> What's considered to be the driest place on earth?And the answer: Antarctica. Photo Courtesy: Shawn King https://www.flickr.com/photos/68329876@N04/An area ofAntarctica called the McMurdo Dry Valleys experience extremely low humidity.Surrounding mountains prevent the flow of ice from nearby glaciers. Due to theseisolated and extreme climate conditions, it hasn't rained in this region forover 2 million years.As a whole, the Dry Valleys form the largest ice-free region in Antartica. The"deglaciated mountainous desert" is comprised of rough terrain, no vegetation,and winds of hurricane strength called the katabatic winds. These drainage windscarry high-density air from a higher elevation down a slope, picking up speedunobstructed on the tundra landscape. The terrain of the Dry Valleys is sobarren and extreme that scientists consider it to be the closest of anyterrestrial environment to Mars.While many first think to deserts as some of the driest regions on the planet,the Dry Valleys unique glacier positioning and extreme temperatures create aclimate not unlike a "true desert" such as Atacama desert in South America. Thedifference between the two, however, is rainfall: an average of .04 inches peryear in the Atacama doesn't compare to the 2 million year drought in the DryValleys.Two king penguins, popular residents of Antartica. © Rich Lindie/ShutterstockInany desert, life struggles to persist. No access to water, shelter, or foodposes a significant inhibitor to the success of even the mostevolutionarily-prepared species. However, scientists continue to unearthstartling realities of resilient life every day. From water samples ofAntartica's Blood Falls revealing microbes with metabolic processes never beforewitnessed to bacteria hiding from the dry winds in the interior of rocks, thevalleys have changed our notion of what it takes to sustain life.Check out the video below for a taste of Dry Valley life.