In 2003, scientists found that a part of Chile's desert is so mysteriously dry that the soil is lifeless and has no DNA at all; today, scientists use it to study Martian conditions without leaving Ear

Chile’s Atacama Desert is the driest non-polar desert on Earth, and it is not what we imagine a desert to be!While most deserts across the world are lined with large stretches of sand and golden dunes, this desert resembles the landscapes of Mars!This might sound like a movie green screen set up only for shooting in Martian lands; it is actually true!Rain is not scarce here so much as functionally absent, and that absence has turned a stretch of desert near Antofagasta into one of the most valuable pieces of 'real estate' in planetary science.NASA has sent teams back year after year, not just for getting snaps, but because the soil itself behaves like Martian soil, tricking the very instruments built to detect life; but what follows next is as surprising as why the "driest" spot might not even be the driest one at all.The area that received only 2…