The best
Baikal is the deepest lake on the planet, the largest reservoir of fresh water, with an area of about 32 thousand square kilometers. According to scientists, Baikal contains about 20% of the planet's fresh water reserves. At the same time, the level of its mirror is significantly higher than the level of the world ocean (of the large lakes, only the South American Lake Tanganyika is 300 meters above Lake Baikal). But the bottom of Lake Baikal is below sea level for a kilometer with a tail. And when they discuss the mystery of the origin of the Baikal seal - in fact, a marine animal - the argument of the connection between Baikal and the ocean looks very doubtful, because if the underground runoff was large enough, the lake waters would have poured out into the world ocean, which is 456 meters long ago. below, by gravity.
But what about the seal, many species of animals of the lake are not found anywhere else, in scientific terms, they are endemic. The bottom of Lake Baikal is interesting - on it you can easily find both depressions and mountain ranges, as if millions of years ago a significant section of mountainous terrain collapsed and was flooded by the waters of hundreds of nearby rivers and streams. Twenty-seven islands of Lake Baikal rise above the waters like the wreckage of Siberian Atlantis.
Although Baikal stretches for 600 kilometers from north to south, by the middle of winter it is almost completely covered with ice, more than a meter thick. And during the winter it accumulates so much cold that on hot June days an icy wind blows from the lake. But in winter it is warmer on the shores of Lake Baikal than a hundred kilometers from it - for the same reason.
The enormous depth of Baikal - 1642 meters at its lowest point - gave rise to legends about the existence of a UFO base in the lake, which were often observed both in water and above water. What? At such a depth, even with the unique transparency of the lake's waters, you can hide at least a dozen of alien bases.
There were legends about the unique ability of Baikal to self-purify waters, until scientists discovered the "culprit" of this miracle - the microscopic crustacean Epishura. This copepod crustacean passes water through its body and eats all the organic matter contained in the water - for the benefit of itself and the whole world around it. This cute crustacean, 1.5 millimeters in size, inhabits the entire water column of the lake, forming more than 90% of the biomass of the reservoir! And the epishura itself is eaten with pleasure by omul (like the epishura, it is also endemic).
The prospects for tourism on Lake Baikal are significantly limited by the temperatures of its water - even in summer, the water on the surface of the lake is cold for swimming - 8-9 degrees. In depth, it is close to freezing - plus four degrees. Only in some bays - the so-called "sors" - does it reach 15 degrees. But sometimes it warms up to a comfortable temperature - the maximum recorded temperature is plus 23 degrees Celsius.
Promotional video:
It is interesting that in winter, when Baikal is covered with an ice shell, the fish in it do not fall asleep and do not die from lack of oxygen. Everything is provided, gentlemen! During frost periods, the ice cracks with a terrifying crack and giant cracks form in the ice - 10-30 kilometers long and 2-3 meters wide, through which atmospheric oxygen enters the water. Another source of oxygen in the water is planktonic algae, which grow even in winter, warmed by the sun's rays, which penetrate to a considerable depth due to the special transparency of the Baikal waters. It is noteworthy that in the cold season, stones on the Baikal bottom can be seen at a depth of 40 meters!
Territory of secrets and mysteries
Speaking of Baikal ice, one cannot but mention the mysterious forms of the lake's ice cover. This is not found anywhere else. For example, "hills" are cone-shaped ice hills up to six meters high, hollow inside. Outwardly, they resemble ice tents, "open" to the opposite side from the coast. Hills can be located separately, and sometimes form miniature mountain ranges. Other bizarre types of ice formation: sokuy, kolobovnik, osenets. And in the spring of 2009, the Internet exploded with a sensation - dark rings were found on satellite images of different parts of Lake Baikal, which ufologists immediately confidently qualified as huge UFOs based in the depths.
But, according to conservative scientists, these rings arise due to the rise of deep waters and an increase in the temperature of the surface water layer in the central part of the ring structure. As a result of this process, an anticyclonic (clockwise) current is formed. In the zone where the current reaches its maximum speeds, the vertical water exchange increases, which leads to the accelerated destruction of the ice cover.
The origin of Lake Baikal also raises scientific controversy. Traditionally, scientists determine the age of the lake at 25-35 million years, although most lakes of glacial origin live on average for 10-15 thousand years, and then they are filled with silty sediments, gradually turning into a swamp. But the scientific world is at times agitated by troublemakers. As it happened in 2009, when the doctor of geological and mineralogical sciences A. V. Tatarinov put forward a hypothesis about the youth of Lake Baikal. Deep-sea vehicles "Mir", diving to the bottom of Lake Baikal, recorded the presence of mud volcanoes, which makes it possible to estimate the age of the lake's coastline at 8 thousand years, and the deep-water part - at 150 thousand years.
In this light, the current invasion of Spirogyra algae into the Baikal waters is alarming - well, how does Baikal face the same fate as most glacial lakes, that is, gradual siltation and transformation into a swamp? Though stretched out for thousands of years. Be that as it may, the transformation of Baikal continues to this day - earthquakes constantly occur in the vicinity of the lake. The largest earthquake on Lake Baikal (up to 9 points) occurred in the 19th century, when dozens of villages went underground, and the crash site was named Proval. In general, Baikal shakes regularly, several times a year.
One of the versions of the origin of the toponym "Baikal" is also associated with earthquakes and volcanic activity. You will be surprised, but it has not yet been precisely established how this toponym developed. So, one of the versions is the origin of the Buryat words "bai" ("to stand") and "gal" ("fire"). According to legend, Baikal was formed on the site of a fire-breathing mountain. The detection of mud volcanoes at the bottom also works for this version. But what if Baikal really was formed as a result of volcanic activity, moreover, recently, in front of people, and this is recorded in the legend?
Although there are Yakut, Evenk, Yukaghir and even Arabic versions of the origin of the name of the lake, there are still more Buryat versions, because Buryats live around the entire Baikal. The closest sounding version is from the Buryat “Baigaal-Dalai”, which means a vast, large body of water, similar to the sea, and “Dalai” also means “boundless, universal, supreme”, and all these epithets are suitable for Baikal. The first Russian Cossacks who visited here used the Evenk name "Lamu" ("sea"). From the second half of the 17th century, Russians switched to the name adopted by the Buryats. At the same time, they adapted it to their language, replacing the "g" characteristic of the Buryats with the "k" more familiar to the Russian ear, as a result of which the modern name was finally formed.