A Natural Wonder

After completing my morning regimen, I turned on my computer today and discovered it is Earth Day. I had been considering the following item as a blog post so this seems the perfect day to do so.

As I was listening to NPR several weeks ago on the way to a meeting, a fellow was being interviewed about a “boiling river” he had discovered (not as in being the first to see it, but as a new geographical feature to him—and many others).

I wasn’t taking notes as I listened, naturally, so later I did a search on the internet in hopes of finding further information on this “boiling river.” Bingo! It popped right up on my computer screen.

A young Peruvian geoscientist, Andres Ruzo, had been fascinated about the myth of a boiling river since he was a child. But it wasn’t until he began writing his PhD thesis on geothermal potential in Peru that he began to wonder if such a thing was possible. All the experts told him that hot rivers exist but they are somehow connected with volcanoes. There are no volcanoes in the area Ruzo hailed from.

In 2011 Ruzo hiked into the Amazon forest with his aunt. She and his mother claimed they had actually swam in a portion of the boiling river as youngsters (obviously not the hottest part). When Ruzo arrived, he saw a river rising with steam, so he whipped out his thermometer and took its temperatureJ It was 86 degrees Celsius—not quite boiling but definitely hot enough to cook.   

Thermal pools in other parts of the world get to this temperature, but he witnessed a huge area at that heat—25 meters wide, 6 meters deep, extending for 6.24 km. (When you translate that to US measurements that is roughly 75 feet wide, 18 feet deep, extending maybe 3-4 miles) I’m not sure of my conversion figures but that is a lot of hot water.

The river is 700 km from the closest volcanic system so Ruzo wanted to discover the mysterious source of this boiling river. He got permission from the local

Shaman to study the river and its ecosystem. He discovered the hot water comes from fault-fed hot springs. Here’s the example given: “Imagine Earth like a human body, with fault lines and cracks running through it like arteries. These ‘Earth arteries’ are filled with hot water, and when they come to the surface, we see geothermal manifestations, like the boiling river.”

The river water was analyzed and was shown to have originally fallen to earth as rain. Ruzo hypothesized this happened far upstream and the rain water seeped down into the ground where it was heated up by Earth’s geothermal energy and then emerged as the boiling river.

The next statement in this article is totally fascinating. “This [hypothesis] means the system is part of an enormous hydrothermal system, the likes of which haven’t been seen anywhere else on the planet.”

Ruzo has researched the microbes living in the hot water and has discovered new species. As for swimming in the river, it can be done only after a heavy rainfall has diluted the hot water--personally, I wouldn’t want to chance it. Normally, the indigenous people use the hot water for brewing tea and cooking. (I wonder if some enterprising person has discovered how to pipe it into their home?)

That’s the science lesson for Earth Day 2016. Once again we see how wondrously our Creator has formed our world and everything in it.