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Atacama Desert: The Ancient, Alien Landscape of Northern Chile
- helloguillecl 5y agoOne of the most impressive things you get to see there is the Flora and Fauna around the San Pedro de Atacama area. It is so beautiful to see the life thriving in such an hostile environment, at around 3.000 MASL. It gives you a unique perspective about nature.
- mbustamanter 5y agoI lived in Antofagasta from age 2 to 4 and visited many times during my teens, one of the most beautiful sightings is the flowering of the desert. Very hard to forget those vast patches of purple.
- davidw 5y agoI was joking with my wife that we should move to Arica for the climate - it looks about perfect, with no rain and moderate temperatures. She likes things like 'trees' and 'grass' though, so ... no deal.
- helloguillecl 5y agoSantiago would be quite what you are looking for. Plenty of trees and grass :)
- davidw 5y agoThe nice thing about Chile, like California or Italy to some degree, is that you just go further north or south to change the climate settings. I am not sure living there is in the cards for us, but I would love to visit.
- helloguillecl 5y agoPing me if you ever want to visit. I'll help you make a personalized plan.
- mbustamanter 5y agoSeconded, it barely rains now and it has plenty of trees and parks (in the east side of the city though).
- jaredxmoore 5y agoYou will get trees in Arica the closer you get to Valle de Azapa, but probably not what your wife is looking for.
- i_love_limes 5y agoThis article doesn't talk about another really interesting aspect of the Atacama. Many observatories are set up there, as it's one of the best places in the world for stargazing, and The reason it's so good is due to the lack of clouds most times, and the extreme dryness of the air as the article pointed out. It's definitely on my list of places to visit!
- shmageggy 5y agoThis gets a brief mention in the second to last paragraph
- pfdietz 5y agoAnd for the same reason, it's the best place in the world for solar energy.
- alex_anglin 5y agoLots of lithium there too.
- seattle_spring 5y ago> The reason it's so good is due to the lack of clouds most times, and the extreme dryness of the air as the article pointed out. In addition to those, it's very good for stargazing because of the "smoothness" of the air. The best places to stargaze are high elevation areas that have direct prominence, and therefore direct airflow, from bodies of water. It's also why Hawaii is such a stellar (pun intended?) place for huge telescopes.
- 8bitsrule 5y agoInteresting place in many ways. Just a few days ago it was reported: "Vast patches of glassy rock in Chilean desert likely created by ancient exploding comet." [https://phys.org/news/2021-11-vast-patches-glassy-chilean-ancient.html https://phys.org/news/2021-11-vast-patches-glassy-chilean-an...] "Around 12,000 years ago, something scorched a vast swath of the Atacama Desert in Chile with heat so intense that it turned the sandy soil into widespread slabs of silicate glass.... Fields of dark green or black glass occur within a corridor stretching about 75 kilometers.... The analysis found minerals called zircons that had thermally decomposed to form baddeleyite. That mineral transition typically happens in temperatures in excess of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit...." Geology PDF: [https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article-pdf/doi/10.1130/G49426.1/5456021/g49426.pdf https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article-pdf/doi...]
- koheripbal 5y agoReminds me of the recent theory that a comet airburst destroyed a city in the middle-east 3600 years ago. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97778-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97778-3
- jdmichal 5y agoThis made me think of Sodom and Gomorrah. And, indeed, it looks like that's a published theory of the director of excavations there, Steven Collins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodom_and_Gomorrah#Possible_sites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodom_and_Gomorrah#Possible_si... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Southwest_University#Archaeology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Southwest_University#A... EDIT: You think I would know to not read just the abstract... Sodom is explicitly mentioned in the linked Nature paper, but only in the sense that if the two are connected, it would be the second oldest known record of an airburst event.
- ale42 5y agoHave been to the Argentinian side of Atacama desert a few years ago, it also has impressive landscapes!
- mypastself 5y agoGreat stuff, love seeing this kind of content on the front page. Dry Valleys are fascinating as well, this is likely to send me into a rabbit hole of reading about arid locations…
- kvgr 5y agoI encourage everybody to go there, it is amazing. And Salar de Uyuni is close to there. Just amazing.
- ngokevin 5y agoHeaded there next month!
- leodriesch 5y agoQuestion: wouldn’t the Mount Everest be among the driest places on earth because it’s top is above the clouds?
- dylan604 5y agoIsn't Everest typically covered in snow?[0] That doesn't exactly scream dry to me the same way an arrid desert screams dry. At some point, moisture had to be around to creat that snow. Also, not very flat which makes building things like large buildings to house telescopes not practical. [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mt.+everest&t=h_&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mt.+everest&t=h_&iax=images&ia=ima...
- leodriesch 5y agoYeah you’re right, snow isn’t exactly dry. My bad, could’ve thought about that.
- virgulino 5y agoAdding to the alienness, you have a fossil whale graveyard in the desert. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26343894 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26343894
- sewercake 5y agoPatricio Guzman's 'Nostalgia for the Light' is a wonderful documentary 'about' Atacama. It cuts between the scientists using the telescopes and a collection of women who have been scouring the desert for fragments of the bodies of loved ones discarded during the pinochet regime. Both are using the space to probe history, just very different kinds and at very different scales. Very powerful and instructive exploration of the (dead) body, grief, and the necessity of 'witnessing'. Highly recommend it to everyone here! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalgia_for_the_Light https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalgia_for_the_Light
- julienchastang 5y agoRelatedly, "Mountain of Clothing in Chilean Desert Disastrous for Environment": https://weather.com/science/environment/video/mountain-of-clothing-in-chilean-desert-disastrous-for-environment https://weather.com/science/environment/video/mountain-of-cl...
- carride 5y agoAlso recently written to be a dumping ground for all the worlds leftover cheap clothing. https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/latin-america/chiles-desert-dumping-ground-for-fast-fashion-leftovers.phtml https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/latin-america/chiles-desert-...
- kaycebasques 5y agoJust jotting down a few meta comments about the article itself simply because I find writing/storytelling to be fascinating and worth studying. Overall I found the content quite engaging. The ads mixed throughout really do detract from the experience. Here I am about to get immersed in the desert and then a laundry detergent ad shows up front and center. I'm not sure how I feel about how they mixed in photos without context. E.g. that mano del desierto sculpture was striking. I wanted to learn more. But maybe the unexpectedness of the photos works well?
- lentil_soup 5y agohighly recommend an ad-blocker, it's night and day
- coyotespike 5y agoI did not know Chile had a desert until I found myself in it, while motorcycling down to Ushuaia. It was incredible - a Mars landscape, as far as the eye could see. We would pick up pallets by the side of the road and make a fire at night. Desolate, and of course amazing stars at night. You could ride 120mph quite easily. That photo of the road going straight to the horizon is what it looked like, the whole way through. Also, running into el Mano del Desierto was just surreal. A Buddha hand, just standing in the desert?! Gas stations were plentiful enough, and clean, as I remember. We rode over some small mountains to see Salar de Uyuni, rather than pay the fee for Americans to enter Bolivia, which was expensive at the time. There we ran out of food and water, and barely made it back over the border into Chile before running out of gas. Oil workers rescued us and gassed us up, declining payment on the grounds that this was hilarious. We went to a little town which was an oasis and crashed in a hotel for a couple of days. The south of the country is much greener, and full of vineyards, which they are very proud of. Around the middle they share mountains with Argentina, and the Mendoza wine region, which produces pretty much all South American wine. Any odds, I can definitely recommend visiting Atacama.
- aezell 5y agoMy mom lived there for years when I was in high school and college. My wife (girlfriend at the time) and I visited my Mom in Antofagasta. We took a bus from Antofagasta to San Pedro de Atacama for a few days. At some point before arriving in San Pedro, we were the last people on the bus. The driver pulled over on the side of the road in the middle of this desert. No other people or cars or anything in sight. He motioned for us to get off the bus. He was increasingly loud and insistent. My wife speaks Spanish but his accent was thick and the bus's engine was loud so she had a hard time understanding him. I was certain we were going to be robbed and potentially murdered. But, he got off first and walked over to a big rock and went around it on a small ledge. I peeked around the edge of this boulder and he was making the universal camera/photo gesture. Ahead of us was the Valle de la Luna [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valle_de_la_Luna_(Chile) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valle_de_la_Luna_(Chile)]. The sun was setting and it was one of the most beautiful sights I've seen in my life. After we arrived at San Pedro, he made sure we got to the hostel and we shared an ice cream in the central plaza with his children.
- helloguillecl 5y agoThanks for sharing your story. My German wife could not help herself getting emotional about the character of the people there, where she lived for 10 years, while I read her your post.