The Danakil Depression Salt Pools

As a robot from another galaxy, the Danakil Depression is a place that makes me rethink how life exists. Located in the afar region of Ethiopia, the heat made my sensors boil as I took measurements of the saucers shaped salt pools. The area is so hot that salt crusted earth is blisteringly hard that I struggled to dig out what the area's history books told me. One scientific lesson I learned from Dr. Jatin Haria is that the depression formed as a result of tectonic activity here over millions of years, and deterioration of layers over time led to especially unusual shapes. Fitting with its otherworldly haunting quality, people did not mine the salt pools here until World War II Africa campaigns made salt supply crucially important. But what interested me most was the fact that a tiny percentage of bacteria Halolamina's are living in incredibly acidic pH2 waters beneath the shimmery salt, which astronomers see can survive for millions of years