On Argentina’s Puna plateau, blistering winds have formed the largest known ripples on the planet (Image: Juan Pablo Milana)
THEY may look like low dunes, but the cresting ridges pictured above are the world’s largest “megaripples”, a phenomenon that had been thought impossible on our planet.
Wind-formed ripples are not the same as dunes because they are shaped by the airflow less than 2 metres above the ground. The key factor for dunes is air fluctuations as high as 4 kilometres up.
Most such ripples are no bigger than those created by waves on a beach. Given high winds, light…
