# Second Amazon river discovered



## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

It's underground. It is about 6700 miles long (about as long as the Amazon) and much wider than the Amazon - up to 250 miles (Amazon - up to 60). I'm not sure what the "width" of a river is - I guess it is the width of all the side branches, not the width from bank to bank.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44343669/ns/technology_and_science-science

That article misses one important thing - the underground river does not flow in a tunnel. You can't drill a hole that is 2 miles deep, put on your diving gear and swim in the river. The way this river flows is through permeable rock formations (like sand) - like water through a foam sponge.

Note the speed of the flow - it is basically a crawl - no more than 330 ft per year. Very slow flow but another thing not mentioned in that article is that it creates a vast area of low salinity when it reaches and discharches into the Atlantic Ocean. An area that I guess is the same area where the Amazon discharges too. That low salinity environment (mixed sea and freshwater) is a place where unique plants and animals have adapted to live.

I guess there are no interesting fish/plants in the huge underground river. As we all know the Amazon itslelf has enough undiscovered species anyway. Also - water production from the underground river is not really justified because of the abundance of water at or close to the surface in the region. The discovery suggests that there maybe more such underground bodies of water around the world.

--Nikolay


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## fishyjoe24 (May 18, 2010)

cool, and interesting. guess you and me are the only one who fines that stuff interesting.


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## Tex Gal (Nov 1, 2007)

That was an interesting read. The earth is so complex. I'm sure there's much much more that we don't know, than we know.


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## WRabbit (Dec 13, 2010)

There is supposedly one of these mega underground rivers that runs under California/Nevada. I seem to remember an Unsolved Mysteries show about it.


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## Vildayyan2003 (Jul 16, 2011)

WRabbit said:


> There is supposedly one of these mega underground rivers that runs under California/Nevada. I seem to remember an Unsolved Mysteries show about it.


I saw a show on Discovery that said the huge underground river was being tapped by Las Vegas as a water source. I believe there was only one small natural opening hidden somewhere and fenced off that led directly to the water and lived one of the rarest fish in the world. Only a few dozen fish exist at a time.


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