How Deep Can Caves Get?

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CORRECTION: As some of you have pointed out, at 2:12 the narration should say "diamond-mesh coated rebar" not "diamond-coated rebar." It sounds awesome, but it doesn't make sense to reinforce the walls of a gold mine with minerals more expensive (and brittle) than gold.


Krubera Cave, one of our planet’s deepest known caves, extends 2200 meters into the earth – that’s a depth of nearly six Empire State Buildings. Or at least, that's as far down as humans have been able to explore; there might be other undiscovered chambers that go down even farther. But the cave can't be that much deeper, because there's a limit – actually, three limits – to how deep caves on Earth can get.

LEARN MORE
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To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
Karst: landscape underlain by limestone which has been eroded by dissolution, producing ridges, towers, fissures, sinkholes and other characteristic landforms.
Solutional cave: a cave usually formed in a soluble rock like limestone
Water table: the upper surface of the saturated zone underground, where all the pores and cracks in soil and rock are completely filled with water.

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CREDITS
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Cameron Duke | Script Writer, Narrator and Director
Arcadi Garcia i Rius | Storyboard Artist
Sarah Berman | Illustration, Video Editing and Animation
Nathaniel Schroeder | Music

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REFERENCES
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“3D Model of Krubera (Voronja) Cave.” Archive.org, 2025, https://web.archive.org/web/200904011...

Ford, Derek C, and R O Ewers. “The Development of Limestone Cave Systems in the Dimensions of Length and Depth.” Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, vol. 15, no. 11, 1 Nov. 1978, pp. 1783–1798, https://doi.org/10.1139/e78-186

“Karst Hydrology and Physical Speleology : Bögli, Alfred, 1912- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” Internet Archive, 2022, https://archive.org/details/karsthydr...

Kohn, Matt. How to Calculate Pressure in Earth’s Crust: Part 1 – Constant Density.    • How to calculate pressure in Earth's crust...  

“MatWeb - the Online Materials Information Resource.” https://www.matweb.com/search/datashe...

“Speleology : The Study of Caves : Moore, George William, 1928- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” Internet Archive, 2025, https://archive.org/details/speleolog...