Bound Forever
A geological feature in the Arabian Peninsula could literally turn massive amounts of carbon dioxide to stone.
In the heart of the Hajar Mountains in Oman on the Arabian Peninsula lies the remote desert valley of Wadi Lawayni. Those wishing to get there follow a lonely gravel road that eventually shrinks down to a few tire tracks in a gravelly hollow. Occasionally you come across small, bluish ponds in the area: groundwater comes to the surface here. It is saturated with alkaline s alts and sometimes contains so much dissolved hydrogen that when you scoop it out, it fizzes like champagne.
Surrounding the barren valley, pinnacles of faded brown stone tower hundreds of feet into the air. The minerals that make them up are chemically unstable at the Earth's surface. This anomaly probably formed dozens of kilometers deeper - in the earth's mantle, the middle layer of our planet, into which man has never penetrated directly. A plate tectonic accident some 80 million years ago exposed the rock where, now exposed to the elements, it is slowly but surely geochemically disintegrating…
