Scientists are coring into the Dead Sea floor to reveal more about regional climate change and earthquakes over time.
Five hundred thousand years of Earth’s history is expected to be bored out of the Dead Sea, reports UPI. A multi-national team of scientists have started drilling from a platform near the Dead Sea resort of Ein Boqeq in Israel. The researchers will take a thin slice of Earth’s history through a 3,937-foot-deep borehole and will examine the layers f sediment like rings on a tree, or core samples from icebergs in the North Pole.
Laid down at the lowest place on earth, the sample is expected to give new clues about seismic activity in the region, climate change, and may hopefully explain some of the unusually hot weather patterns felt in the Middle East lately.
The sediments will provide an ‘archive’ on the environmental conditions that existed in the area in its geological past, a statement from the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities said.
“We believe that the results of this project will have vast implications in the fields of science and environment and will shed light on new natural resources,” Zvi Ben-Avraham, a professor at Tel Aviv University, and Moti Stein, with the Israel Geological Survey, said jointly.
The governments of Jordan and the Palestinian Authority are cooperating with the dig. Maybe they’ll find one of Cleopatra’s old earrings. It is rumoured that the Dead Sea was her source of beauty.
Read more on the Dead Sea:
Harley Bikers Ride the Dead Sea To Vote It As A World Wonder
Protect the Middle East’s Natural Wonders – Vote Today!
Despite Everything, Shrinking Dead Sea is a Popular Tourist Destination
Regional Environmental Hazards and the Red-Dead Peace Conduit
::UPI
