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As a boy in Lima,
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my grandfather told me a legend
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of the Spanish conquest of Peru.
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Atahualpa, emperor of the Inca,
had been captured and killed.
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Pizarro and his conquistadors
had grown rich,
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and tales of their conquest
and glory had reached Spain
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and was bringing new waves of Spaniards,
hungry for gold and glory.
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They would go into towns and ask the Inca,
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"Where's another civilization
we can conquer? Where's more gold?"
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And the Inca, out of vengeance, told them,
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"Go to the Amazon.
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You'll find all the gold you want there.
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In fact, there is a city called Paititi --
El Dorado in Spanish --
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made entirely of gold."
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The Spanish set off into the jungle,
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but the few that return
come back with stories,
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stories of powerful shamans,
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of warriors with poisoned arrows,
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of trees so tall they blotted out the sun,
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spiders that ate birds,
snakes that swallowed men whole,
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and a river that boiled.
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All this became a childhood memory.
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Fifteen years passed.
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I'm working on my PhD at SMU,
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trying to understand
Peru's geothermal energy potential,
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when I remember this legend,
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and I began asking that question.
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Could the boiling river exist?
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I asked colleagues from universities,
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the government,
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oil, gas, and mining companies,
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and the answer was a unanimous no.
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And this makes sense.
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You see, boiling rivers
do exist in the world,
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but they're generally
associated with volcanoes.
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You need a powerful heat source
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to produce such a large
geothermal manifestation,
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and as you can see from the red dots
here, which are volcanoes,
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we don't have volcanoes in the Amazon,
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nor in most of Peru.
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So it follows: we should not expect
to see a boiling river.
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Telling this same story
at a family dinner,
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my aunt tells me,
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"But no, Andres, I've been there.
I've swum in that river."
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(Laughter)
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Then my uncle jumps in.
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"No, Andres, she's not kidding.
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You see, you can only swim in it
after a very heavy rain,
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and it's protected by a powerful shaman.
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Your aunt, she's friends with his wife."
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(Laughter)
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"¿Cómo?" ["Huh?"]
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You know, despite all
my scientific skepticism,
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I found myself hiking into the jungle,
guided by my aunt,
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over 700 kilometers away
from the nearest volcanic center,
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and well, honestly,
mentally preparing myself
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to behold the legendary
"warm stream of the Amazon."
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But then ...
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I heard something,
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a low surge
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that got louder and louder
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as we came closer.
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It sounded like ocean waves
constantly crashing,
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and as we got closer, I saw smoke, vapor,
coming up through the trees.
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And then, I saw this.
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I immediately grabbed for my thermometer,
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and the average temperatures in the river
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were 86 degrees C.
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This is not quite
the 100-degree C boiling,
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but definitely close enough.
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The river flowed hot and fast.
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I followed it upriver and was led by,
actually, the shaman's apprentice
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to the most sacred site on the river.
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And this is what's bizarre --
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It starts off as a cold stream.
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And here, at this site,
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is the home of the Yacumama,
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mother of the waters,
a giant serpent spirit
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who births hot and cold water.
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And here we find a hot spring,
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mixing with cold stream water
underneath her protective motherly jaws,
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and thus bringing their legends to life.
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The next morning, I woke up and --
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(Laughter)
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I asked for tea.
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I was handed a mug, a tea bag
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and, well, pointed towards the river.
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To my surprise, the water was clean
and had a pleasant taste,
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which is a little weird
for geothermal systems.
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What was amazing
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is that the locals had always
known about this place,
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and that I was by no means
the first outsider to see it.
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It was just part of their everyday life.
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They drink its water.
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They take in its vapor.
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They cook with it,
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clean with it,
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even make their medicines with it.
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I met the shaman,
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and he seemed like an extension
of the river and his jungle.
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He asked for my intentions
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and listened carefully.
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Then, to my tremendous relief --
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I was freaking out,
to be honest with you --
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a smile began to snake across his face,
and he just laughed.
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(Laughter)
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I had received the shaman's blessing
to study the river,
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on the condition that after I take
the water samples
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and analyze them in my lab,
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wherever I was in the world,
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that I pour the waters
back into the ground
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so that, as the shaman said,
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the waters could find their way back home.
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I've been back every year
since that first visit in 2011,
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and the fieldwork has been exhilarating,
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demanding and at times dangerous.
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One story was even featured
in the National Geographic Magazine.
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I was trapped on a small rock
about the size of a sheet of paper
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in sandals and board shorts,
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in between an 80 degree C river
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and a hot spring that, well,
looked like this, close to boiling.
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And on top of that,
it was Amazon rain forest.
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Pshh, pouring rain, couldn't see a thing.
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The temperature differential
made it all white. It was a whiteout.
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Intense.
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Now, after years of work,
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I'll soon be submitting my geophysical
and geochemical studies for publication.
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And I'd like to share, today,
with all of you here, on the TED stage,
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for the first time,
some of these discoveries.
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Well, first off, it's not a legend.
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Surprise!
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(Laughter)
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When I first started the research,
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the satellite imagery was too
low-resolution to be meaningful.
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There were just no good maps.
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Thanks to the support
of the Google Earth team,
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I now have this.
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Not only that, the indigenous name
of the river, Shanay-timpishka,
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"boiled with the heat of the sun,"
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indicating that I'm not the first
to wonder why the river boils,
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and showing that humanity
has always sought to explain
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the world around us.
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So why does the river boil?
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(Bubbling sounds)
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It actually took me three years
to get that footage.
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Fault-fed hot springs.
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As we have hot blood running
through our veins and arteries,
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so, too, the earth has hot water
running through its cracks and faults.
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Where these arteries come to the surface,
these earth arteries,
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we'll get geothermal manifestations:
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fumaroles, hot springs
and in our case, the boiling river.
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What's truly incredible, though,
is the scale of this place.
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Next time you cross the road,
think about this.
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The river flows wider than a two-lane road
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along most of its path.
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It flows hot for 6.24 kilometers.
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Truly impressive.
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There are thermal pools
larger than this TED stage,
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and that waterfall that you see there
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is six meters tall,
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and all with near-boiling water.
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We mapped the temperatures
along the river,
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and this was by far the most
demanding part of the fieldwork.
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And the results were just awesome.
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Sorry -- the geoscientist
in me coming out.
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And it showed this amazing trend.
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You see, the river starts off cold.
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It then heats up, cools back down,
heats up, cools back down,
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heats up again, and then has
this beautiful decay curve
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until it smashes into this cold river.
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Now, I understand not all of you
are geothermal scientists,
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so to put it in more everyday terms:
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Everyone loves coffee.
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Yes? Good.
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Your regular cup of coffee, 54 degrees C,
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an extra-hot one, well, 60.
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So, put in coffee shop terms,
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the boiling river plots like this.
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There you have your hot coffee.
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Here you have your extra-hot coffee,
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and you can see
that there's a bit point there
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where the river is still hotter
than even the extra-hot coffee.
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And these are average water temperatures.
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We took these in the dry season to ensure
the purest geothermal temperatures.
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But there's a magic number here
that's not being shown,
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and that number is 47 degrees C,
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because that's where things start to hurt,
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and I know this from very
personal experience.
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Above that temperature,
you don't want to get in that water.
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You need to be careful.
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It can be deadly.
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I've seen all sorts of animals fall in,
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and what's shocking to me,
is the process is pretty much the same.
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So they fall in and the first thing
to go are the eyes.
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Eyes, apparently, cook very quickly.
They turn this milky-white color.
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The stream is carrying them.
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They're trying to swim out,
but their meat is cooking on the bone
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because it's so hot.
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So they're losing power, losing power,
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until finally they get to a point
where hot water goes into their mouths
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and they cook from the inside out.
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(Laughter)
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A bit sadistic, aren't we?
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Jeez.
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Leave them marinating for a little longer.
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What's, again, amazing
are these temperatures.
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They're similar to things that I've seen
on volcanoes all over the world,
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and even super-volcanoes like Yellowstone.
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But here's the thing:
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the data is showing
that the boiling river exists
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independent of volcanism.
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It's neither magmatic
or volcanic in origin,
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and again, over 700 kilometers away
from the nearest volcanic center.
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How can a boiling river exist like this?
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I've asked geothermal experts
and volcanologists for years,
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and I'm still unable to find another
non-volcanic geothermal system
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of this magnitude.
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It's unique.
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It's special on a global scale.
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So, still -- how does it work?
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Where do we get this heat?
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There's still more research to be done
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to better constrain the problem
and better understand the system,
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but from what the data is telling us now,
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it looks to be the result
of a large hydrothermal system.
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Basically, it works like this:
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so, the deeper you go
into the earth, the hotter it gets.
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We refer to this
as the geothermal gradient.
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The waters could be coming
from as far away as glaciers in the Andes,
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then seeping down deep into the earth
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and coming out to form the boiling river
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after getting heated up
from the geothermal gradient,
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all due to this unique geologic setting.
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Now, we found
that in and around the river --
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this is working with colleagues
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from National Geographic,
Dr. Spencer Wells,
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and Dr. Jon Eisen from UC Davis --
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we genetically sequenced
the extremophile lifeforms
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living in and around the river,
and have found new lifeforms,
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unique species living
in the boiling river.
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But again, despite all of these studies,
all of these discoveries and the legends,
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a question remains:
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what is the significance
of the boiling river?
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What is the significance
of this stationary cloud
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that always hovers
over this patch of jungle?
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And what is the significance
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of a detail in a childhood legend?
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To the shaman and his community,
it's a sacred site.
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To me, as a geoscientist,
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it's a unique geothermal phenomenon.
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But to the illegal loggers
and cattle farmers,
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it's just another resource to exploit,
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and to the Peruvian government,
it's just another stretch
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of unprotected land ready for development.
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My goal is to ensure
that whoever controls this land
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understands the boiling river's
uniqueness and significance.
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Because that's the question,
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one of significance.
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And the thing there is,
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we define significance.
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It's us. We have that power.
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We are the ones who draw that line
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between the sacred and the trivial.
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And in this age,
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where everything seems mapped,
measured and studied,
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in this age of information,
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I remind you all that discoveries
are not just made
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in the black void of the unknown,
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but in the white noise
of overwhelming data.
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There remains so much to explore.
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We live in an incredible world.
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So go out,
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be curious,
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because we do live in a world
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where shamans still sing
to the spirits of the jungle,
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where rivers do boil,
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and where legends do come to life.
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Thank you very much.
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(Applause)