How the Eye of the Sahara Appeared: A Mysterious Structure in the Middle of the Desert (3 photos)

There's a place in the Sahara that, from above, looks as if someone has stamped a giant seal, or as if our Earth has opened its eye and is looking into space.

This is the Richat Structure, better known as the Eye of the Sahara. It is a huge ring-shaped formation lost among the sands and rocky plains of the desert in Mauritania.





The Eye of the Sahara as photographed by the International Space Station. The image was taken on December 17, 2011, from an altitude of approximately 406 kilometers.

The average diameter of the Eye of the Sahara is 40 kilometers, so from the surface, it's hard to tell that you're looking at an unusual geological feature.

But from orbit, everything becomes clear.

Concentric rings radiate from the center of the structure, reminiscent of ripples in water. The Eye of the Sahara is such an atypical formation that it attracts the attention of not only astronauts and scientists, but also, of course, fans of alternative history and conspiracy theories.

Initially, scientists associated the Eye of the Sahara with a meteorite impact. Others, however, attributed a connection to Atlantis, because "Plato described its capital as a city of alternating concentric rings of water and land." Some even saw the structure as something extraterrestrial, incomprehensible to the human mind.

At first glance, the meteorite theory seems logical. The structure is nearly round, large, and clearly visible from space. So why couldn't it be an ancient impact crater?



The Richat Structure as seen from the International Space Station. The image was taken on April 5, 2019, from an altitude of approximately 410 kilometers.

The problem is that real impact craters leave behind characteristic traces: rocks that survived monstrous pressures, materials melted by the impact, specific fractures, and other signs of a catastrophic collision. No such pattern was found for the Richat structure.

The search for a true explanation led to the realization that the Eye of the Sahara is not a scar from a space rock impact, but a collapsed geological dome. In the distant past, magma rose beneath this section of the Earth's crust. It was unable to erupt to form a full-fledged volcano, but it intruded into the rocks below and lifted them, forming a huge dome. The result was something like a bulge in the Earth's crust.

And then time came into play.

Wind, water, and temperature fluctuations eroded this dome over millions of years. Different rocks resisted this irreversible process differently: softer rocks wore away faster, while harder ones were better preserved. Thus, gradually, the concentric contours that make the Richat structure so recognizable in satellite images emerged.

Interestingly, if you suddenly found yourself in the Eye of the Sahara, you wouldn't realize you were inside one of the most recognizable geological features on the planet. You could wander for hours among the hills, rocks of varying sizes, dry plains, sand, and sparse vegetation without ever finding anything unusual.



Inside the Eye of the Sahara. From the ground, the Richat structure looks like an ordinary desert landscape with rocks, sand, and sparse vegetation.

Only the view from above brings all the details together into a coherent picture, allowing you to appreciate the true nature of the structure.

And despite the Eye of the Sahara's natural origins, a touch of mystery and enigma remains. Not because aliens or a long-vanished civilization are involved, but because the human mind struggles to comprehend the scale of geological processes.