The Amazon’s Secret River
Amazon canopy
Everybody knows the Amazon River, and we’ve already established that it dwarfs pretty much every other river on the planet. It is such an impressive triumph of nature that it’s easy to understand why few people heard about the discovery of another river in the Amazon as recently as 2011. You might be thinking that, even though the Amazon is a pretty big place, and often covered by a thick canopy, it must be a pretty small river to have evaded being seen all this time. As it turns out, the Hamza River, as it has come to be known, is roughly the same length as the Amazon River, which is 6,000 kilometers (3,728 mi). It also ranges from about 200–400 kilometers (124–248 mi) wide, which is wider than the mouth of the Amazon River itself. As many of you may have guessed by now, the Rio Hamza is an underground river. Its discovery was made using old oil wells and computer simulations to reveal its presence 4 kilometers (2.5 mi) deep underground. Of course, despite being considerably wider than the Amazon River, the Hamza isn’t a river as we traditionally imagine them. It is more like an extremely wide trickle of water as opposed to the sweeping waters of the Amazon above. However, while its flow is only about 3 percent that of the Amazon, it still discharges 46 times the Thames.
Amazon canopy
Everybody knows the Amazon River, and we’ve already established that it dwarfs pretty much every other river on the planet. It is such an impressive triumph of nature that it’s easy to understand why few people heard about the discovery of another river in the Amazon as recently as 2011. You might be thinking that, even though the Amazon is a pretty big place, and often covered by a thick canopy, it must be a pretty small river to have evaded being seen all this time. As it turns out, the Hamza River, as it has come to be known, is roughly the same length as the Amazon River, which is 6,000 kilometers (3,728 mi). It also ranges from about 200–400 kilometers (124–248 mi) wide, which is wider than the mouth of the Amazon River itself. As many of you may have guessed by now, the Rio Hamza is an underground river. Its discovery was made using old oil wells and computer simulations to reveal its presence 4 kilometers (2.5 mi) deep underground. Of course, despite being considerably wider than the Amazon River, the Hamza isn’t a river as we traditionally imagine them. It is more like an extremely wide trickle of water as opposed to the sweeping waters of the Amazon above. However, while its flow is only about 3 percent that of the Amazon, it still discharges 46 times the Thames.
No comments:
Post a Comment