DEAD SEA — If you thought you couldn’t get any lower than the
Scientists here are drilling 1,640 feet beneath the bottom of the
Rock samples that have been underwater for millions
of years are likely to be better preserved, they say, than samples
taken from under an exposed surface, which can be damaged by aridity
and erosion.
As a result, the
hole is expected to contain priceless information about the planet’s
past and to offer insight on its future. Expectations are high that the
lowest place on Earth can answer questions on climate change,
earthquake risk and untapped natural resources.
Since the region was mentioned in biblical contexts
that include Sodom and Gomorrah, the ruins of which some scholars
believe are submerged under the
It’s a massive undertaking. A unique rig was
constructed and then towed more than four miles into the salty sea,
where drilling will go on for 40 days and nights, perhaps appropriate
for the region.
Forty scientists from six countries are taking part
in the deep-drilling program, sponsored by the Israel Academy of
Sciences and Humanities and the German-based International Continental
Scientific Drilling Program, which conducts deep sea and lake drilling
worldwide.
The samples are expected to provide a sort of
tree-ring-style annual log, stretching over a half-million-year period,
that will enable experts to say, for example, that “368,153 was a very
rainy year,” says
At a nearby laboratory, the rings are clearly
visible through Plexiglas tubes containing the first samples. A pair of
layers, brown and white, represent a normal year with a wet season and
a dry one. Variations bear witness to drought, flood and trauma. “These
are the pages of our history,” says
although its current version is only 11,000 years old. It fills one of
Earth’s deepest holes, located in a depression on the border between
two tectonic plates forming part of the long Syro-African fault line.
The plates are still moving. Small tremors are not infrequent, but
Ben-Avraham says the region is relatively calm. The last big quake
occurred in 1927.
Experts say the
Filled tubes are kept in a freezer outside an
unassuming lab in Kibbutz Ein Gedi, in the hills above the water. Early
batches have been passed through a scanner that buzzes and beeps while
sending data to a computer.
More tubes lie on the lab floor, soon to be put
through the machine. In one, a 4-inch stretch of mud reflects a
century-long wet period around 400 years ago, in what is known as the
Little Ice Age. Deeper samples should corroborate other documented
events such as the volcanic eruption of Santorini about 3,500 years ago.
The data in these “archives,” as
The data of past relations between two climate belts, the Mediterranean
and the desert, will help prepare climate models in times of global
warming and desertification, Stein says.
project. Fresh water flowing into the sea is trapped; with no outflow,
the only way out is up. High evaporation rates in this hot, arid zone
result in extreme hyper-salinity.
The buoyancy draws tourists who come for a float.
Others are attracted by the purported cosmetic and healing properties
of the minerals, fabled since antiquity, or simply for the striking
landscape.
But the
Receding about 3 feet a year, the water, pessimists warn, could soon
vanish. Stein says the lake has naturally recovered from catastrophic
aridity before.
But humans are playing a role. “We’re not helping,” says
Tectonic plates aren’t the only things grating against each other. There’s regional politics too.
and the Palestinians. The site’s nomination for the Seven Wonders of
the World competition was almost undone by conflicting political claims.
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