Thursday 18 November 2021

It Is A Mystery,

where does this flow of water come from?



photograph Pline/Wikimedia Commons, the Fosse Dionne is a huge upsurge of water in France’s Burgundy region around which the town of Tonnerre was built, the underground spring when it reaches the surface flows at around 311 litres of water per second on a regular basis, which can increase to 3,000 litres per second in rainy weather conditions. The Romans used it for drinking water, the Celts considered it sacred, and the French used it as a public bathhouse during the 1700s, but no one has ever been able to locate its source,

in 1974, two professional divers descended into the limestone rocks’ tight passages, but instead of finding the spring’s source, they found their end, unable to properly navigate the tapering chasm. Then, in 1996, the town of Tonnerre hired another diver to get to the bottom of things, but he died as well, to this day, no one has been able to reach the source of Fosse Dionne. Last year, the mayor of Tonnerre hired professional diver Pierre-Éric Deseigne to finally solve the mystery. He descended more than 70 m underground, venturing more than 370 meters from the cavity’s entrance, but was unable to reach its source, the video above is a mug of coffee long, as a one time divemaster, I have to say cave diving is not for me, the video just confirms why I would not have liked to try it back then, as an aside I really did not like the musical score, but there it is, I wonder if anyone else will try to solve the mystery?


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