The geometric patterns in salt flats around the world look so similar because of subterranean fluid flows. Groundwater seeping up to the surface evaporates, leaving a crust of salts and other minerals that had been dissolved in the water. As groundwater evaporates from the surface, it concentrates salt in the remaining groundwater. That salty water, now denser and heavier, sinks, forcing other less dense water upward. Over time, the circulation, known as convection, tends to push the descending plumes of saltier water into a network of vertical sheets. The surface above these sheets accrues more salt, so thick salt ridges grow there. Thinner crusts of salt form between, where less salty water upwells, spontaneously making the characteristic polygons shared by playas around the world.
This was explained by physicist Jana Lasser and colleagues who used sophisticated mathematical models, computer simulations and experiments performed at Owens Lake in California to connect what they saw on the surface with what is going on beneath .
About Flat Salts;
The formation of geometric shapes such as pentagons and hexagons spontaneously form in a wide range of geologic settings. Dried mud, ice and rock often crack into polygons, but these patterns tend to vary dramatically in size. However, similarly sized polygons of salt form in playas all over the world.
Salt flats form in places where rainfall is scarce and there’s a lot of evaporation. Groundwater seeping up to the surface evaporates, leaving a crust of salts and other minerals that had been dissolved in the water. Most strikingly, this process results in low ridges of concentrated salt that divide the playa into polygons: mostly hexagons with a smattering of pentagons and other geometric shapes.
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