Sometimes you just start thinking and come up with something bizarre like how are caves formed. The answer may be simpler than you imagine. Caves are formed by a couple of different processes in nature. It takes a very long time to create caves and there isn’t really any idea of just how long this process will take. However, you can test the rocks inside a cave to tell how long it’s been a cave. These processes depend on the area that the cave is going to be in. There should be a vast amount of limestone for the most common type of cave.

If you have limestone then how are caves formed becomes a matter of adding water and time. Limestone is soluble in water for the most part. That doesn’t mean you can dissolve limestone in a glass of water. However, if you add soil and vegetation above that limestone and it rains, you will find the perfect circumstances to begin making a cave. The vegetation and soil mix with water and create an acid means for the water to dissolve the limestone. These will create a carbonic acid that eats away at the limestone creating holes. The more holes, the more carbonic acid, and the larger the holes get. Once they get big enough, they will crack and form large openings that will attain more water and dissolve more limestone.

This isn’t the only way on how are caves formed, though. You can create what they call lava tubes or lava caves with the moving of lava through the coil towards the sea coast. The water cools down the lava and then slowly erodes it back into the original rock. Thus, it will create a cave. You might also get a glacial cave when the melting glacier starts to create cracks as they move. These cracks will start to melt open further and, eventually, will turn into an ice cave. Once you figure out these basics, it pretty easy to understand how caves are formed. Although you might not be able to recreate a cave in real time, you can always see what the processes will do by running complex computer models.