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Deep underground, encased by the rolling hills of North Virginia, lies a subterranean paradise and musical marvel. The Luray Caverns boast the most extensive cave system in the eastern United States, but for the millions of visitors who flock there each year, it’s not just the beautiful rock formations that reel them in. These natural walls also house the eerie vibrations that emanate from the world’s largest musical instrument. Locked away, deep in the labyrinthine passages of the Luray Caverns, is The Great Stalacpipe Organ. This instrument is a natural wonder that brings a new meaning to “rock music”. The...

South Australia's Naracoorte Caves is one of the world's best fossil sites, containing a record spanning more than half a million years. Among the remains preserved in layers of sand are the bones of many iconic Australian megafauna species that became extinct between 48,000 and 37,000 years ago.The reasons for the demise of these megafauna species are intensely debated. But the older the fossils we can find, the better we can understand the species' evolution and extinction.To date, determining the precise age of the caves has been difficult. However our research demonstrates, for the first time, how old Naracoorte's caves...

The Liangzhu excavation site, on the Yangtze River Delta, southwest of Shanghai in China, is home to the remains of a 5,300-year-old civilisation. Liangzhu City was once an advanced culture, with hydraulic infrastructure including dams, reservoirs and canals. Despite not having metals, the Neolithic people of Liangzhu operated a complex water system that allowed agriculture to flourish. There is still much to learn about Liangzhu, which was only declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019. It was inhabited for 1,000 years, but it’s still not entirely clear what caused the city’s downfall, which was thought to be abrupt... Moisture...

Reference Paulsen, D.E., Li, H.-C. and Ku, T.-L. 2003. Climate variability in central China over the last 1270 years revealed by high-resolution stalagmite records. Quaternary Science Reviews 22: 691-701. What was done In the words of the authors, "high-resolution records of ð13C and ð18O in stalagmite SF-1 from Buddha Cave [33°40'N, 109°05'E] are used to infer changes in climate in central China for the last 1270 years in terms of warmer, colder, wetter and drier conditions." What was learned Among the climatic episodes evident in the authors' data were "those corresponding to the Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and...

A close up of one of the stalagmites analyzed in the study. Credit: Jud Partin When Georgia Tech Assistant Professor Kim Cobb and graduate student Jud Partin wanted to understand the mechanisms that drove the abrupt climate change events that occurred thousands of years ago, they didn't drill for ice cores from the glaciers of Greenland or the icy plains of Antarctica, as is customary for paleoclimatolgists. Instead, they went underground. Growing inside the caves of the tropical Pacific island of Borneo are some of the keys to understanding how the Earth's climate suddenly changed - several times -...