Interesting Questions And Answers| Ignored Truths

Well to answer this first of all, one should know what is a desert. 

Okay then I hope you have guessed the place by now and if not let me come to your help. Its none other than Antarctica. Yeah!  Antarctica. Parts of this continent have seen no rain for at least two million years for now! 

The Sahara desert gets just 1 inch (25mm) of rain a year. Antarctica too receives the same amount of rainfall. But, some parts of Antarctica known as dry valleys doesn't have ice and snow and it never rains there too!

Next to those dry valleys of the Antarctica, comes the Atacama desert in Chile. Its average rainfall is a tiny 0.004 inches(0.01mm). There too some areas, haven't seen a single drop of rain but that is only for about 400 years. Now this makes the world's driest place 250 times as dry as the Sahara.

Interesting facts on Antarctica:

Antarctica also has some other specialities that you should know, Antarctica is also the wettest and the windiest place on the earth.. Also seventy percentage of the world's fresh water is found in the form of ice and Antarctica has recorded the speediest winds ever.You might be wondering why those dry valleys are so much dry. This unique condition is caused by a type of wind called katabatic winds (from Greek word 'going down').

These winds occur when cold, dense air is pulled down simply by the force of gravity.The winds can reach speeds of 320 kph (200 mph) evaporating all moisture, water and snow in the process.Now is that clear why I stated Dry valleys of Antarctica to be the driest place.And these Dry valleys are called, somewhat ironically,"Oases of Antarctica"! 

They are similar to the conditions on Mars that NASA used them to test the Viking Mission.

Before the final curtain goes down On my life,I shall say to my Mother-Earth, My gratitude-heart is all for you, All for you.

Sri Chinmoy

If you say 70% then you are partially right. Seven-tenths of earth's surface is covered in water. But taking the Earth's mass into consideration water doesn't even account for fiftieth of one percent.The Earth is big-it weighs about 6 million,billion,billion kg. Half of this is mass is contained in the lower mantle, the massive semi-molten layer that begins 660 km (410 miles) below the crust, the mass of the land is forty times greater than that of the oceans.

A Japanese  experiment reported in Science in 2002 suggests that there may be five times as much as water dissolved in the lower mantle than sloshing around the Earth's surface. Using a pressure of 200,000 kg per cm and temperature of 1600^o C, the researchers created four mineral compounds similar to those found in the lower mantle. They added water and measured how much of it was absorbed.

If the Japanese are right, the proportion of the world that is water will have to be revised upwards - to 0.1 per cent.