Table of Contents
DALLOL
- One of Earth’s most extreme environments, Dallol is incredibly hot, salty and acidic. Its ponds extend across a volcanic crater, in the Ethiopian Danakil depression, filled with salt, toxic gases and boiling water in response to extreme hydrothermal activity.
- Published journal: Nature Ecology and Evolution.
DALLOL
- The researchers, including those from the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), said Dallol’s landscape extends over a volcanic crater full of salt, constantly releasing toxic gases with water boiling in the midst of the intense hydrothermal activity.
- They said it is one of the most torrid environments on the planet with daily temperatures in winter exceeding 45 degrees Celsius.
- The landscape, the researchers said, had abundant hypersaline and hyperacid pools, with pH — which is measured on a scale from 0 (very acidic) to 14 (very alkaline) — even hitting the negative mark.
POINT TO NOTE
- “In addition, our study presents evidence that there are places on the Earth’s surface, such as the Dallol pools, which are sterile even though they contain liquid water,” stresses Lopez Garcia.
- This means that the presence of liquid water on a planet, which is often used as a habitability criterion, does not directly imply that it has life.
NOTES
- In this study, it is found that, in the hyper acid and hyper saline pools, nor in the Black and Yellow lakes of Dallol but found few salt-loving microorganisms in the desert, and the saline canyons around the hydro thermal site.
- The Black and Yellow lakes of Dallol which are rich in magnesium.
WHAT EXACTLY IS DALLOL?
- Dallol is a cinder cone volcano in the Danakil Depression, northeast of the Erta Ale Range in Ethiopia.
POINT TO NOTE
- The term Dallol was coined by the Afar people and means dissolution or disintegration, describing a landscape of green acid ponds (pH-values less than 1) and iron oxide, sulfur and salt desert plains.