The Atacama has been in a hyperarid state for millions of years Even in the driest places on Earth there is life eking out an existence, it seems. Scientists have examined the soils in those parts ...

There’s nowhere on Earth quite like the Atacama Desert. Literally: it exists in a basically unique meteorological void, rendering it all but devoid of water and home to almost no life at all.

ON A MAY MORNING two pickup trucks passed through the quiet town of San Pedro in Chile’s Atacama Desert and headed up a mountainside on a dirt road. It was 1994, and the five men inside the ...