Why Are Some Mountains Flat on Top? The Geology of Tepuis and Mesas
Table mountains in Venezuela, Utah and South Africa share a formation story: hard caprock over soft rock, carved by erosion over millions of years.
Alien Landscapes: How They Form & Where to See Them
Places on earth that don't photograph like earth, and usually have a straightforward explanation.
Earth has places that look like other planets and are used for exactly that purpose — as analogue sites for testing Mars rovers, or as film locations for other worlds. What makes them convincing is usually not the colour but the absence of the things we read as normal: no vegetation, no scale reference, no water, and a surface texture produced by processes that dominate somewhere else in the solar system.
How alien landscapes form
The mechanism, without the jargon.
- 01Extreme aridity removes vegetation and lets underlying mineral colour show — the primary reason these places look unearthly.
- 02Volcanism and hydrothermal activity produce mineral deposits, acid pools and sulphur fields that mimic alien chemistry.
- 03Salt and evaporation cycles create polygonal crust patterns very similar to those observed on Mars.
- 04Wind abrasion in the absence of plants produces ventifacts and yardangs — streamlined rock forms also seen on Mars.
Best time to see them
Follow the desert rules: avoid the peak of summer, and aim for the low sun of early morning or late afternoon, when relief casts shadows and the colour saturates.
How to get there
Many of these sites are genuinely remote, and several require a guide, a permit, or a convoy. Some are on active volcanoes or near unstable ground, where access conditions change from month to month.
Tickets, permits & fees
Expect national park or geopark entry fees, mandatory guide charges in several locations, and in some places a conservation fee that funds the research station or local community.
Notable alien landscapes
Five worth building a trip around.
-
Danakil
Ethiopia
Yellow sulphur fields, acid ponds and salt plains at 100 m below sea level, in temperatures that regularly exceed 45 °C.
November–February Guide -
Dallol
Ethiopia
A hydrothermal field in a volcanic crater, with acid pools in shades of green and yellow that look like nothing else on the surface.
November–February -
Socotra
Yemen
Dragon blood trees and bottle trees on an island isolated long enough to build a flora found nowhere else.
October–April -
Salar de Uyuni
Bolivia
The world's largest salt flat: 10,000 km² of blinding white polygons that becomes a mirror in the wet season.
May–October for dry, January–March for the mirror -
Wadi Rum
Jordan
Red sandstone massifs rising from sand, so convincingly Martian that it has stood in for Mars in multiple films.
March–May, September–November
Related guides
12 Places on Earth That Look Like Another Planet
Twelve landscapes on Earth that look like other worlds. From Ethiopia's Danakil Depression and Bolivia's salt flats to Antarctica's dry valleys and Iceland's black sand deserts.
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