Atacama

The deserted of Atacama is most arid (one speaks about hyper-arid desert, i.e. it receives less 50mm of rains per annum) in the world and is located at the Chile (South America). It is a desert of shelter wedged between the underwater Fosse of Atacama and the Andes cordillera. This desert is located at the north of the country, in the Región de Antofagasta and the north of the Región de Atacama.

The temperatures fluctuate enormously between the night and the day, often close to 0° the night and approximately 25° with 30° the day. The fluctuations between the winter and the summer are weak because this desert is located at the limit of the Tropic of Capricorn. It is often known as that the desert of Atacama is the driest desert of the world, one raised on average 0,8 mm of rains per annum with Arica (Chile), which is reached in no other point of the sphere.

The desert of Atacama is rich in ores: Copper, Iron

The desert of Atacama shelters astronomical project ALMA ( Broad Atacama Millimeter Array ). ALMA is located on the site of Chajnantor, a high-plate (5000 m) located at approximately 60 km in the east of the village of San Pedro de Atacama. It is about an exceptional site for the Astronomie (sub-) millimetre-length, because of the extreme dryness of the place as well as absence of luminous pollution.

Valley of the Moon or planet Mars, the traveller saunters on these grounds among most arid of planet. Its pupils discover a world hitherto unknown, decorated with orange new ranges, of red contrasting with a pure blue sky. Country Aymara, almost uninhabited, Atacama remains one of the last inviolate grounds. Alternating between Saharan quietude , fractures worthy of the Wadi Rum, extents comparable with those of the Gobi Desert , Atacama offers in more one volcanic line, marking the border between the Chile here, the Bolivia and the Argentine, other side. Throughout this natural barrier, volcanos passing very close to the 6  000 meters, of the turquoise lagoons, the Geyser S and the valleys which one would consider extraterrestrial. It is in this desert " extraterrestre" that NASA tests small vehicles before the latter will walk on Mars. Another world, another planet. It would be sworn. We are however in the north of Chile and Atacama is not without pointing out red planet, which makes an invaluable ground of experimentation of it. An autonomous robot discovered traces of life in one of the sorriest places of our planet, the desert of Atamaca which presents important similarities with the arid surface of the planet Mars. The Droïde, assembled on four wheels and baptized " Zoé" , however found colonies of Bactérie S and Lichen S on two sites distinct from this desert which has more the weak density of organic activity of our planet.

See too

External bonds

  • SanPedrodeAtacama.Net & Org
  • Web site San Pedro Atacama
  • Web site ALMA

Be-X-old: Атакама Simple: Atacama Serves

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