I learnt about these on Geo Rutherford’s Spooky Lake Month series. These are a fun (and educational) watch.
Unfortunately for us. Very fortunate to the crystals themselves, as tourism would likely end up destroying them.
I don’t want to be a buzzkill, but I often think of how I would describe todays technology to my wife, who died over 30 years ago. How would she take me saying I’m going to take my phone out of my pocket to take a picture and send it to my friends. Or, let me find a restaurant on my phone and have it direct us to it.
What do you mean, a ‘phone in your pocket’, that takes picture?
And that just barely scratches the surface. She almost would have lived to the point of seeing pocket phones with cameras. But that’s still a far cry from a complete computer in your pocket, and the Internet as a whole was only just barely getting started in her day.
Myself, I’ve been a science fiction fan all my life, so once I got past the terminology, I’d have no problem understanding the concept of networked, pocket-sized computers 30 years ago; I’d probably be disappointed that they haven’t yet figured out a way to connect them directly to our brains. Just say “We’re one step before cyborgs” and I’d get it right away.
You want AI, Google, data mining, spambots and phishing scams to have direct access to your brain??
No, but 1996 me wouldn’t have known about those.
Someone should do a parody of the Borg as they would be if the collective was based on our actual Internet.
Sounds a lot like MAGA. An army of shambling brainwashed clones.
Lake Baikal is fascinating. It’s where the Amur subcontinent is splitting off from the rest of Asia. The depth is basically “all the way” through the crust. It might be a consequence of the Indian subcontinent collision.
Something like one fifth of all the world’s fresh water is in Lake Baikal
I’d love to go visit it if weren’t in a politically problematic area.
So what happens when the plates split further and the ocean comes in?
I went there with the trans-siberian railway 25 years ago, in Putin’s first year, when the Kursk sank. It was fascinating. Not only in positive ways, and seeing what the country has become today, I see many things in a different light. I will never go back there, but the memories are interesting.
Getting into an internet café in the middle of nowhere and being able to read the El País blew my mind.
The only freshwater seals in the world will become seawater seals again.
Depends on the details. The current lake surface is about 1500 ft above sea level. It might be not so much the ocean comes in, but the lake goes out. Compare to the Great Lakes of North America. Lake Baikal would become a watershed with multiple smaller lakes that eventually drain into the ocean. The fresh water species would adapt to smaller bodies of water.
If the lake surface reaches sea level, so that there’s two-way interchange of water, the “lake” would become a sea, comparable to the Red Sea. But there’ll still be freshwater watersheds that could support freshwater species. But the interconnection among the watersheds will be more limited, since there wouldn’t be a lake directly connecting them.
I think a more likely scenario for Lake Baikal to become salty is that elevation changes cut off its outflow to the ocean. That is, it becomes an endorheic basin, which usually leads to increased salinity. There are multiple salt lakes in Asia like this.
“I hate the unearthly sound my phone makes when the weather service issues a tornado harbinger.”