ChapterZero

I’ve started making a list of exotic locations that I’m going to visit when I have a job to take some time off from. This is one of my new hobbies

First up is Lake Baikal in Siberia, the largest lake in the world by volume. It is located over a young continental rift, so is more than a mile deep, and every year gets deeper. The water has incredible clarity– so much so that you can see down for over a 100 meters in the interior of the lake. Lake Baikal is also one of the most biodiverse lakes: 80% of its 1550 species of wildlife can be found nowhere else in the world. The nerpa, one of the three freshwater species of seals, as well as the most pleasant and sociable of seals, is found only at Lake Baikal — this strange fact has yet to be explained.

Sounds like a beautiful place, and makes you reconsider all the rumors about Siberia being a forbidding, desolate place.

Here’s a trick question: how many years would it take for Lake Baikal to be drained by the Niagra river, if it had no other inlets and outlets?