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The hard halite surface provided a smooth but grippy 13-mile straightaway for pursuing the ultimate prize in motor sports, the land speed record.

It is also halite precipitation that has created the salt sculptures that first began peeking out above the surface of the Dead Sea about 10 years ago, Mr. Lensky said.

Freese and her colleagues argue that minerals such as halite and zabuyelite are already deep inside Earth and thus are shielded from cosmic rays.

“Further down, no bracing is needed; the salt has fused into solid rock” known to geologists as halite, or rock salt, Bohorquez tells us.

We drove past the Devil’s Golf Course, a jagged expanse of halite salt-crystal formations.