The large-scale deposits of salt around the Dead Sea, known as salt giants, are built up as the lake's highly saline water evaporates, and a new study of their formation has revealed some of the secrets of these mounds of halite.

That's exciting for geologists, because salt giants can be found in several other places, including under the Mediterranean Sea . However, these deposits are no longer being formed, so they can't be analyzed in the same way as the Dead Sea salt giants.

The study was carried out by mechanical engineer Eckart Meiburg, from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and geologist Nadav Lensky, from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and gives us some answers to long-standing questions about salt deposits, the evolution of lakes , and shifting environmental p

See Full Page