Imagine my surprise when I read about this. I have always been fascinated by the dead sea as I can’t swim, I remember telling this as a kid that I will float in the dead sea once.
Recently I read that Dead Sea is actually a lake. It also called the Salt Sea is a salt lake in Jordan. The Dead Sea is 378 m (1,240 ft) deep, the deepest hyper saline lake in the world. It is also one of the world’s saltiest bodies of water, with 33.7% salinity. It is 8.6 times more salty than the ocean.
The Dead Sea has attracted visitors from around the Mediterranean basin for thousands of years. Biblically, it was a place of refuge for King David.
The Jordan River is the only major water source flowing into the Dead Sea, although there are small perennial springs under and around the Dead Sea, creating pools and quicksand pits along the edges. There are no outlet streams. Rainfall is scarcely 100 mm (3.9 in) per year in the northern part of the Dead Sea and barely 50 mm (2.0 in) in the southern part. The Dead Sea zone’s aridity is due to the rainshadow effect of the Judean Hills.
There are two contending hypotheses about the origin of the low elevation of the Dead Sea. The older hypothesis is that it lies in a true rift zone, an extension of the Red Sea Rift, or even of the Great Rift Valley of eastern Africa. A more recent hypothesis is that the Dead Sea basin is a consequence of a “step-over” discontinuity along the Dead Sea Transform, creating extension of the crust with consequent subsidence. Around three million years ago what is now the valley of the Jordan River, Dead Sea, and Wadi Arabah was repeatedly inundated by waters from the Mediterranean Sea. The waters formed in a narrow, crooked bay which was connected to the sea through what is now the Jezreel Valley. The floods of the valley came and went depending on long scale climate change. The lake that occupied the Dead Sea Rift, named “Lake Sodom”, deposited beds of salt, eventually coming to be 3 km (1.9 mi) thick. According to geological theory, approximately two million years ago the land between the Rift Valley and the Mediterranean Sea rose to such an extent that the ocean could no longer flood the area. Thus, the long bay became a lake. The salt concentration of the Dead Sea fluctuates around 31.5%. This is unusually high and results in a nominal density of 1.24 kg/L.
Anyone can easily float in the Dead Sea because of natural buoyancy. In this respect the Dead Sea is similar to the Great Salt Lake in Utah in the United States. So in case I am unable to make it to Dead Sea, I will visit the Great Salt Lake. I wanna float.
Mann Ki Window 