce•23m ago
the sun is energy so i’d expect there to be a correlation there.
wpollock•24m ago
Just because the cave is sealed now, does not mean it has been sealed for millions of years. Even for geology, 5.5M years is a long time. I don't understand how they can claim it never had connections to the outside, just because it doesn't have connections now.
cyberax•37m ago
So it was not truly sealed. A truly sealed cave would have had no oxygen, it would have all been consumed in reactions with methane.
dyauspitr•29m ago
john_strinlai•25m ago
where did it say this? i did a double-take because the article says the opposite, and i checked the wikipedia and didnt see it there either. is there another source of info? or am i being blind?