Image: Ray Boren
By David Poulson
Is that a sudsy Lake Superior shoreline?
Nah, this lake may be great, but look at the mountains in the distance. This is Utah’s Great Salt Lake.
The foam is not soap. Nor is it salt.
But dissolving salts can play a role, according to the Earth Science Picture of the Day published by the Universities Space Research Association.
Decaying algae acts like a surfactant, according to the space folks. In this case, they say that the foam generator is probably a salt-loving phytoplankton.
As for the lake?
Great may be in it’s name, but the Great Salt Lake ranks 34th in the world with an area measuring 1,800 square miles.
The title of world’s largest lake by area goes to another salty lake – the Caspian Sea, which is 143,000 square miles in size.
How’s that stack up with the North American Great Lakes? Pretty impressively. Here are their sizes and world rankings:
- Lake Superior, 31,830 square miles, 2
- Lake Huron, 23,000 square miles, 4
- Lake Michigan, 22,000 square miles, 5
- Lake Erie, 9,930 square miles, 11
- Lake Ontario, 7,520 square miles, 13
Of course, if you consider lakes Huron and Michigan as a single lake the way some scientists do, it would come in at 55,000 square miles and eclipse Lake Superior for second place.
Size isn’t everything. You can credit the Great Salt Lake as three to five times saltier than the ocean.