All articles tagged with #atacama desert
Unprecedented rainfall from a record-strength El Niño has triggered a massive spring bloom in Chile's Atacama Desert. Over 200 plant species, including the iconic garra de león, are flowering across hills and ravines that had remained barren for decades. The phenomenon, known as Desierto Florido, is expected to draw nearly 300,000 overnight visitors to the region by November, boosting tourism significantly.
Unprecedented rainfall linked to a record-strength El Niño has triggered a massive 'flowering desert' phenomenon in Chile's Atacama, with up to 15,000 hectares of dormant seeds blooming after months of heavy precipitation.
Researchers have identified a fossilized capybara tooth in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert, dating back approximately 8.8 million years. This discovery, published in Scientific Reports, challenges the prevailing scientific consensus that the Atacama has remained continuously hyper-arid for 40 million years. The presence of a semi-aquatic rodent in a marine sediment layer suggests the region once supported wetland ecosystems, freshwater habitats, and lush vegetation, including palms, during the late Miocene epoch.
Four amateur astronomers running a remote 11-inch Schmidt telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert discovered C/2026 A1 (MAPS), a Kreutz sungrazer, on January 13, 2026—81 days before it would pass near the Sun. Its last inner-solar-system visit likely occurred in the late Roman era (roughly 1,700–1,886 years ago, with a possible sighting in 363 AD). The comet likely disintegrated during its close solar approach on April 4, 2026, but the find demonstrates that dedicated amateurs can catch long-period comets early, well before professional surveys.
In Chile’s Atacama Desert, vast piles of unsold and secondhand clothing dumped from abroad persist because most fabrics are synthetic and non-biodegradable; only about 1% is recycled while fires and toxic smoke from dumps are common. A tiny Alto Hospicio factory, EcoFibra, turns shredded textile waste into insulation panels for affordable housing, recapturing value from waste, but the scale of imports and dumping far exceeds what the plant can process, underscoring the need for upstream changes in how disposal material is shipped and managed.
Back-to-back winter storms in August 2026 dumped rare snow across the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, stretching from the Andes to the Pacific coast, with some rain in parts of the region. The event, tied to a strengthened El Niño and a large trough, disrupted ALMA operations and triggered mudflows and flooding. Satellite imagery from Landsat 8/9 and Terra MODIS captured the before-and-after views, illustrating how unusually widespread snowfall transformed the hyper-arid desert.
The European Southern Observatory’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is being built atop Cerro Armazones in Chile’s Atacama Desert to become the world’s largest optical/infrared telescope, featuring a 39-meter segmented mirror inside an 80-meter dome. Slated to be completed by 2027 and operational by 2030, it will greatly improve resolution and light-collection, enabling detailed studies of distant galaxies, precise measurements of smaller exoplanets, atmospheric signatures that could hint at life, and potentially the first strong evidence of life beyond Earth, though experts caution about what would count as proof.
In northern Chile’s hyperarid Atacama, rain gauges sit idle for generations while a daily marine fog called camanchaca drenches coastal cliffs, sustaining lichens, cacti and a fishing village that relies on the mist for moisture. Scientists have developed fog collectors to harvest this water, turning a natural phenomenon into a local resource, while researchers study how the fog also shapes unique ecosystems on the cliff faces and soils in one of the driest places on Earth.
The Atacama Desert in northern Chile—arguably Earth’s driest non-polar region—serves as a Mars-like laboratory with salt flats, near-lifeless soils, and some of the clearest, darkest skies, helping scientists study life beyond Earth and test how we search for it on other worlds, while looming light pollution threatens to erase this crucial astronomical window.
NASA spent four field seasons in Chile’s hyperarid Atacama Desert to rehearse a Mars rover mission, testing autonomous drilling and life-detection hardware (SOLID, PISCES, LITMS) and studying how extreme dryness can preserve life while fooling detectors, with sites like Yungay illustrating the challenges of translating Earth analogs to Martian missions and informing the design of future life-detection payloads.
In Chile’s Atacama Desert, the Residencia is a desert-blending, climate-controlled lodging for astronomers near ESO’s Paranal Observatory and the VLT. It’s famously film-friendly (a Quantum of Solace finale was shot there) but functions as a serious research hub with strict light-pollution controls, high-altitude living (no alcohol), and a cycle of night/day shifts as engineers work on the ELT nearby.
In Chile’s Atacama Desert, home to ESO’s Paranal Observatory, some of Earth’s darkest skies are increasingly affected by artificial light from nearby cities, mining and growing satellite traffic. A proposed nearby megaproject, Inna, could have raised light levels at the observatory by as much as 50% and introduced air turbulence, prompting scientists to push for tighter regulations beyond a 10% threshold. Although AES Andes canceled Inna in 2026, enforcement of light-pollution rules remains weak, and the International Astronomical Union’s 2025 guidelines call for lower limits and a possible secondary norm to empower government action to dim lights if needed. The issue underscores a global struggle: preserving dark skies is crucial for astronomy and our understanding of the universe, even as technology and industry encroach.
The Atacama Desert, a premier astronomy hub hosting the ELT and major observatories, faces rising light pollution from mining, energy projects, and urban development. Scientists warn that even small increases in artificial light can degrade decades of data and hinder the search for Earth-like planets, spurring calls for stricter protections and regulatory updates after a near-miss green-energy project near Paranal highlighted governance gaps.
The Atacama Desert in Chile hosts some of the world’s most powerful astronomical facilities thanks to exceptionally dark skies, but growing urban expansion, mining, wind farms, and a canceled nearby green-energy project have spotlighted how light pollution and regulations threaten these observatories and their ability to study the universe—spurring calls for stricter sky-preservation rules to safeguard projects like the ELT and the search for Earth‑like planets.
Scientists found bacteria and archaea two meters underground in Chile’s Atacama Desert, detected with the SOLID biosignature detector, revealing a hidden, salt‑rich microbial oasis that could inform how and where life might exist beneath Mars’ surface.