THE CRUELEST PLACE ON THE PLANET

They say it is the cruelest place on earth. Located between Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti
and the Red Sea, the salty desert Danakil is a dazzling beauty. And the closest thing
to hell. In this unique corner, Spanish and French scientists seeking the secrets of
the origin of life.
Hotter than the caverns that hide Naica giant crystals. Murkier than Yellowstone
geysers or Tatío. But in this salty desert at 120 meters below sea level, the Earth
has taken the best of their palettes to create an inimitable landscape mineral forms.
It is the hell of Dallol, Ethiopia.

The surface opening cracks widen titanic imperceptible speeds and when flooded
become seas. Two of those cracks began to form 30 million years ago, and today is
red and the Gulf of Aden sea. The third, the foot of the Y, began somewhat earlier,
although it may be aborted. Still, it has already left a huge mark up from Tanzania
via Kenya and Ethiopia. It is what is called the Rift Valley (Rift Valley). At the junction
of these three cracks is a salt desert, Danakil Depression call, an area of over 100
square kilometers which at first glance seems an endless carpet of salt.

Actually, the Danakil is not covered by a rug, but by a subsalt two kilometers thick
deposited during the successive occasions when the Red Sea has invaded this
depression in the last 200,000 years. Under the saline stratum there is a hot magma
trying to reach the surface. The salt deposit, plastic and waterproof, hold magmatic
lunges, but finally broke letting out liquids, vapors and gases trapped inside. The hill
created by the thrust of magma and molded mineralization it is known as the Dallol,
a place that the Afars, the inhabitants of the region, considered the abode of an evil
spirit.

The Hydrothermal formations at the top of the Dallo, a mixture of hot water, magma
and minerals. The air smells of sulfur and at dawn as the temperature exceeds 30
degrees.
At sunrise, the temperature exceeds 30 degrees. The landscape is barren. No sign
of life. The entire atmosphere is disturbing for the sulfur smell you perceive and the
presence of Ethiopian soldiers escorting us in this insecure border with Eritrea.

Everywhere there hot springs where water comes bubbling to the boiling
temperature. This water is actually a supersaturated sodium chloride brine. When it
arises, all that is left salt crystallizes forming pillars are initially bright and pure white.
The acidity of water is brutal, almost 500 times more acidic than lemon. After the
salt, when the water temperature drops a few tens of degrees, condensed sulfur
painting fluorine yellow inactive pillars. Acidic water runs through dams built by
crystallization of the salt itself. Iron, in contact with oxygen of the atmosphere, is
oxidized by lowering the pH to the lowest value measured in a natural way, almost
10,000 times more acidic than lemon. Successive mineralizations due to oxidation
 THE CRUELEST PLACE ON THE PLANET
stained waters warm colors, from lime green to green jade, from orange to red, ocher
and chocolates. Walk on a salt crust that know hollow and brittle. Notes underfoot
something threatens to come to the surface. Intimidator gurgling you hear and feel
the hot soil by escaping gases and vapors makes you think every step you take.
That salt water vapor builds structures that seem eggs thin crust of salt. When the
hot springs arise under the impounded water, brine crystallizes forming a pipe
through which reaches the surface. There precipitates circulate around the spout
creating beautiful mushroom-shaped structures that appear colored water lilies
floating on a crust.

If you want to call this art is ephemeral art underline. Everything is fleeting in the
Dallol, as befits the extraordinary geodynamics of the area. Everything is changing.
Yesterday areas were quiet today have a disturbing activity. Fumaroles steaming
west yesterday today do east. The flowers are white salt sported yellow today, and
gone tomorrow, red. And they disappear to germinate elsewhere. A couple of
kilometers from here has appeared an incipient field of fumaroles and hot springs. It
has done by a lagoon called "black" whose composition is saturated magnesium salt
solution. It took an entire afternoon to sample this gap, because she was falling into
certain death. The water is 70 degrees centigrade and its concentration is so high
that it has the consistency of a gel, which it should be impossible to get out. A few
kilometers southeast has formed another lake, called "yellow" mortally beautiful,
decorated with salt water lilies and surrounded by bird carcasses deceived by the
devil Dallol off a sickening stench

We want to know how much this wilderness hell is, or has been colonized by a
microbial life.

Beyond beauty, which alone justifies the study and conservation of this mineral
museum, Dallol is important for two reasons. The first is to know to what extent this
hell is wilderness or, on the contrary, has been colonized by a microbial life that
every day we know more universal. Look for signs of the existence in these extreme
conditions of acidity, salinity and temperature is the main task of purification.
Determine the physical and chemical limits of life on Earth would allow us to extend
the types of environments in which to look for life on other planets and help us better
understand the early stages of life on this when its surface must be less hospitable
now. On the other hand, it is suspected mineral self-organizing structures that may
have played a crucial role in the early Earth, when it had not yet appeared life on a
planet who was playing to create organic molecules that allow these extreme
chemical environments. That search, from extremely alkaline lakes of Kenya's Masai
land to these ultraácidos lakes Afar territory,CSIC).