Original photo by craige bevil/ Alamy Stock Photo
Compared to other planets in our solar system, Earth is filled with impressive landscapes, including snow-capped peaks, lush rainforests, and vast oceans. But some places on our planet are so extreme, they’re otherworldly — like Venus otherworldly. The Atacama Desert in Chile is one of the driest places in the world, so it makes sense that such a parched ecosystem would get its fair share of sun. But in the summer of 2023, scientists discovered that some parts of this immense plateau in fact get far more sunlight than any other place on Earth. While taking measurements of solar irradiance (light energy from the sun) on the Chajnantor plateau, researchers discovered — via a complex meteorological process known as “forward scattering” — that this area was nearly as sunny in summer as the surface of Venus.
Oops, incorrect!
It's a factWhile most planets spin counter-clockwise, Venus flouts the trend and spins clockwise. Astronomers theorize that a huge celestial collision involving Venus in the early solar system flipped the planet upside down. A similar process may have happened to Uranus, which spins on its side.
Despite some key differences between the two planets, scientists often call Venus Earth’s twin. Venus is roughly the same size as Earth, formed in the same area of the inner solar system, and is composed of much the same material — scientists even theorize that Venus was just like Earth some 3 billion years ago. But it is definitely not Earthlike now; it’s a sweltering hell planet thanks to an atmosphere of thick carbon dioxide that traps all greenhouse gases. If you somehow found yourself on Venus, high levels of solar irradiance would be the least of your immediate worries, considering its surface temperatures of 900 degrees Fahrenheit and sulfuric acid-filled clouds.
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The brightest objects in the universe are called quasars.
The world’s largest telescope is being built in the Atacama Desert.
Low humidity, high altitudes, and zero light pollution make the Atacama Desert arguably the best place on Earth for stargazing, and astronomers around the world have used its unparalleled nighttime views to their advantage. The region is home to a variety of telescopes and surveys, including the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, the Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor, and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (previously the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope). The European Southern Observatory is also currently at work in the area building the largest telescope in the world, known (rather unimaginatively) as the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). Just the main mirror of the telescope stretches 128 feet in diameter, which is three times larger than the current record holder, and that immense size will aid astronomers studying black holes and dark matter when ELT is ready to point its impressively huge eye skyward by the end of the decade.
Darren Orf lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes about all things science and climate. You can find his previous work at Popular Mechanics, Inverse, Gizmodo, and Paste, among others.
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