Lake Baikal Isn't Really a Lake. It's a Wound.

Lake Baikal holds roughly a fifth of all the unfrozen fresh water on Earth — more than all five Great Lakes combined — in a crescent 636km long and never more than about 80km wide, thousands of kilometres from any ocean. It's the deepest lake on the planet at around 1,640 metres, with a floor sitting over a kilometre below sea level. It's also the oldest, at 25 to 30 million years. And it should not exist. Seven kilometres of sediment has gone into that basin. That's more than four times the current depth of the water. Every other lake on Earth silts up and dies within tens of thousands of years. Baikal didn't, and the reason is the thing nobody mentions. This is 15 facts about what's actually underneath it — the winter they laid railway track directly onto the ice, the night in 1861 when 200 square kilometres of delta sank and the lake came in over the top, the paper mill deliberately built on the purest water in the world, the only freshwater seal on the planet living 3,000km from the sea, and the hydrothermal vents and methane hydrates on the floor that belong to a mid-ocean ridge rather than a lake. Because Baikal isn't a lake. It's a rift, it hasn't failed, and the two sides are still moving apart at about two centimetres a year. CHAPTERS 0:00 A Fifth of the World's Fresh Water 0:45 15: Deeper Than All Five Great Lakes 1:48 14: Seven Kilometres of Sediment 3:08 13: The Railway Laid on the Ice 4:40 12: Half the Water Comes From Mongolia 5:49 11: Proval — The Night a District Sank 6:47 10: The Lake Has a Valve 7:53 9: The Paper Mill Built on the Purest Water 9:09 8: The Sponges Are Dying 10:13 7: 60% Endemic, Including a Fish Made of Oil 11:17 6: Why the Bottom Isn't Dead 12:32 5: The Nerpa — A Seal 3,000km From the Sea 13:38 4: The Oldest Lake on Earth 14:31 3: Olkhon, Shaman Rock and the Sarma Wind 15:48 2: Hydrothermal Vents and Gas Hydrates 17:07 1: The Continental Wound Which one did you not know? Tell me in the comments. A note on accuracy: the near-