New research explains why salt crystals are piling up on the deepest parts of the Dead Sea's floor, a finding that could help scientists understand how large salt deposits formed in Earth's geologic past. The Dead Sea, a salt lake bordered by Jordan, Israel and the West Bank, is nearly 10 times as salty as the ocean. Humans have visited the Dead Sea for thousands of years to experience its purported healing properties and to float in its extremely dense, buoyant waters, and mention of the sea goes back to biblical times. Much of the freshwater feeding the Dead Sea has been diverted in recent decades, lowering the sea's water levels and making it saltier than before. Scientists first noticed in 1979, after this process had started, that salt crystals were precipitating out of the top layer of water, "snowing" down and piling up on the lakebed. The salt layer on the lake floor has been growing about 10 centimeters (4 inches) thicker every year. You May Also Like... 23,000-Year-Old Human Footprints Found in New Mexico The Truth About the Electrically Charged Rocks From the DRC New Mexico Footprints Are Oldest Sign of Humans in Americas The process driving this salt crystal "snow" and buildup of salt layers on the lakebed has puzzled scientists because it doesn't make sense according to the laws of physics. Now, a new study in AGU's journal Water Resources Research proposes that tiny disturbances in the lake, caused by waves or other motion, create "salt fingers" that slowly funnel salt down to the lakebed. "Initially you form these tiny fingers that are too small to observe... but quickly they interact with each other as they move down, and form larger and larger structures," said Raphael Ouillon, a mechanical engineer at the University of California Santa Barbara and lead author of the new study. "The initial fingers might only be a few millimeters or a couple of centimeters thick, but they're everywhere across the entire surface of the lake," said Eckart Meiburg, also a mechanical engineer at UC Santa Barbara and co-author of the new study. "Together these small fingers generate a tremendous amount of salt flux." The new finding helps researchers better understand the physics of the Dead Sea but also helps explain the formation of massive salt deposits found within Earth's crust. The Dead Sea is only hypersaline water body on Earth today where this salt fingering process is happening, so it represents a unique laboratory for researchers to study the mechanisms by which these thick salt deposits have formed, according to the authors. "Altogether this makes the Dead Sea a unique system," said Nadav Lensky, a geologist with the Geological Survey of Israel and co-author of the new study. "Basically, we have here a new finding that we think is very relevant to the understanding of the arrangement of these basins that were so common in Earth's history." Read more here: https://www.geologyin.com/2019/07/mystery-of-bizarre-salt-crystals-in.html
Comments