At first sight, orange and off-white shards of rocks surrounded by dust and dirt are all you can see for thousands of desolate kilometres in the Atacama Desert of Chile. This is one of the driest ...

Stretching across northern Chile and southern Peru, the Atacama is the driest non-polar desert on the planet. With its "Martian landscapes" and sprawling salt flats, the arid "geographical ...

This galaxy's central black hole appears to be a "messy eater" as its interstellar scraps are strewn into space.

Far from being barren wastelands, deserts are biologically rich habitats with a vast array of animals and plants that have adapted to the harsh conditions there. Some deserts are among the planet ...

The dark skies of Chile's Atacama Desert are perfect for skywatching, especially when a parade of six planets and a comet grace the night sky all at once. In February 2025, conditions were just ...

Lithium is often extracted from brine pools in arid regions such as the Atacama Desert in Chile. These areas are already facing water scarcity issues, and the mining process exacerbates the problem.

Some 3,800 years ago a massive 9.5-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami with waves as high as 20 metres (66 feet) slammed the coastline of Chile’s Atacama Desert, the world’s driest ...

The Atacama’s dark skies and other qualities lured organizations to build cutting-edge instruments such as the VLT, the ELT and the southern array of the CTAO. “The darker the sky, the fainter ...