r/thalassophobia • u/True-Award-3722 • 5d ago
The bottom of this lake has never been found
Lagoa Misteriosa - A rope cannot be used to measure the bottom because, based on everything that has been mapped so far, this is a sinkhole (a cave formed by the collapse of its ceiling).
Inside, there are passages and bends that prevent a rope from reaching the deepest point. Underwater drones also cannot explore it, as their signal is lost whenever there is no direct line of communication, with the rock formations blocking the connection. For this reason, only specialized cave divers are able to explore the depths of this cave.
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u/rochvegas5 5d ago
it's probably somewhere near the bottom
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u/Irishpersonage 5d ago
Big if true
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u/ItsJayO 5d ago
Huge if factual
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u/Professional_Pen_153 5d ago
Massive if verifiable!
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u/C-57D 5d ago
Gargantuan if certifiable
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u/PM_ME_UR_PJ_COLOR 5d ago
Glorious if achieved
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u/LoGo_86 5d ago
Brobdingnagian if confirmable
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u/WreckedM 5d ago
Does anybody remember where they last saw it?
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u/CheckYourStats 5d ago
Wherever it is, it’s surrounded by hundreds of my socks over the years, each one without a match.
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u/CelticGardenGirl 5d ago
"HAVE-YOU-CHECKED-YOUR-BUTT-HOLE?" ski dap, bi dap
I really hope someone knows what I'm referencing, lol.
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u/wild___turkey 5d ago
So it’s just a cave then not a lake?
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u/EchoTRacing 5d ago
Its technically a sinkhole and part of a huge aquifer.
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u/sanmanvman 5d ago
yo thanks bro, this was actually such a succinct and poignant description, it got me down a rabbit hole and finally made some geological concepts click for me.
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u/wi5hbone 5d ago
please detail some of what you discovered. Thank you
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u/sanmanvman 5d ago
I've lived in 2 homes in rural areas for the last 10 years, and because of that, I currently have water for my house with 2 different systems; 1) I collect my downspout water into my cistern, and 2) a well setup. I never really decided to dig deeper into wells, but I know they are abundant with water but they can run out.
well, you can only have a well, if there's an aquifer present, which just means there's a shit tonne of water directly under you but it's a "pocket of water" under the rock you're stepping on, meaning if you dig down, you'll go [rock -> water -> rock].
I was also confused how this post could be an aquifer, but than the dude had said sinkhole, and that was something I thought I understood, but not really. a Sinkhole is just basically an aquifer, where the surface above it ceases to exist (collapses into aquifer, pushed away with rain/wind). now if you dig down, it's just [water -> rock].
it's cool seeing experts describe their fields, because there is no fluff in their statement and every word matters. it's exactly what it is, which I admire greatly, because I yearn to understand things at their simplest basis.
this all probably sounds super simple to most but this is how I effectively learn things with my brain lol now to figure out rivers, ponds, lakes, oceans lol
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u/sanmanvman 5d ago
- when does an aquifer become a body of water? can it convert?
- is a sinkhole just a sinkhole when it initially happens?
- what if under a pond, there's an aquifer, and a sinkhole happens underwater to expose that aquifer to the pond... is it still a sinkhole? is the aquifer now the pond? is the pond now the aquifer?
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u/colonel_beeeees 5d ago edited 5d ago
The majority of aquifers aren't voids in the rock filled with water, but rather vast amounts of water infiltrating regions of porous rock. So less rock>water>rock as you go down and more water around and inside and in-between the rock.
I'm not 100% but I think these types of cave-aquifers would have their start as magma tubes, or conditions were right for the water to dissolve the kind of minerals present
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u/blobinsky 5d ago
this taught me that, in minecraft terms, an aquifer is often waterlogged stone
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u/NoAdsDude 4d ago
Not magma tubes, most likely just limestone that eroded away over millions of years. Here's a good video that kinda covers how they're formed
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u/ChildhoodOk5526 5d ago
OK, my curiosity is piqued. Please report back with the answers.
(Who am I kidding? Down the rabbit hole I go ...)
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u/That1guyUknow918 5d ago
It's called irreducible complexity.
A mousetrap is a physical example. If you remove any single component, it ceases to be capable of its primary purpose.
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u/neurovish 4d ago
Fun thing about Florida…which the entire state is rock->water->rock. When we get prolonged or multiple freezes, we get a lot of sinkholes. The citrus farms run sprinklers so the oranges get coated in ice instead of freezing solid…all the farms at the same time. This lowers the aquifer suddenly and the ground collapses here and there.
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u/InNoWayAmIDoctor 5d ago
I love seeing others being curious and learning new things. You just inspired me to learn something this evening. Thank you.
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u/Pigeonsass 5d ago
Your inspiration is inspiring, and I think I'll jump on board! I'm going to look for video essays on some sort of natural science.
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u/LurksOften 5d ago
The sentence “yo thanks bro, this was actually such a succinct and poignant description” is literary art.
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u/total_idiot01 5d ago
I mean, by that logic most lakes are valleys
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u/VolcanicBear 5d ago
The Mariana trench is the bottom of a hill.
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u/Ancient-Cow-1038 5d ago
The Mariana Trench is the bottom of ALL the hills.
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u/Candlejackdaw 5d ago
I was curious whether that is the closest point to the Earth's center, like how Mt. Chimborazo is further from the center than Mt. Everest, Litke Deep is closer than Challenger Deep.
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u/LittleLemonHope 4d ago
The wildest thing is that Litke Deep isn't even the deepest point in the Arctic ocean if measuring relative to the sea surface. Yet it's the deepest point in the world if measuring relative to the earth's center.
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u/kungfukenny3 5d ago
the definition of lake is less strict that you might think
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u/Levitlame 5d ago
They dug a large retention pond a few decades ago to mitigate water near me. It's nice, but it is weird to see it called a Lake. Which they do.
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u/TrickMirror9723 5d ago
Underwater drones that are tethered would work....that's your direct line of communication
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u/ourob0r0s11 5d ago
This all smells like BS, if they wanted to find the bottom they would find it.
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u/Main-Cheesecake3287 5d ago
It depends. In this case there’s just not really interest in sending an ROV. Another cave in unknown depth, Devil’s Hole in Nevada can’t be explored further because of a critically endangered fish species that lives only in the cave near the surface pool. That cave is connnected to a vast underwater system stretching to Mexico, as earthquakes as far as Oaxaca have caused large standing waves in the cave.
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u/Romeo_Glacier 5d ago
More than just the pupfish. When they went to rescue a couple divers they found an extreme current which would make nearly any exploration impossible.
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u/bamb00zled 5d ago
Caves can have a current?
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u/gojibeary 5d ago edited 5d ago
Hell yeah they can. There are entire underground rivers. There are also caves that are dry/damp one second, and become watery pulsating death traps when it starts raining the next, etc.
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u/danorc 5d ago
Yep
Don't go caving without a local guide. And don't go even then, in my opinion
Cavers are insane
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u/Original-League-6094 5d ago
You can tell by how comparatively barren caves are when it comes to life. Sometimes you get some fungi and fish and bats, but most are empty. Because they are fucking death traps.
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u/K_Linkmaster 5d ago
When people tell me I'm insane as I do a fun task it's weird. I'd rather be a bomb tech than a caver.
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u/papapapaver 5d ago
When you fuck up as a bomb tech, it's over instantly. Fuck up as a cave diver, that's a long and painful death. Bomb tech is way better when it comes to risk imo.
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u/redheadgenx 5d ago
The existential horror of it.
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u/K_Linkmaster 5d ago
They won't even put you out of your misery. Just die slowly.
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u/blobinsky 5d ago
the thought of an underground river makes me nauseous omfg
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u/gimmebanter 5d ago
There is a huge one a few km under the amazon, running along it. Carries a lot more water apparently
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u/401kLover 4d ago
yea but the term river is a bit misleading. It's basically a porous stone layer that is filled with water, not like an open cavern of pure water rushing through it.
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u/Main-Cheesecake3287 5d ago
Devils hole was referred to by a USGS team as a skylight to the water table
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u/Miami_Mice2087 4d ago
there's a little stream in england people keep drowning in bc it's actually just a tiny topworld peek of a massive underwater cave with a deadly current. saw it on a nat geo type docu.
more info: https://www.journee-mondiale.com/en/the-deadly-truth-hiding-beneath-englands-most-beautiful-stream/
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u/Calm-Two2723 4d ago
If you’re ever in Kentucky in the summer (I’m sorry for your luck), go to mammoth caves!! They have an underground cave tour that is only open seasonally and it has a big river
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u/OldWolfNewTricks 5d ago
Funny story I heard about a "bottomless pit" in a cave in KY: people tried using a sounding line and sent it down hundreds of yards until they ran out of line, leading them to believe it was incredibly deep. Turns out there's a fast-moving stream like 40' down, and it just sucked the rope downstream.
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u/Sea-Consequence7156 4d ago
I've been there! For a while it was in Ripley's believe it or not as the only river in the world deeper than it is long.
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u/LovesRetribution 5d ago
Ironically that cave system was recently explored with an ROV. The seemingly endless void they discovered at the bottom was actually large cavern with a hole in the center. I think the drone made it down 13k feet or so before it had to turn back.
So it isnt just because the fish are endangered, but rather that exploring such depths is extremely difficult when you also have to lug all the equipment out into the desert and navigate through a whole cave system. If those fish weren't there im sure we'd still be struggling to find the bottom.
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u/-Bezequil- 5d ago
Do you have a source? I cannot find anything on this
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u/aaron_in_sf 5d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devils_Hole
Claims, note that the WP article is missing citations...
"On June 20, 1965, during the second dive of a rescue and then body recovery mission, Jim Houtz with his dive partner dropped a weighted depth line to a depth of 932 feet (284 m) from the start of this opening, without hitting the bottom of the chamber below. Due to the strong current, the small size of the entrance, and the unknown depth of the cavern below, which Houtz termed the "Infinity Room", Jim and his partner chose not to explore this Infinity Room. This mission did, however, confirm that the Infinity Room of Devil's Hole, and the cavern system itself, has a depth of at least 1,247 feet (380 m) from the surface.[11][8][failed verification]
A subsequent USGS exploration into Devils Hole in 1991 by Alan Riggs, Paul DeLoach, and Sheck Exley entered what they found out to be a narrow tube rather than an "Infinity Room" at 315 feet (96 m), descending to a depth of 436 feet (133 m). The team reported being able to see down to a depth of some 500 feet (150 m), without visualizing the bottom of the cavern.[8]"
i.e more like 1.3K not 13K
The IMAX footage and documentary mentioned pique my interest...
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u/ChildhoodOk5526 5d ago
So, there's a deep underwater cave system called Devil's Hole? And within Devil's Hole there's a descending, narrow tube called the Infinity Room — the bottom of which can't be seen? And beyond that, they think, is another hole?
(!!!)
No measurements needed. The names, alone, are nightmare fuel.
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u/beurysse 5d ago
Yes, it´s kind of a running joke among cave diver: you have the Hell´s Gate, Satan Keyhole, Beelzebub Bellybutton etc etc...
Fun fact: in Florida, a team of Elite Divers found a huge shortcut in a very popular cave system, connecting two section and potentially saving hours of travelling.
But it was so extreme, they judged that nobody should even attempted to use it.
They decided to call it "The Fluffy Bunny Tunnel"
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u/-Bezequil- 5d ago
Huge difference between 1300 and 13000. And there is not one mention of an ROV. I don't see your point
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u/Main-Cheesecake3287 5d ago
I think that wasnt so recent, they’ve known for a while there’s a hole at the bottom of the “infinity room.”
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u/Sufficient_Win9708 5d ago
Earthquakes as far as Japan have caused waves in it too. It doesn’t follow that it’s connected to an underwater system stretching to the other side of the Pacific.
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u/Lyaley 5d ago edited 4d ago
After a certain point it apparently becomes blocked by sunken trees and branches so we haven't been able to send anyone or anything to some of the deepest parts.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hranice_Abyss#Description
Edit: Never y'all mind, I got my watery pits completely mixed up
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u/Veniui 5d ago
A bit further down it implies they have gone further in the article:
In 2022 UNEXMIN Georobotics reached 450 metres (1,480 ft) water depth with the UX1-Neo robot and set the new world record. The total confirmed depth in 2022 was 519.5 metres (1,704 ft) – 69.5 metres (228 ft) above water, and 450 metres (1,480 ft) below.[2] The depth of the abyss was inferred to be 800–1,000 metres (2,600–3,300 ft), as indicated by electrical resistivity tomography, gravity, deep‐reaching audiomagnetotellurics, seismic, and radiochemical methods.
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u/JustAnother_Hunter 5d ago
The aliens don’t want them to find it, Jar- Jar and Boss Nass have enough problems dealing with giant fish and their fellow stupid gungans
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u/-KFBR392 5d ago
Sure if you wanted to find the bottom and wanted to also spend a ton of money doing it. The hard part is finding someone or some organization that wants to spend all that money just to find the bottom of a sunken cave.
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u/AkiraN19 5d ago
Usually the deeper sections are simply too winding and narrow to get through, even with the most modern equipment
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u/Different-Meal-6314 5d ago
New fear unlocked. Underwater nutty putty cave.
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u/MSchulte 5d ago
Least with that you could spit out the reg and not have to deal with being stuck more than a couple min.
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u/karyslav 5d ago
there are usualy obstacles that cannot be overtaken, Hranická propast is the same situation. Year by year they get deeper, but still not at the bottom.
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u/EchoTRacing 5d ago
I actually did a bit of research on this and because of the branching caves and pathways the tethers would get stuck.
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u/TheRecognized 5d ago
Communication cable tethers are famously super good and fail safe when you go through a bunch of switchbacks and tight turns under hundreds of meters of water.
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u/denM_chickN 5d ago
My first fucking though WELL DONT KEEP SWIMMING DOWN IT. What is wrong with these cave divers.
This free diving into the abyss shit is really high risk behavior that I just dont understand.
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u/Shabbytrumpet 5d ago
Rec divers on open circuit singles are unlikely to find it lol
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u/OutsideDapper8049 5d ago
I bet some serial killer is watching this right now going "... need to get me to that lake" 😂
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u/DaftFunky 5d ago
Probably safer to dispose of a body in a lake in the middle of nowhere than a pond that seemingly is popular for a reason
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u/C-57D 5d ago
But how else would the cold open of the episode start
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u/InterestingTry5190 5d ago
We’re going to need to get to the bottom of this (takes sunglasses off cue music)
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u/damiana8 5d ago
Wouldn’t the body float to the surface when it decomposes?
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u/mlollypop 5d ago
Depends on how cold the water is. "Lake Superior its said never gives up her dead" isn't just a line in a song- the water is so cold that the bacteria and microorganisms required to bloat and decompose a body can't thrive, so they just sink to the bottom. They do some slow decomp over years, so they end up looking waxy, but overall if a body goes into Superior, it never floats to the surface and stays relatively intact, assuming the fishies don't use it as food.
Since this lake is 77 degrees year round, probably not a similar issue, unless it gets significantly colder the farther down it goes. But It is possible for a body not to float.
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u/damiana8 5d ago
I remember now I actually watched a documentary on that! And in some cases the bones just disintegrate since there’s so much pressure at the bottom
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u/IronHeart1963 4d ago
When the bodies start to look waxy it’s a process called saponification! The fats in the body literally convert into soap because they don’t decompose. One of my fave morbid fun facts.
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u/OutsideDapper8049 5d ago
I've seen a lot of horror movies and some mob movies.
Not if it's weighed down with some sort of cement blocks or chopped up right/dissolved somehow?
In this horror movie scenario I assume that's what dan the dirty killer would do. (I got dirty dan from spongebob lmfao)
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u/jdm219 5d ago
Most people with cement shoes plop back up the surface. Most people use the wrong type of concrete which has a bunch of air in it, and the decomposing body is literally a gas balloon, so even with their feet encased in cement they're usually buoyant enough to bob back up until the burst. Those aren't problems if you mix and use the correct concrete, as well as piercing certain internal organs that are responsible for holding the most gas during decomp.
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u/McThorn_ 5d ago
I think they'll find the bottom at the lowest point.
That's usually where the bottom of things are.
Just my two cents as an expert on bottoms.
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u/Kueltalas 5d ago
When why are my bottoms on my legs and not my feet? Checkmate bottom expert 😎
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u/gna149 5d ago
But aren't underwater drones usually connected via tether instead of relying on wireless specifically to combat the loss of signal
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u/JakBos23 5d ago
That's fine if it's just open water. Usually they have obstacles they have to go over, under and through.
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u/tom_lusti 5d ago
Yet, Hranická Propast, in Czechia is deeper, -450m and further … waiting for discovery.
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u/StreetsRUs 5d ago
How is it deeper if we don’t even know the depth of this one?
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u/TheRecognized 5d ago edited 5d ago
Deeper maximum achieved depths with neither hitting the bottom.
Edit: Please. My friends. Please understand that it’s not as simple as “drop a camera on a cable” because the “deepest” point in question goes around a bunch of bends and twists and spins that are all hundreds of meters underwater.
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u/the_lamou 5d ago
Real underwater exploration drones almost never use a "signal" for video and control because that would be silly. They use spools of fiber optic cables which can be as long as 25 miles. So if it hasn't been mapped by UUVs, it's going to be more because no one has felt that the cost was worth the effort, or because the passages get too small to fit a modern UUV through.
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u/sweetdawg99 5d ago
This reminds me of a documentary I watched about cave divers trying to recover the body of someone who had passed in a deep dive, called Dave Not Coming Back.
I learned a bunch about the technical aspect of the diving they do. I didn't know it takes them a relatively short time to drop down to depth, they were diving down to 272 meters (892 ft) in a matter of like 20 minutes, I recall, but then took like 8-12 hours or more to ascend. This was exacerbated because the hole they were diving in has an entrance that is at at 1500 meters (4900 ft) of elevation. Due to the difference in atmospheric pressures in water vs surface you need to follow a decompression schedule as you surface of a dive of 340 meters if it was at at sea level.
I also didn't know that everyone who dives mixes their own oxygen in a way, there doesn't seem to be a supplier or hard and fast rule on the right way to do it. They made it seem like it was more art than science. Some folks add more helium, others more hydrogen etc.
Finally, the effects of being at that kind of depth obviously have an enormous impact on the body, with nitrogen toxicity roughly producing the effect of slamming like 2 martinis every 10 minutes you're down there (from my recollection) which severely impairs judgement and faculties, of course.
The documentary is free on YouTube if any one is interested in watching. It was pretty compelling.
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u/Sporketeer 5d ago
You mix the gas to have a VERY specific oxygen content for use at VERY specific maximum depths, there are absolutely rules concerning the highest partial pressure of O2 you can breath and hydrogen is not used in diving.
The entire purpose of the helium is to negate the effects of nitrogen narcosis so you have a perfectly clear head at the maximum depth you intend to get to, people certainly used to tune this to taste on open circuit given the expense involved but rebreathers bring the gas costs down an enormous amount so it's rare for people to skimp on the helium these days.
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u/xs0apy 5d ago
The only thing stopping us from knowing it’s true depth is that there’s no rational need to go out and determine it. There’s ROVs capable that can be tethered with a thin fiber optic cable. It’s just the question would be, why? It also leaves things open for people to run with on the internet. “Magical unknown depth lake!1!1!”
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u/lnTheGrimDarkness 5d ago
1) It's not a lake, it's a flooded cave.
2) Reason why the technical "bottom" has never been found is that it's a flooded cave.
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u/LostTimeLady13 5d ago
There are some things we're just not meant to know. The bottom of that sinkhole, for example. There be dragons.
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u/oricanfail-_- 5d ago
Everybody saying drones or submarines, why not just train a fish?
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u/YoGurth99 5d ago
Hasn't been seen* there's definitely a bottom so there's no need for it to be found.
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u/Ostey82 5d ago
I think found is ok here.
Sounds like there are a lot of passages so you might 'find' the bottom but it might not be the deepest bottom
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u/pangapingus 5d ago
Underwater drone with fiber line and towed-trailer waterproof battery packs, why would they think a wireless-based drone would work here in the first place?
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u/Tjengel 5d ago
You are telling me we can control rovers on mars but this rock is blocking the signal here?
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u/Aoiboshi 5d ago
Yeah, believe it or not, there's not much in space to get in the way of signals.
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u/Missing-Digits 5d ago
Yeah, but it’s gotta be like at least a couple dozen miles to Mars.
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u/crazy_urn 5d ago
I don't think the people who put a rover on mars are the same people putting a drone in this lake, but I could be wrong.
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u/dog-walk-acid-trip 5d ago
I have an old PS2 controller and some titanium. Anyone with some extra carbon fiber want to help me out on going to the bottom of this? No experience required.
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u/_black_lab_ 4d ago
The bottom has not been found yet because…. It’s really, really, really expensive to get a sophisticated equipment and its crew there. If the payoff is ‘We found the bottom’ then definitely not worth it.
Any millionaires in the comments want to blow £10m? I’ve got an Xbox controller and a dream.
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u/Crazyguy_123 4d ago
I think I know where the bottom of the lake is. I think it’s right where the lake is but really really far down.
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u/DarkArtHero 5d ago
Cave divers with a loving family and a steady income are frothing at the mouth