upshift wrote...
WTF is all that?

Sean wrote...
looks like a pile of dirt... i want to say that there is some kind of floor auger in the middle there and it was pulled out that way...

silence wrote...
If that's diatomite, I hope you took home a sample. Its likely to be absolutely incredible under a microscope.

tofu_minx wrote...
what do people use this for? (plant fossils??)

Andy Frazer wrote...
I like how the whole ceiling and the diotomite forms a giant arc around the center of the image. (Diotomite is used as a filtering medium in water filters). -- Seen on your photo stream. (?)

Steve wrote...
You'll often find diatomaceous earth used in pool filters ( as Andy was saying above ). I sent a summer cleaning pools and got well acquanted with the stuff. I took a little baggy of it with me to my biology lab when school started and it's really amazing stuff under the 'scope!

Jonathan Haeber wrote...
This mine specifically was given a government subsidy to provide diatomaceous earth for use in light-weight concrete and cement (likely for nearby vandenberg.

Todd Lappin wrote...
Is diatomite the stuff they use to power the warp engines?

Scott Haefner wrote...
Wow, we gotta get over here in March when we head down...