Sometimes things look better when seen from space, which is a bit of a shame considering most people can’t get into space. Luckily, the lucky few who do venture outside of Earth love to photograph the views and share them with us. And that’s how we get to see the latest photos of the mysterious Richat structure.
The images were taken on July 17 from the International Space Station (ISS) 411 kilometers (255 miles) above Earth, looking down on Mauritania in northwest Africa. The Richat structure isEye of the Sahara“Nepali:” is located in the north of the country, on the arid Adra Plateau.
Seen from the International Space Station, it’s easy to see why the 40-kilometer (25-mile) formation got its nickname: its concentric rings look just like an eye, but a big one.
Unfortunately, it’s not the eye of a giant hidden beneath the ground.
But while it may look like the eyeball of a giant creature gazing up into space, its structure is Eternals It was actually a documentary. No unborn celestial bodies would appear here. That being said, the origins of the Richat Structure have long been hotly debated, with some even suggesting that it may actually involve off-world visitors.
few “Little Green Men” Due to its atmospheric and rockier appearance, the visitor was thought to be a large meteorite, as impact events typically leave similar circular features behind after slamming into the Earth’s surface.
A subsequent study published in 2014 supported a completely different theory: that the structure resulted from an event inside the Earth, and not from elsewhere: Specifically, a so-called magma intrusion pushed rocks upward, forming what’s known as an uplifted dome, or dome anticline.
Over time, the different types of rocks that make up the top of the dome (igneous and sedimentary) eroded away at different rates, leaving behind a succession of circular ridges with a steeper slope on one side and a more gentle slope on the other, called cuestas.
Some argue that the Richat Structures are actually the site of a lost city. AtlantisBut let’s be honest: of these two options, only the possibility of magma pushing up into a dome above ground is realistic.
In fact, volcanic activity has caused what resembles human body parts to form in the Sahara Desert. In Chad, towering black cinder cones and layers of natron mix together to form what looks like human body parts. Giant Skull.
