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The Atacama Desert of Chile is a virtually rainless plateau made up of salt basins (salares), sand, and lava flows, extending from the Andes mountains to the Pacific Ocean. It is 15 million years old and 50 times more arid than California's Death Valley. Image File history File links Atacama1. ...
Image File history File links Atacama1. ...
Image:Morocco Africa, which is where bottoms come from, Flickr Rosino December 2005 84514010 edited by Buchling. ...
Monte Roraima In geology and earth science, a plateau, also called a high plateau or tableland, is an area of highland, usually consisting of relatively flat open country. ...
A magnified crystal of a salt (halite/sodium chloride) A salt, in chemistry, is any ionic compound composed of cations (positively charged ions) and anions (negative ions) so that the product is neutral (without a net charge). ...
Look up lava, Aa, pahoehoe in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
The Andes form the longest mountain chain in the world. ...
Death Valley and Panamint Range For other uses, see Death Valley (disambiguation). ...
The average width of the Atacama (east-to-west) is less than 160 kilometers (100 miles) but it extends from the Peruvian border 1000 kilometers (600 miles) south to the Bolivian Altiplano. The mountains nearest to the ocean are the Pacific coastal range, with an average elevation of 800 meters (2500 feet). The Cordillera Domeyko, a range of foothills of the Andes Mountains, lies east. The Altiplano (Spanish for high plain), where the Andes are at their widest, is the most extensive area of high plateau on earth outside of Tibet. ...
The Andes form the longest mountain chain in the world. ...
Driest Desert
The Atacama Desert is the driest desert on Earth (with the possible exception of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica) and is virtually sterile because it is blocked from moisture on both sides by the Andes mountains and by coastal mountains. The average rainfall in Antofagasta — a region in Chile which is part of the Atacama — is just 1 mm per year, and there was a period of time where no rain fell there for 40 years. It is so arid, in fact, that mountains that reach as high as 6885 metres (22590 feet) are completely free of glaciers and, in the southern part from 25°S to 27°S, have possibly been glacier-free throughout the Quaternary - though permafrost extends down to an altitude of 4400 metres and is continuous above 5600 metres. Some weather stations in the Atacama have never received rain, evidence suggests that places may not have had significant rainfall for about 400 years. Earth (IPA: , often referred to as the Earth, Terra, the World or Planet Earth) is the third planet in the solar system in terms of distance from the Sun, and the fifth largest. ...
Categories: Antarctica geography stubs | Geography of Antarctica | Ross Dependency | Valleys ...
Antofagasta is Chiles second administrative region from north to south. ...
A glacier is a large, long-lasting river of ice that is formed on land and moves in response to gravity and undergoes internal deformation. ...
For other uses, see Quaternary (disambiguation). ...
In geology, permafrost or permafrost soil is a thermal condition where ground material stays at or below 0°C for two or more years. ...
Some locations in the Atacama do receive marine fog, providing sufficient moisture for hypolithic algae, lichens and even some cacti. But in the region that is in the "fog shadow" of the high coastal crest-line - the crest-line of the coastal range averages 3000 m for about 100 km south of Antofagasta - the soil has been compared to that of Mars. // A rain shadow (or more accurately, precipitation shadow) is a dry region on the surface of the Earth that is leeward or behind a mountain with respect to the prevailing wind direction. ...
In 2003, a team of researchers published a report in Science magazine titled "Mars-like Soils in the Atacama Desert, Chile, and the Dry Limit of Microbial Life" in which they duplicated the tests used by the Viking 1 and Viking 2 Mars landers to detect life, and were unable to detect any signs in Atacama Desert soil. The region may be unique on Earth in this regard and is being used by NASA to test instruments for future Mars missions. Alonso de Ercilla characterized it in La Araucana, published in 1569: "Towards Atacama, near the deserted coast, you see a land without men, where there is not a bird, not a beast, nor a tree, nor any vegetation" (quoted Braudel 1984 p 388). A science magazine is a periodical publication with news, opinions and reports about science for a non-expert audience. ...
The Viking 1 was the first of two spacecraft sent to Mars as part of NASAs Viking program. ...
Frost on Mars. ...
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the solar system, named after the Roman god of war (the counterpart of the Greek Ares), on account of its blood red color as viewed in the night sky. ...
Another picture of Atacama desert with the sunset make it look like the desert is from Mars. ...
Another picture of Atacama desert with the sunset make it look like the desert is from Mars. ...
Human occupation The Atacama is inhabited, though sparsely populated. In an oasis, in the middle of the desert, at an elevation of some 2000 meters, is the village of San Pedro de Atacama. Its church was built by the Spanish in 1577, but archeological evidence indicates that the San Pedro area was the center of a Paleolithic civilization that built rock fortresses on the steep mountains encircling the valley. The Escondida Mine and Chuquicamata are also located within the Atacama. Oasis in the Libyan part of the Sahara For other uses, see Oasis (disambiguation). ...
San Pedro de Atacama is a pre-Inca town in northern Chile, and a popular tourist destination. ...
The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (Greek παλαιός paleos=old and λίθος lithos=stone or the Old Stone Age) was the first period in the development of human technology of the Stone Age. ...
Categories: Stub | Mines ...
One of the larger pits in the base of the open cast mine Chuquicamata copper mine in 1984 Chuquicamata, or, Chuqui, as it is commonly called, is the largest open pit copper mine in the world. ...
The Pan-American Highway runs through the Atacama in a north-south trajectory. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...
The European Southern Observatory operates two major observatories in the Atacama Desert: The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is an international astronomical organisation, composed and supported by ten countries from the European Union plus Switzerland. ...
MolÄ—tai Astronomical Observatory An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial and/or celestial events. ...
La Silla Observatory is an astronomical observatory in Chile with eighteen telescopes. ...
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is an international astronomical organisation, composed and supported by ten countries from the European Union plus Switzerland and was created in 1962. ...
One of the four telescopes that make up the VLT, named Kueyen. ...
Abandoned Nitrate Mining Towns The Atacama has rich deposits of copper and other minerals, and the world's largest natural supply of sodium nitrate, which was mined on a large scale until the early 1940s. The Atacama border dispute between Chile and Bolivia began in the 1800s over these resources. General Name, Symbol, Number copper, Cu, 29 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 11, 4, d Appearance metallic pinkish red Atomic mass 63. ...
Minerals are natural compounds formed through geological processes. ...
Sodium nitrate (not to be confused with sodium nitrite) is a type of pepper(NaNO3) which has long been used as an ingredient in explosives and in solid rocket propellants, as well as in glass and pottery enamel, and as a food preservative (such as in hot dogs), and has...
FALSE borders between Peru, Bolivia and Chile before the 1879 War of the Pacific The Atacama border dispute between Bolivia and Chile began in the 1800s over the Atacama corridor, a part of the Atacama Desert which now forms northern Chile. ...
Currently, the Atacama Desert is littered with approximately 170 abandoned nitrate (or "saltpeter") mining towns, almost all of which were shut down decades after the invention of synthetic nitrate in Germany at the turn of the 20th century. Some of these abandoned towns include Chacabuco, Humberstone, Santa Laura, Pedro de Valdivia, Puelma, Maria Elena and Oficina Anita. Chacabuco is a special case since it was later converted into a concentration camp during Pinochet's regime. To this day it is surrounded by 98 lost landmines and is guarded by one man who lives there alone. Chacabuco may refer to Argentina Chacabuco, Buenos Aires Chacabuco Partido Chile Chacabuco Province This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...
General Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte1 (born November 25, 1915) was head of the military government that ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990. ...
External links
Reference - Braudel, Fernand, The Perspective of the World, vol. III of Civilization and Capitalism 1984 (in French 1979).
Fernand Braudel Fernand Braudel (August 24, 1902–November 27, 1985) was a French historian. ...
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