Scott McCrea wrote:27,000 miles!?
That's a lota cave! Anyone care to add up the long cave list and see how many miles of cave, in the whole world, have been surveyed? I bet it's not even close to 27,000 miles.
I dunno, Scott, if the United States alone has, as Spike has computed, over 4,238.15 miles of cave passage just counting the caves that are over one mile long, then it seems likely that there is enough known underground cave passage to encircle the Earth, maybe twice.
But obviously the Ruskies are wrong. It takes more than than having a hundred mile square of 30 feet of flat laying limestone to have a 27,000 mile maze cave. Like in all solutional maze caves it takes continuous right angle jointing throughout the expanse to induct the process.
Secondly, a system of contiguous ground water flow moving under a hydraulic head must be set in motion. And since recharge requires discharge, there in lies the problem of unequal down cutting at the perimeter of the rock aquifer perched above.
My dollar against your ruble that, at the very most, the Russkies have only a thousand mile long cave.