The extraordinary event temporarily shut down equipment at the ALMA Observatory, and the snow reached the telescope's main ...

The Atacama desert bloom is shown in Copiapo, Chile, on Oct. 14, 2021. In the Atacama desert, the driest in the world, the phenomenon takes place from northern Vallenar to Copiapo.

Much of the Atacama Desert's core is caked in thick salt deposits called playas, which can stretch for miles and are nearly half a meter thick (1.6 feet) in some places.

For the Atacama, however, a bloom is particularly rare. The desert strip extends for 994 miles along Chile's northwestern coast. It's so dry that, in some regions, rainfall has never been recorded.

"This very arid soil houses a treasure," ecologist María Fernanda Pérez told Live Science after the Atacama Desert produced a rare winter bloom. When you purchase through links on our site, we ...

CHANARAL, Chile (Reuters) -In Chile's arid Atacama, the driest desert in the world, growers and researchers are looking to harness water from the very air itself to grow lettuces and lemons, using a ...

As one of the driest places on Earth, Chile’s Atacama Desert is one of the last places you’d expect a trip to be ruined by rain. Dirk Schulze-Makuch happened to be so lucky. In early 2015, he ...

Every afternoon, microorganisms fly into the Atacama Desert on grains of dust carried by the wind. The wind-driven dust could be how microbes first colonised the desert. If there are microbes ...

Standing in the middle of the Atacama Desert, it’s easy to feel like the only person on Earth. The region is isolated and one of the driest regions in the world. Drier deserts can only be found ...

Chile's Atacama desert is best known for its salt lagoons in the north, but head to the Mar de Dunas in the southern part and you will be rewarded with perfect wind-sculptured wave patterns as far ...