A snow-covered area in the Atacama desert - Photo: AFP
"Unbelievable! The Atacama Desert, the driest place on earth , is covered in snow," the ALMA observatory wrote on social network X on June 26, along with a video of vast areas covered in snow.
ALMA sits 2,900m above sea level in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, but its giant telescopes are located on the nearby Chajnanator Plateau, which sits 5,000m above sea level. While the Chajnanator Plateau often sees snow, ALMA has not seen snow in a decade.
AFP news agency quoted climatologist Raul Cordero, working at the University of Santiago (Chile), saying that it was too early to conclude that this unusual snowfall phenomenon was related to climate change. However, previous climate model runs indicated that "this type of event, that is, precipitation in the Atacama Desert, will become more frequent".
The Atacama, home to the darkest skies on Earth, has been the ideal location for some of the world's most advanced telescopes for decades. Stretching 1,600km west of the Andes, the Atacama covers an area of 105,000km 2 .
The Atacama is the driest non-polar desert in the world and the second driest overall. It is the only true desert that receives less rainfall than the polar deserts (located in the polar regions) and is the world's largest fog desert.
The area has been used as a test site for Mars exploration simulations due to its similarities to the Martian environment.
The ALMA telescope, developed by the European Southern Observatory, the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, is recognized as the world's most powerful telescope. At a cost of about $1.4 billion, it is also the world's most expensive ground-based telescope currently in operation.
Source: https://tuoitre.vn/tuyet-phu-trang-sa-mac-kho-can-nhat-the-gioi-20250627101136885.htm
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