Look at the world: Danakil Depression is the hottest place on Earth

Every Sunday you will find the most beautiful and interesting satellite images of the Earth on our website. This week: Danakil Depression.

The Danakil Depression is not the most beautiful place in the world. Based on average annual temperature, it is the hottest place on Earth, and it rarely rains there.

But that’s not why this area in Ethiopia’s Afar region is called a depression. It lies at the junction of three tectonic plates – the African, Indian and Somali – creating a gap or depression about 200 by 50 kilometres in the landscape.

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Nothing can live there.

These sliding plates in the Earth’s crust also cause essential volcanic activity, which in turn creates the world’s saltiest, hottest, most acidic pools of water.

They have of course been examined for life so that we can say something about possible life on other planets. But this search yielded nothing. Even for organisms that live in extreme conditions—organisms that can thrive, for example, in deep-sea sources with temperatures exceeding 120 degrees Celsius and in radioactive mine shafts—the conditions were simply too extreme.

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Image: CNES/Airbus, Google Earth