Moonmilk Discovered in Alaska
Scientists in Alaska discovered moonmilk in a cave. Sounded weird to us, as moonmilk is a rather common speleothem found in many caves. However, the article Southeast cave life chews through rock tells this.
We thought a while about this and what we guess is, the news interpretation shows simply that the writer did not understand the scientists.
Moonmilk is a white dripstone which contains a lot of tiny blisters, as a result it is light, full of water and rather soft. It seems the scientists found out that microorganisms are essential for its formation, and actually there are various theories how moonmilk is formed, and none is very good. The connection with microorganisms has been guessed before, but as far as we know there have been no successful examinations which support this theory so far. We will have an eye on future publications, actually this is an interesting topic.