Underground Wonders
November 13th, 02008 by Alexander Rose
This is an updated post of one of my early blog entries here at the Blog of the Long Now. Over the last couple years I have found even more amazing underground and stonework spaces. Since we hope to build the space for the 10,000 Year Clock underground, for the last 10 years I have been collecting references and images of the great, ambitious, and or inspiring underground spaces and stonework of the world (in some cases they are also lessons of what not to do). I thought I would list some of that collection here to share them, as well as ask for any recommendations or references you all might have. ( I continue to collect so please send along your favorites.) You can click through most of the images below to colelctions of images or blow ups of the shown image.
- Cliff Path in China This may be the same one pictured below as the Stremnaya Rd.
- Abandoned Turda Salt Mine of Romania
- Etruscan Necropolis
- Napalm Caverns of Russia
- Crystal Caves of Mexico
- Data center in old nuclear bunker under Stockholm Sweden
- Church of St. George Lalibela, Ethiopia (wikipedia entry)
- Not sure of the origin of this one. Looks South East Asian.
- 12th century underground church (France)
- Salt Church near Bogota Columbia
- Lava Tube Cave, Lava Beds National Monument, Tulelake, California
- The Hall of Records at Mt Rushmore
- St Patricks well by DaVinci in Orvieto Italy
- Underground naval base in Sweden
- Underground Lakes
- The 800 year old salt mines of Poland
- The Stremnaya cliff road in Bolivia China
- Depth Scrapers!
- Anasazi Cliff Dwellings
- Petra
- Japanese Sewer System
- Hana Lava tube
- Cappadocia Turkey
- “The 7 Undergound Wonders of the World”
- The Mormon Geneological Vaults
- Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository
- Nuclear Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
- Cavern in Tennessee (I think)
- Stockholm Subway
- Underground Europe
- Largest Caves
- Underground New York
- Rock Temple
- Large holes in the ground
- The hanging temple in China
- Collection of cave photographs
- Ahern Pass goat trail
- Heavenly Stairs
- Laerdal Tunnel
- Great shot of the “Hell Hole” cave
- Underground Moscow
- Niagara Falls aquaducts
- The wonderful stairs at Acoma Pueblo
- Stone mountain stairs in China
- Impressive Natural Rock Formations
- The stone work of Machu Picchu, and the Inca Trail
This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 10:15 am and is filed under Clock of the Long Now. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Posted on October 4th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Lalibela, churches carved out of the rock in Ethiopia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bete_Giyorgis_Lalibela_Ethiopia.jpg
Posted on October 6th, 2007 at 9:11 am
The Budapest underground tours (under the “7 Wonders” item) look worth taking, to compare the flashlight version with the public lighting version. I’ll bet the flashlight tour is more amazing.
Posted on October 6th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
The rock-carved churches of Cappadocia, central Turkey, from probably the 700’s (see photos at http://www.pbase.com/dosseman/goreme_museum, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cappadocia, http://www.ianandwendy.com/OtherTrips/IcelandGreeceTurkey/Turkey/Capadoccia/slideshow.htm)
Posted on October 8th, 2007 at 9:45 am
For the record, note that the photos labeled as “The Stremnaya cliff road in Bolivia” are actually of the Guoliang Tunnel in China, see pointers to the evidence here: http://rickmccharles.com/?p=1230
Posted on October 9th, 2007 at 4:45 am
There are also a number of particle physics experiments and detectors that are buried underground, some photogenic examples:
MINOS is a detector designed to study neutrino oscillations. Pictures here: http://www.fnal.gov/pub/presspass/press_releases/MINOS_photos/
The beast weighs 6,000 tons and is half a mile underground in the Soudan Mine in northern Minnesota. The cavern includes a wonderful painted mural across the raw rock wall: http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/pdfs/200505/deconstruction_soudan_mural.pdf
Another example is the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector project located in the Mozumi Mine in Japan. The walls are covered in photomultiplier light detector tubes. The regular placement of these tubes make for stunning photographs of the underground space, it looks like something a Sci-Fi movie set designer would dream up. See Wikipedia for more info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-Kamiokande pictures here: http://www-sk.icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/sk/gallery/index-e.html and video here: http://www-sk.icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/lib/video06/index.html
My favorite Super-K image is at the bottom of this page: http://www.esi-topics.com/nhp/2006/september-06-EdwardKearns.html
Some other examples of similar detectors and projects can be seen on the PBS Nova site: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/neutrino/detectors.html
Posted on October 11th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
The new Library of Congress audio-visual archives are set inside Pony Mountain in central Virginia. Over 90 miles of shelving housing nearly 6 million pieces of a/v history – much of it maintained at 25 degrees F. http://www.loc.gov/avconservation/
Posted on February 24th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Cavern in Tennessee { I Think} is Fantastic Pit, 586 ft. vertical drop in Ellisons Cave, in Walker County, Georgia.
Posted on June 18th, 2008 at 3:44 am
[...] one of the more photogenic. I will keep the list below updated as I find more (like I do with the Underground Wonders post), so feel free to make notes of ones you know about in the comments and they will be [...]
Posted on June 24th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
[...] Long Now Foundation has a list of Underground Wonders. I’ve always been fascinated by caves and such. Check out their list and follow the links. [...]
Posted on November 14th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Hey, check out the aqueducts! All of them are awesome, but i was thinking of the modern ones that quench NYC, like the Catskill, Delaware, and Croton aqueducts.
Posted on November 15th, 2008 at 5:55 am
The image of “Stone mountain stairs in China” is not in China. It is located in Guatape, a small town 2 hours away from Medellin, Colombia. It is named “La piedra del Peñol” (El Peñol Stone).
Take a look at :
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=la+piedra+del+pe%C3%B1ol
http://www.piedrapenol.com/
http://www.paisajesdecolombia.net/Penol2.html
Posted on November 15th, 2008 at 10:56 am
I’m not sure if these are the same salt mines as the 3rd picture shows, but here are two salt mine pictures I’ve found in the past.
http://dizzyclub.deviantart.com/art/Tell-me-Baby-if-you-remember-75759623
http://dizzyclub.deviantart.com/art/These-Foolish-Dreams-75751047
Posted on November 15th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Thinking about big holes, caves and carving stones, I selected some Italian stuff links:
The “Sassi di Matera” with many “architectural solutions”
http://www.sassiweb.it/
The Frasassi Caves or “Le grotte di Frasassi”, giant
http://www.frasassi.com/index.php?l=2
The Roman Catacombs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs_of_Rome
Posted on November 16th, 2008 at 9:45 am
The “Italian Laerdal Tunnel” is in fact in Norway, and has little to do with Italy.
I have been inside of it, and it is bloody fantastic.
Posted on November 19th, 2008 at 10:22 am
[...] Wonders An interesting post on the Long Now blog called Underground Wonders… lot’s of visually interesting [...]
Posted on December 30th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
[...] 詳細はこちらから。 ra-miの寝言／昨日ネイティブ夫妻とステーキ食べに行ってきました。日本だとステーキと言えばご飯と一緒に食べるのが当然なんですけど、こっちではステーキを食べるといえば出てくるものは当然ステーキだけ。美味しかったけど凄い違和感がありました。笑 [...]