Speleology Commons^™

Creating Synthetic Analogs Of Fluorescent Speleothems In Wind Cave As An Astrobiological Model Cave, Teresa Feldman

Honors Program Theses

The wind cave system represents a unique environment on Earth where the direct interplay of organic chemistry on the surface can possibly be traced to extremophiles living hundreds of meters below the surface. In many cases, minerals and organics from the surface become trapped in calcite formations creating fluorescent minerals. To understand the environment giving rise to the fluorescent minerals in Wind Cave, laboratory analogs of the calcite crystals found within the Wind Cave National Park cavern were synthesized and analyzed using SEM and fluorescence spectroscopy. This data was compared to the fluorescence and XRF data collected from speleothems in …