Hell-on-Earth

The Death of Pinochet led me to do some refreshing of my Chilean Geography. I recalled learning about a brutal desert in that snake-shaped nation, it's called the Atacama. This desert is 50 times more arid than California's Death Valley, and likely the driest terrestrial environment on earth.

The Atacama is situated between two mountain ranges so that moisture from the nearby Pacific Ocean rarely reaches the ground. The average rainfall is ~1 millimeter per year. The climate is so inhospitable that NASA researchers have used it to test research equipment proposed for use on Mars. Perhaps even more surprising is how long the Atacama Desert has existed.

Google News turned up a current story on an extremeophilic deep sea shrimp this morning. The microbial life in the Atacama is also an extremeophile in terms of water demand (and other things). Understanding these fringes of life could lead to breakthroughs in our understanding of biology and evolutionary behavior. Why do some organisims thrive in places where almost every other creature would be tortured? How are they different from the dominant forms of life? We might never get satisfying answers to these questions - especially since scientists continue to find life in improbable places.