Endorheic Basins Life in Super Saline Conditions

And so welcome, welcome um to everyone. I see lots of uh friendly faces out there. Um so uh let's see. He looks like just about everybody I recognize. So what I normally would do would be to emote stringiness indeed. Uh what I would normally do go welcome to the science club or science circle. I can still say that. And then I'm going to use voice. You can use uh text. Please do. I like to see lots of chatter. Um and I'll answer questions as they come up. All that good stuff like that. The reason I do it as it comes up is so that I don't forget what you asked later and you don't either. So I like to be involved with the audience. Okay. Um so let's start on the hour and end on the hour so to speak unless there's a lot of stuff still going on. And let's see. Oh yes, lots of people just showing up there. Great. Okay, so the title of this the endoric basins life and super salailing conditions that's kind of what you'd see in an article but in reality um okay D hang on to that question but um organisms can I don't think cats can anymore than we can but um there there is when I when come up here. There are some organisms that live in super salailing conditions and they are able and I looked it up myself actually this is kind of one of those fun presentations because what I did was I saw a picture kind of like what you see in the title here and I go good gracious where's that and it obviously it must be somewhere shallow etc blah blah looked it up and actually it was very interesting topic and that's kind of what I do with science I'm sure you do too is the yeah same as us. Um, but there are organisms that live in salt water and they can do it because of a particular uh physiological thing that they have. The same way they can live in um a temp in um water that is below freezing, that sort of thing that it's super okay, good. But yeah, you don't want to drink a lot of salt water for and I'll cover that. So anyway, I saw this picture just like the one in here. I started looking it up and I go, "Wow, that's a very interesting topic and I really didn't know much about it." So I started looking up stuff like what you guys are saying. I'm like, "Okay, can anybody live in really salt water?" And yes, there are organisms that do it. Well, how do they do it? Well, uh, for some of the same reasons that they can live in very very cold cold water and things like that. And so, um, yeah, all of what you guys are saying threats. So, I just like a lot of other science things. Uh, I have I have fun with science. Yes. Okay. There you go. That's There you go. Okay. So, Brian Shrimp there, Ben. Actually, I have a picture of Brian Shrimp. I I think I have in here. Hang on. We'll get there in a second. I'm glad you guys are all uh seabirds like flamingos. Yep. Okay. So, uh you guys are all bringing up some really cool stuff, which is good. And it also tells me whether I've covered some of my topics, uh completely. So, hang on to that and I'll get into the presentation right now. Okay. But this is kind of one of those fun ones where, like I said, I I look at a picture, I go, "Oh, what kind of science is behind that?" So you may have when I was young, my um mom in particular was uh brought up on classic literature and all that stuff and so a lot of uh classic literature and poems and stuff. So I heard this what about water water everywhere nor a drink to uh what? No. Um uh nor any drop to drink. And it was from a poem called The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, which is about a man who gets stranded in becoming oceans and uh can't drink the water even though it's all around him. And so he's slowly uh dehydrating. Um sounds like a grand topic for a poem. But any case, water is Yeah. after killing albatross which is not which then again is you know a lot of lot of these legends which killing an albatross is not good luck. Okay. So water is the third most common molecule in the universe. So in other words if you look out there even though uh the space looks pretty empty it's not. It's full of all kinds of stuff. And so where oxygen is the third most common element and hydrogen the first most common element. Uh anybody happen to know what the second most common molecule is? That's an astrophysicist question but whatever. Water. Yeah. Excellent. Wow. S um so anyway. Yeah. Well that's that's definitely one. And then carbon monoxide that I found out is the second. So anyway, uh water is found just about everywhere. The problem is it's not found in liquid or easily accessible forms. On Earth, there is a lot of water, but perhaps only 1%'s available for life. On the moon, it's estimated that there may be as much as 600 billion kilograms, but we don't know yet how much is available for life. In August of this year, the uh China is going to be launching their seventh I think it's seventh um mission uh since about the time that uh sign circle got started actually in second lab and they're specifically going to the south pole to find water. That's the mission. Okay. So we should be able to answer whether there's actually water and what form there is later in the year. Now speaking of which every every week on Monday we have a group science moonbased Seline Seleni group and so we water becomes a big deal uh when we're talking about living on other planets. So is there any fresh water in the solar system? Well, it's if you're in kind of the Goldilock zone as they call it. I'm not sure that everybody is familiar with that um story, but the idea is if you're too near to the sun or too small, say Mars size is that you may have had liquid water at one time. In fact, Venus and Mars both have indications that they had water at one time. Mars because it's small uh it lost its magnetic field because the interior got too solid and then without the magnetic field the solar wind stripped off the atmosphere. Without the atmosphere then essentially the water went away and so the only water on Mars may be found frozen under the surface that sort of thing or around the poles. Venus actually had uh there's a art good article out that showed that the Venus had water uh oceans just like the Earth until about 715 million years ago and then they had a catastrophic outpouring of carbon dioxide from volcanic events that uh ended up in a runaway greenhouse. uh that then of course more um Venus has a very hellish at or environment today. Now at about the same time when we say fresh water even Earth at some points did not have fresh water. Uh around 759 years ago there was hypothesized to be a snowball earth where essentially all of the fresh water on Earth was frozen. And then if you're too far out. Yeah, there we go. Could accelerate. Okay, that's interesting, sis. Okay. Um and and then again, see, anything in the path there, you're going to have to come up with some pretty good Oh, that's interesting. Sumo. Yeah. The In other words, what form does water take? If water then is embedded in the materials in glass beads, that sort of thing from impact craters. Okay. Uh there you go. Look at tags. Uh detailed stuff from a medical standpoint. Yes, exactly. How saline the oceans were in Earth formation, etc. But if you're too far out in the solar system, then for example, the water is not going to be liquid because it's too cold. But it can be liquid under a cover. So uh under a layer of ice, a rather thick layers, kilometers of ice like under Europa. Europa is actually the smoothest object in the solar system. The reason being is that the surface is renewed uh by the interaction of a hypothesized water ocean. In fact, it may have more water than Earth does. Um but we don't know yet, but we may find out sometime. We do know that there's there's outpourings of salt and other stuff. So essentially um Jimson's water okay etc. Okay. So in other words fresh water is kind of a rarity. So let's anybody remember this from their early high school days or whatever the water. Okay. So you've got all all these things. Now, the interesting thing is they looked at this water cycle and they didn't say anything about the sun. They just said, "Okay, it evaporates and it condenses and it moves with the wind and then there's precipitation and condensation and all that good stuff." But you got to have all of these things in order to have a full water cycle. So, there's this yo-yo. In fact, actually, this is kind of from one of the thing it's it's uh from a university, Colorado State University, so it's probably in a textbook. And so you've got you have process physics process processes where you got warming and cooling and wind and pressure and the shape of things and all that good stuff. And then you got the chemistry phase changes and airborne life. In fact, rain can't uh you can't you don't have rain unless it has some sort of a nucleus whether that's dust or in some cases bacteria and such. In fact, there was a recent article that basically said there every square meter on Earth in in average has about four airborne insects above you, let alone um bacteria. So that's why fresh rainwater might not be fresh. In other words, you might want to clean it up a little bit before you uh drink it. And then of course, biology. Yeah. Okay. So all of these types of things that that are going on to create the the the water cycle including in other words if you have any one of these disrupted you're going to have you won't have the full water cycle including the uh uptake of water from plants and then into the atmosphere. Sublimation of the snow instead of instead of going to liquid water, sublimation the air and deposition of frozen precipitation. And you also have infiltration into the surface below, but it has to be sufficient so that it can percolate down. Otherwise, it's going to run. Oh, all of these sorts of things go into it. Very complicated. Okay. So where is the fresh water? Yeah, dry. Exactly. And also on the moon since they do the moon group or the moon people mooneyies loonies. Um if you mine water on the moon in the form of obviously ice or something, you have to be careful because the moment it warms up, it's going to sublimate way and you're going to lose your ice. So essentially you have to mine it and then you have to put it in a container and then uh otherwise it's all going to disappear before it can get it back to wherever you want to melt it. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So here is where the fresh water Yeah, that too. Okay, so here where the fresh water is well or or water is period on Earth. Most of it's in the oceans. Uh, some of it's in the atmosphere, a lot of it's in ice and snow still, although that's going to come down of course with climate change. A lot of it's in groundwater, not all of it's accessible. And then the part that we actually think of fresh water where uh well, yeah, uh fresh salt water pools. Yes. Lots of uh fatted in this case meaning full of buggies or full of um yeah buggies. Well, yes, because there are haloilic organisms that love salt water and they often color the water and I'm going to get to that here in a minute. You can actually see uh salt water, you know, blue, not of course drawn buggies. English is fine. So anyway, okay. So, let me continue. Uh ah yes, of course. There you go. Okay. In other words, the types of bacterias that might be harmful to us can be delayed by having brine like pickles or heavy concentrations of pickles or sugar as well. Now, there there's a reason uh there's a reason why, okay, I'll say it anyway. The buggies, the little Things that can survive in salt water do so because they have a lot of things like glycerol and other small neutral molecules in inside them that kind of act as the same as antifreeze except in other words it crowds out or doesn't allow. Now, Tag probably knows more about this, but essentially crowds out um it protects the salt from coming out of the or the water from coming out of the cell and drying up, which is essentially what happens. So, back we'll have to talk about that next. So, in other words, they're able to live in more saline conditions because they have um molecules within their cells that act somewhat like antifreeze, only it's more like anti- osmosis. In fact, uh cells need fresh water as tagline pointed out uh for both s structural integrity, in other words, to keep them nice and plump. um because you need it for ATP production. You need it and so cells maintain an equilibrium a osmo regulation regulation of osmosis between the inside and the outside. So if you have too high a salt concentr concentration it's going to shrink the cells impair their function. They need water to act as a solvent for chemical reactions to move essential molecules like sugars and salts and stuff into the cell, flush out waste products. I think people have pointed out several of those indicators. Now what do we mean by salty is fresh water is uh is not necessarily saltree but it has very little salt. However, our blood in other words when they do salt uh IV saltine solution it's actually the same amount of.9% or nine parts per thousand is what they usually use for a dimensions for salt. Um so blood is actually 0.9% uh mostly sodium chloride some potassium that sort of thing. um oceans are up to 3.5 but some seas like the Mediterranean Sea and such are higher and then there's other ones which are higher than that uh all the way up to the point where water is saturated which uh is can be as much as yeah the great salt lake which I will cover in a second but I need to get past the science in order to share a bit about some of the end endoric basations around the world. I always like to read taglands too because I like to learn the medical the actual medical side. Okay. Keith ser Yes. Great. So well it has salt and sea. Okay. I'll mention those here. Okay. So let's take a look then. Endormic basins. Let's just Okay. They're not always salt seas, by the way. But an endormic basin means that it does not have an outlet to the sea or to the ocean. Old salt. Exactly. Says is very quick on the witisms, but they're on all continents. And so what we'll do is kind of a counter clockwise look at some of the enduranic wiz. Oh, that. Okay, that's a very good. I like I like reading the chat as as much as sharing your stuff. Okay, but that's why I'm here. Otherwise, I'd be talking to myself. I sug um could smile at me and wag wag its tail. Yeah, I like to have the witicisms. Um Um Okay, so let's do a counterclockwise look at some of the uh interesting endo ramic basins which mean they don't have an outlet to the sea which means just like a cell essentially there has to be an equilibrium in order to sustain any water. You have to have uh the source of water and then you can't have too much evaporation otherwise you're going to have a salt flat. But not all the enderanic basins are a salt flat. Uh some are very li very uh healthy uh lakes and things like that. So let's go ahead and and check out some of the endormic basins around the world. Uh here's one. Australia. Australia is one of the largest andic basins in the world. It takes up a good You can see it takes up a good part of the central eastern part of Australia. It is below sea level. A lot of some of them are, some of them aren't. Some of them are very high in altitude. Some of the enderamic basins are also the lowest places on earth. They uh in this case uh lake I probably anybody know how to pronounce that? Um Australia. Um this particular one's not it's more like think of the Mississippi River in the US. In other words, it's simply in the middle of the continent. So, it's kind of a been stretched, so to speak. Um, this is not, but there are Shiloh, there are some volcanic basins. I'll get to one uh here shortly that's in Turkey that had definitely had some volcanic argents. There also uh but good question. Okay. So, Crater Lake, for example, in Oregon, in the US and other places, uh there are lakes in in Central America. Um so, Crater Lake is a possibly an endormic basin. In other words, it doesn't have an outlet, but it's actually called crypto ray, which means that actually the water drains from the inside and it has to be refilled. And there are other basins like that that are not fully end raic which are uh volcanic lakes. Okay. So any case in Australia that the lake IIE uh ranges from completely yeah I know says one of the things I thought that I the reason I gave this presentation is not only it's interesting science but it has some very strange little tidbits of information you know the AIES you know they do so they actually have this little yacht club where they've got the catamarans with no keel and so you go skimming across these things. Uh, but you can't do a lot of tacking because otherwise you're going to uh stick your uh you're going to stick your uh bow in the mud and go head over heels, I think. So, anyway, uh Lake Ivy has three times in the last 150 years it's actually been full. And it basically if it's full, it's no more salty than the sea. But of course as it dries up it becomes fully saturated and it is often pink which is by the way what okay question why are flamingos mostly pink. Okay. Uh there you go. Okay. The little stripy things. And others have him salt. Uh, no. But Himalayan salt may flush a lot. Okay. I I love the answers. Okay. Um, maybe they blush a lot, but Well, it's not die. Okay, there you go. Okay, that must be tag. It is. Okay, the Crater Lake one. So, anyway, it's it's their diet. Okay, that's probably a good thing. And what they do is they dine on little uh red shrimpies and other stuff. But in one of the organisms that it's a blue green type algae or red algae that exists in saline lakes like this and so when lake ivory gets low it looks kind of pink from the air and there is that uh juna leola selenino whatever that produces I air okay pronounced like air to air is human um and it produces beta carotene. Well, it's interesting. The Aussies kind of looked at that and they they started actually getting beta clarotene from the little organisms in the lake and it became a worldwide economic uh thing so to speak. In other words, where do you get beta carotene from? Well, you can get them from Yeah. Good place carrots. Well, I don't think so. But any case also with great carrot. Okay. But also this is a really interesting lake because when it gets full there are birds that come from thousands of kilometers away and they don't know why or how the birds know that the lake is full but it basically supports about a 1% of some of the uh bird species in that area of Asia Asia Pacific area. They don't know how the birds know that the lake is full, but they come from thousands of kilometers way to get to the lake. Okay. And they also have that um um the yacht club. So, lots of very interesting things having to do with these lakes. Okay. So the next one is Lure or Lake uh that at one time the lake in 1928 was as uh measured as high as 3,000 square kilometers making it a big lake. But due to constructions of dams along the tributaries, the rivers that and creeks that went into the lake that were damned for agricultural reasons, stuff. The lake no longer had um the lake no longer had Oh, thanks. Uh I I try to make the slides interesting. Even if even if you're not too uh keen on the topic, I try to make the slides. Okay. So anyway, the lake was really big in 1928, but then you had dams on the tributaries. Remember that these areas, since they don't have an outlet to the sea, they basically are in equilibrium between the precipitation and the evaporation. And uh that's what rules whether there's going to be water in the lake or not. So the lake dried up completely. It's got as much as 100 cm of salt. Now the lake um on on what on which point? Yeah, go ahead and put it in there. Okay. Any case. Okay. So anyway, um this is an old lake. It's it you can actually see from maps back in Marco Polo and Silk Road time periods that the lake existed for some period of time and it and it had a lot of uh salt marshes and stuff. The only native animal or not the only native but one of the native animals right now. Well, Shiloh, that's a good question because as the glaciers melt, obviously you're going to have less runoff from ice packs, etc. And so you're going to have more saline conditions in the lakes. But in the ocean, if the larger glaciers, think Greenland and the Arctic and Antarctica and stuff, then you're going to drastically change the top of the oceans. Now, remember that the oceans actually have a safe a boundary where it's more salty below. The submarines know this. It took full it's kind of like a a bounce layer for sonar is the uh they so the yeah thermocline good thanks in this case it's it's a it's a thermocline but at which is causes the yeah halo seed perfect thank you for the scientific answers but the idea is that the top in particular is going to be more freshwater in the oceans in addition to them rising you're going to want more fresh water the ocean that's going to greatly affect a lot of the currents and so you're going to have a real problem is the bottom line. Okay. So coming back to locker is when it became one of the native animals there is a backing camel the normal vacian camel. This is a local vacuum camel that is native to this area but because it was way out in the middle of nothing. China used this area between 1964 and 1996 for its nuclear tests. Um, they actually think they might still be using it for underground um up until almost the uh 2020s. Okay. So, the RLC, most people probably have heard of the RLC. It's the one east there of the Caspian Sea. Pasian Sea being the largest lake in the world um meaning a body of water that is enclosed like that. So the RLC even though it's called car se but it's large the RLC used to be the third largest lake in the world but the uh Soviets in the 1960s started doing irrigation projects and basically dried it up and it used to have sturgeon and a lot of other not a huge uh biodiversity but certainly more than it has now because there's one of the little brine shrimpy things over on the right. Uh, and it's about the only thing that can live there except for there is a Ukrainian stickleback which is the only native fish to survive it now. Yeah. Sturgeon fish like is in caviar. Um, but it's probably extinct. There's nothing Well, it's kind of gone. There are now the next one I'm going to show you. I think it's the next one. >> Well, the one after that, they've tried to restore some of it, but in this case, this is probably gone. Now, the UN Secretary General um Bunky Moon said it was one of the planet planet's worst environmental disasters because this was a large lake that used to support human and other life around that area. Now, there's really not much there. Well, this one is a human cause one the same way with the locked door, but the one that I'm going to show you like Chad is a rainfall pattern. Okay, so these are both man-made. So, uh, human made. So, anyway, what I'm trying to show you is each one of these like lake air is simply a natural occurrence. It's it's a temple lake. So that it's sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not. It all depends on the moss monsoons and stuff. Lake Nure and Lake the RLC are both drained by human activity and some of them are by climate change. Okay. Well, that's interesting. Obviously that obviously it has a influence in the local area. Okay. So here's my gratuitous cat or um is Mike here? And it's not really gratuitous. Yeah, I'm here. Okay. It's not gratuitous, but I was looking at like Oh, yeah. In fact, the eyes, if you look at it, one's blue and one's another lovely eyes. Okay, so anyway, Lake Vaughn has a rich human history. It's over in the area near the uh Mesopotamian area and stuff. And there was a even a van civilization, Von Kingdom and such. Yeah, this particular one uh swims. It likes to swim in the lake. So lake von is one of the largest lakes in end of rayic lakes in the world. It's up to 450 m deep and it holds about 40% of the surface water in Turkey. And and even though in the winter the winter temperatures are below freezing, it doesn't freeze because of the higher salinity content. And it's been around for a very long time. Uh and they have measured um the lake uh has in some cases is it okay? Uh has been um up to 200 m more shallow and up to 100 meters more uh higher that sort of thing over a 90,000year uh time period. But it's uh a very but it historically it's been known for a very long time period in that area. Okay. Lake Chad. Here's the one. This one was simply caused. It's in the Sahel which is if I pronounced that correctly, somebody tell me quick. Um, but it's in the area of Africa between the Saharan Desert and the more equatorial area where it cycles back and forth between being somewhat wet and somewhat dry. And Lake Chad was once one of the largest bodies of fresh water on the continent of Africa. And there's still about 30 million. I love the chat. I could never come up with some of the stuff you guys write. But the historic Lake Ted back when Saharan desert had hippos and stuff and crocodiles, uh, was about the a good portion of the UK. That's what you're looking. The green section down there, which simply drowns a quarter of Ireland, um, is more recent. It's, you're looking back in the 60s. Um but then it's pretty it did rebound in the 70s and then by 2000 it's pretty low now. There's not a lot there. Um after bully it's it's hard to read all of what you're writing at the same time as I'm trying to think about my what I'm saying here. But in any case, it's still supports about 30 million people uh both from fishing and agriculture. The the problem though is in addition to the lake shrink shrinking to nearly nothing. There's also a lot of conflict in that area that's caused significant food. It's just chatter. That's okay. Some of it's very fascinating. Okay. So now, okay, say this this one many times fast. M gadi or whatever. And I don't know what that and I'm Yeah. Okay. So anyway, it's it's probably better known as like the Kalahari desert. Uh at least the bottom part of it the officially it's known as that. It's in uh both Batswana and Namibia area and Angola which is to the north of it closer to the equator actually gets three times the rainfall as Batswana because it's closer to the equator and probably on uh I haven't exactly looked at it but it's on one of the uh a more tempered zones. Yeah. Okay. So yeah and be okay. Well, don't say it three quickly. So, anyway, Angola gets rain and it dumps all that rain in a little a river. The river doesn't actually go anywhere except for into this basin. But when it goes into this basin, it can create a wetland of up to 150 kilometers across, which comes at a great time for Batswana because it's during Batswana's winter. And it actually creates one of Africa's greatest concentrations of wildlife, which is just north of the Kalahari Desert. So you have these uh great flocks of flamingos and you can see what it looks like there to the uh bottom right there's these falls or rapids and then in the river itself and um DNA suggests that a long time ago well first of all long time ago there was a big lake and it was called Mock Katti lake. Um, yeah. Okay. And it covered a good part of that area. And DNA evidence suggests that this is where homo sapiens began about 200,000 years ago. Now, that's kind of highly contested, but it actually is in Nature magazine, so that's pretty um verified. I mean, not verified, but at least uh vaguled. uh when the basin had a large lake. Of course, there's other places like that up in northern Africa and Southern Africa and Eastern Africa that they're all saying that's where homo sapiens began. But in any case, there's some DNA evidence that suggests that homo sapiens began in this area, this lake. I always like to find little te tidbits of information like that that make it interest that make the science uh more interesting. Okay. Great basin of the US. People were mentioning the Great Salt Lake um and stuff like that. This is the largest one in Nice Kate, I think. So, okay. The Great Basin is the largest endoric basin in North America. It actually takes up a good part of it would overlaid over Western Europe. Take up a good part of Western Europe. And it has the Great Salt Lake. It has Death Valley. uh lots of good deserts. The Colorado River is kind of the eastern boundary of it and then the Sierra Neadas is the western boundary. And it also contains uh just like China used their uh dried up salt beds as nuclear test areas. Well, this is where the US uh did their nuclear testing, hundreds of tests over uh periods of time back uh 5060s time period. And it's also where Area 51 is. So, you got the you you have all those up to the upper right there, you've got all those craters from underground substance craters from underground nuclear tests. It's the parts to the north are cold, the parts to the south are desert. You've got the Colorado River running through there. And the uh interesting thing is at one time the Colorado River actually had a delta much like the Mississippi and there were river boats and everything going up the Delta. Well, it doesn't even reach the ocean anymore. And it also had one of the world's largest desert estuaries and a lot of biodiversity. Now it doesn't even reach the ocean at all. It's it's used up well before you no UFOs. Yeah, they moved over area 52. Ah, okay. And but it does have Great Basin National Park as most people probably even heard of little national park that was made in 1986. uh to be home for the bristle cone pine which is the oldest known non living nonclonal organism meaning there are some I think it was uh there's a a tree it's the one with the white bark birch or something and then there are also some grasses which are known to be like 10,000 years old because of the cloning but in here the bristle cone pines are close to 5,000 years old single trees okay can anybody guess I'm looking watching their time. Can anybody guess why the national park was created in 1986? Yeah. Pando uh species. Anybody know why it was the national park was created in 1986? Well, the Roosevelt was long dead by 1986. Good guess. because in 1984 a graduate student cut down the oldest tree in the world in order to do a project on it uh and didn't know it was the oldest tree in the world until they measured the rings and said oops this is was the oldest tree in the world. Uh yeah. Uh oh. So they created a national park I know in n in 1986 in order of the preserve the other bristle chrome pines that were there. I'll talk about it. Oops. They could have done a core sampling. Okay. So anyway, now the reason why I did this presentation and I hope it's been fun. Uh I've got a few more. You got a degree. Uh uh probably because it wasn't until it wasn't until they finished the the uh research that they found out. Whoops. Okay, I shouldn't laugh. Okay, so they I know a catastrophe for sure. Okay, so anyway, the original reason why I did the research here was because of this area here. Uh this is actually for Okay. The picture in my title page with the person standing in what looks like a very shallow lake is the picture I first saw. Yeah. Imagine having that on your thesis. So the the um picture that I saw on the title page where the person's standing in the very glassy lake is actually at this place here called Salar de Yuni in Bolivia. Now, Salar de Bini is in a large area um rather high elevation. Um Oh, okay. Well, now Chat GPT didn't exist back in 84 either. I I like these anacronisms. Okay. Okay. So anyway, this is this lake here or this salt band really and then it becomes a lake when it floods when they do have some seasonal rain. It's over 10,000 kilometer square kilometers which makes it the largest salt flat on earth which when it floods it becomes the largest mirror on earth and so it becomes near since it's near the equator it's the most effective natural calibration site for satellites because it's extremely flat. it varies by less than a meter over the entire distance of the lake uh of this 10,000 square um kilometer lake. So the satellites actually use it uh to bounce off um ways to uh to calibrate their altitude which that that I thought was really cool. And the other interesting thing is you see a lot of pictures there. You see the Yeah, you selfies. Exactly. And so you see the what it normally looks like there with the vehicle driving over the salt there. It also uh you it has a trained boneyard so to speak because it's got a lot of minerals and at one time they used to mine the minerals but Bolivia put a stop to it which is good because it has one quarter of the world's lithium which we all know nowadays is in uh yeah and so uh if anybody if people were allowed to just go and willy-nilly. Oh, you know what picture? Shoot. Um, did you guys you guys saw the the Star Wars I was going to put it in here. The Star Wars picture. Okay. The last Star Wars like episode what is it? Nine. Okay. Where you've got um Luke Skywalker and he comes back and he fools them because he's not really there. that kind of stuff is uh and then you saw those vehicles going across the salt flats with the pink trails that was filmed here. Yeah. Had the salt planet and it that was filmed that was filmed uh in this area. Of course they kind of made big ruts in the salt area. Um but the reason but you have that salt flats but underneath that salt flats are a lot of the algae that are really red. So if you rip up the salt flats there you're going to get big red ruts in the in the surface and that's how they did with the removing. Now this there there is some wildlife not a lot of biodiversity can not a lot of animals can live in hypers salailine conditions but you've got some cactus you've got this funny looking whatever critter is in the middle there you've got the pink flamingos and then just like up in northern Sweden I think it is where there's an a hotel made of ice each winter They've got a hotel made of salt blocks. Uh, no, it's not a chinchilla. It's but it's something like that. Uh, and I forgot what it's called. I should have put the the name on there. But you've got this hotel made of salt blocks that are that you can stay at. You Oh, interesting. I love it that you look up these things. Okay, so this is the this is uh one of the interesting endoric areas. It's also the same sort of area that you get stuff like um uh lake titaka that that that sort of in fact that's the lake you see over to the west of the A and other uh which has a huge history as far as the Incas and others in that area. Okay. And last but not least, and uh I wasn't sure how much time I had, so but Lake Bonnie, and this one kind of circles back to the um very first one that I showed you with the planets. In other words, what is underneath ice? This is Lake Bonnie. It's a nearly 80° south latitude. It's got a permanent ice cover over because of the um how cold it is in the area. Yeah, it's probably like that. Says it's it's it's some one of those sorts of critters. Okay. But lake body, there's also one called Lake Fonda in the same area. It's part of an area called the McMurto Dry Valley region of Antarctica. It's a small lake only about 1 by seven kilometers under permanent ice cover, but it's a very fascinating one because it's a saline lake and there's at least one organism that they found in the lake and that's this green algae uh with the fleella uh there. Um there's about 150 different species of that. Okay, I'm reading this stuff. Okay. Um, okay. So anyway, one of the interesting things about this this this circles back to the Europa oceans and such and to the um ice or excuse me snow ball earth back in the uh early days before the Cambrian explosion of the earth. And so what they found was uh there's a very weird thing called blood falls on a glacier. And so yeah, it's actually uh okay. So there's a thing called blood falls. I was going to show you that on the slide here, too. But what it does, but it didn't have really to do with what we're doing here, but blood falls actually comes from under a glacier. It looks blood red, except that it's actually iron is what causes the red color. And so what they what they found is that beneath a glacier which is next to this one, Lake Bonnie, there are organisms that use sulfur and iron rather than oxygen. In other words, it's as if the ecosystem was before oxygen existed on Earth and the or deep in the sea where they use sulfur compounds and stuff. So instead of using oxygen for oxid um oxidation, they use sulfur and iron compounds. And they're using that area to and this area here to develop autonomous submersible robots to explore uh Europa's uh ocean. So I thought that was so we've come so essentially we've come full circle. And so if you look back on let me see if I can get the proper it's probably let's see slide 10. Okay on here we're kind of back to where we've talking about Europa's oceans here. Um and let me see did I do it before? Not that one. Not that one. Oh, okay. Here. So, we've come we've come kind of full circle, so to speak, in counterclockwise from Australia to Asia to Western Asia. there with RLC to um eastern or or uh Lake Vaughn and then into Africa with Chad and then down toward the Kalahari Desert and the Great Basin and stuff. Now, there are other ones if we had time that I would see. Well, says if I was going to show a dead, one of the reasons I didn't show Dead Sea was because that one is probably one of the more known areas of of Ender. So, most people know more about that than they probably do about anything else. Uh, I have been to the um Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. The Sea of Galilee is actually very interesting. It looks like a big bowl. you're coming if you come from the west where uh um Nazareth is and you and um you drive in you actually look down on the Sea of Galilee and the dead uh because it's below sea level and so it's surrounded by hills and it's a big um lake at the bottom of a big hole. It's uh of a big bowl. It's also not very big. And then if you go down the Jordan River area down to the Dead Sea, you can then see that it's also surrounded because it's very it's it's uh well below sea level, you know, hundreds of meters below sea level. Um, but I think the reason I didn't include it because of the timing and also because um what what what would I put of interest about it other than I did have a picture of person uh floating around in it reading a newspaper? Oh, the color coding of the map means nothing. It means uh Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I'm sorry. The color coding of the map means everything. Those are watersheds. Okay? In other words, you got the Amazon River area, the Mississippi that's kind of tan. You got the purple area there over there with Pacific Ocean. You've got the Arctic Ocean and that sort of thing. So, all of these have to do watersheds. Uh, yes. Everything's coming apart over seems like. Nope. African continent for sure is in other words Roy if you look at where the kind of pinkish looking thing where the watershed flows into the Indian Ocean versus the green where it flows into the Atlantic Ocean that whole area is the Rift Ball. Um, I've been there, too. And you've got the area up that's called the Afar Triangle. That's up there where the where it says the Red Sea takes a left turn. Uh, and where the I've been there through Somalia, too. Uh, in the Navy, a shore in Somalia. Um, Mogadishu. And uh that's where a lot of the Somalian pirates try to um capture the oil tankers or other tankers coming out of the Red Sea. Uh the eastern rift is splitting all the way from where you see it up there all the way down to uh Tanzania where you've got the u by Madagascar there the island the pink island the eastern Africa and the lakes where you got a lake Victoria Lake Tangika and those are all part of that uh splitting area and you can actually see it. It's kind of an interesting um uh area. It's but it's also kind of you could you could do a whole presentation on and I might because I've also got little red dots on the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. So why would I put do Okay. So why would I put a little dot on the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea? Anybody? We have two minutes. Also, by the way, the Valley of Mexico, where Mexico City is and where Lake um Tanachan, if I remember how to pronounce that, was the one time where Mexico City is now. Yes, exactly. It's all part of the Yeah, you got India uh creating that vast Tibetan plateau. Um, oh yeah. I mean, we're talking millions of years. It's kind of the same thing that happened to the Atlantic Ocean about what, 75 million years ago. Is it? Anybody good geologist? In other words, the Atlantic Ocean looked like that rift valley of Africa when all of that pangia was all um connected and then you had the split between with uh Lorasia and Gondana land all that stuff if I if I have mixed my lands up. Okay. So, why do I have Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea? One more minute. because they are also enduric basins. Mediterranean sea 5 million years ago was dry. Okay. Okay. So, the Mediterranean Sea was dry five million years ago. The Black Sea actually has a salt river that runs under it. It does not mix with the upper level uh freshwater and it runs through the foster straight that kind of stuff. So we I think I will make a presentation on that whole thing because it's actually extremely fascinating how all that area um which is also affected by the same tectonic forces that heavy sea used to be. Okay, that's my next one. When we have when we have time I'll do one on that whole area because it's absolutely fascinating. It really is. It's it's very fascinating that whole about how the Tbby Sea uh got um all swallowed up in the uh you got that whole area there that goes from the Indian Ocean all the way to the Atlantic and how it all got squished up against it much the same way as India squished up against Asia. Okay. So, any last questions? Otherwise, we'll call it a an hour or comments um voice or chat. Uh yeah, Emil that delu that's part of where that came from. In other words, the Black Sea. Okay. So, I'll I'll include that one in there. Okay. Good. Uh, that's the best compliment I could get. They're quite interesting. That's what I do these for. I do it for my own. I like to salty. I like to learn science and so I go through here. But I also like to make sure it's interesting if I'm going to share it with you guys. So there you go. >> Yeah. Okay. There you go. Science.