Its depth is 404 meters
Not far from the Czech city of Hranice, a group of Czech explorers led by Krzysztof Starnavski managed to discover a cave, which, as further study showed, is the deepest known to date. Its depth reaches 404 meters, which is 12 meters more than the previous "record holder" - the Italian Pozzo del Merro.
The flooded karst cave was discovered a long time ago, in 1999, but it took a lot of time for specialists to study it in detail. However, experts immediately suspected that the cave promises to be deep. As scientists note, it was formed in a rather unusual way - bubbles of hot air saturated with carbon dioxide, erupting from its depths like lava during a volcanic eruption, pushed many stones to the surface (and also made the exposed skin of the researchers itch).
Krzysztof Starnavski and his team started the most detailed study of the cave two years ago. In 2014, scientists penetrated 200 meters into the cave - then it was assumed that it was at this depth that its bottom was located. However, instead, the researchers saw a narrow passage going deeper. A special robot was sent to this crevice, with the help of which data was obtained that the depth of the cave reached 384 meters, only 8 meters inferior to the Italian "competitor". Some time later, the researchers found that the passage to the cave widened and tried to measure its depth again. During the first measurements, it turned out to be even smaller than initially - by 370 meters (as the researchers assume, this was due to the fact that recently breakaway debris from its upper part lay on the bottom of the cave. However, further research using a more sophisticated remote-controlled underwater vehicle made it possible to fix a new record of 404 meters, National Geographic reports.
According to Krzysztof Starnavski, he deliberately did not swim into the depths of the cave himself, but left this work to the robots - his task was not to go to an unprecedented depth, but to conduct scientific research, and special devices would cope better with collecting data for him.
Dmitry Erusalimsky