Thermal Valley
Steaming, acidic emerald pool in a misty valley, source of a mineral found nowhere else on Earth but here.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Thermal Valley in Beitou, Taipei opens in 1905, when a Japanese engineer named Okamoto Yohachiro found an unfamiliar crusted stone in a scalding, acidic riverbed. You'll hear how that discovery led, a few years later, to scientists naming a new mineral after this district, and how the valley earned its old nickname, Hell Valley, from the water's heat and acidity. The guide also traces how a physicist later put the site's radioactive traces to use in an early nuclear experiment.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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