There is a place, deeper in the ocean than you might think, where not even the Little Mermaid would survive. Scientists have discovered hypersaline regions in the Red Sea where there is not even oxygen and kill any living thing that dares to come near.
According to researchers at the University of Miami, there are four pools of brine, nicknamed "wells of death". These sites have a salinity nearly five times that of ordinary marine water.
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As bizarre as it may seem, these regions are extremely useful for science. They help scientists learn more about what Earth was like in its early days.
The information was published on the British website Unilad.
According to researcher Sam Purkis, author of the study at the University of Miami, “despite being devoid of oxygen and hypersaline [these regions] are teeming with a rich community of so-called microbes ‘extremophiles’”.
For him, studying these tiny beings can be like looking through a keyhole into the past. That's because these conditions of these waters resemble the same as when life appeared on the planet. “[These findings] may guide the search for life on other 'water worlds' in our Solar System and beyond”, underlined Sam.
What are these deadly regions at the bottom of the Red Sea like?
These brine pools Red Sea are considered some of the deadliest places in the world. In the last study, the scientists found three of them, with a maximum of 10 meters in diameter. However, there are records of some with more than 10,000 meters.
The danger lies in the lack of oxygen and the very high concentration of salt in the water. This causes creatures to die or, at the very least, become stunned when they get close to the "death pits". If that happens, they become easy prey for predators that swim around.
It is speculated that there is a large amount of water below the ocean. For scientists, where these deadly regions are located could one day be a new ocean.
This will happen with the movement of the African, Arabian and Somali tectonic plates. They are slowly moving away from each other and could at some point split the Earth.
Shocking, isn't it?
Graduated in Social Communication at the Federal University of Goiás. Passionate about digital media, pop culture, technology, politics and psychoanalysis.
