Several years ago, a team of Czech speleologists discovered a massive underground system of hot springs in Albania. Little did they know that it would lead them to the largest known subsurface thermal lake in the world.
“[Following] the high column of steam coming out of the limestone massif, we managed to find an abyss over a hundred meters [328 feet] deep,” Marek Audy, a speleologist and head of the Neuron Atmos Expedition that made the discovery, said in a Neuron Foundation statement. “We called it Atmos. At the bottom, we discovered a strong thermal inflow and a vast lake.” Lake Neuron, named after the Czech science foundation that funded the enterprise, is located 471 feet (127 meters) below the surface.
During this first expedition, however, the team didn’t have the appropriate instruments to take precise measurements of the lake. They knew it was big, but they couldn’t prove just how big, so they returned a few years later armed with more funding and advanced scientific instruments.
“During our initial exploration, we created a basic map using our equipment and immediately realized that we had discovered something extraordinary,” Richard Bouda, a photographer and speleologist on the expedition, told Euronews. “Thanks to the Neuron Foundation, we were [later] able to use a mobile LiDAR scanner, which allowed us to accurately measure the entire cave and lake area. We are also working with hydrologists to analyze the underwater portion of the lake using sonar technology.”
The team named the lake “Neuron” in honor of its sponsors, and conducted a hydrogeological analysis during the second expedition to confirm the lake’s dimensions. It measures 453 feet (138 meters) in length, 138 feet (42 meters) in width, and boasts a total circumference of 1,131 feet (345 meters). It’s three times the size of the main hall in Prague’s National Theater and carries 294,348 cubic feet (8,335 cubic meters) of thermal mineral water, according to a separate Neuron statement announcing the record-breaking measurements. For a comparison more familiar to this side of the world, that’s over three times the volume of an Olympic swimming pool.
“Thanks to the scientists we work with, we know that the surrounding springs are fed with water from the lake,” Bouda told Radio Prague International. “We believe this discovery could also contribute to the protection of the whole area and to a better understanding of its hydrology, because to this day, nobody knows how exactly these underground waters are connected to the surface.”
Lake Neuron is in a region called Vromoner along the Greek-Albanian border region. Due to tensions between the two countries last century, the region has not received a lot of scientific attention, making the team’s expedition all the more revealing, according to the first statement. In fact, the discovery of Lake Neuron is “something that could have a huge impact on understanding underground ecosystems and geological processes,” Audy told National Geographic. “We want to look at other parts of the cave, learn more about the geology and biology of this area.”
While the world has seemingly begun a second space race, it’s worth remembering that there’s still a lot we don’t know about the land beneath our very feet.
