You're looking at a satellite image of the Dasht-e Lut salt desert in southeast Iran. If you think it looks a bit weird, that' because it is: it's widely regarded as the hottest place on Earth.The highest land surface temperature ever recorded—from space, by satellites—was in the Lut Desert back in 2005. It reached a staggering 70.7ºC. That's 160 Fahrenheit. That is off the wall.So, what can you see in the picture? The European Space Agency explains:
The image was captured by Envisat’s MERIS instrument. And is a welcome reminder that we shouldn't grumble about the weather. [ESA]The light area in the centre of the image are the long, parallel wind-carved ridges and furrows. The darker area to the east is an extent of massive sand dunes, some reaching up to 300 m tall. In the upper-right section we can see a light green, shallow body of water that straddles Iran’s border with Afghanistan... In the lower-left we can see the white, snow-capped Jebal Barez mountains.
Not surprisingly, Pizza Hut and Domino's dominate the country (which gives new meaning to "red" and "blue" states), but once we slice the data by chain, we can also see some regional differences. The Godfather's Belt arcs through the upper Midwest, Sbarro is mostly an East Coast thing and Papa Murphy's take-and-bake is big in the Pacific Northwest (Maybe hot pizza is harder to deliver in the rain?). Michigan is so Little Caesar'ed it's almost glowing orange. Note also the smattering of purple dots where Chuck E. Cheese's is the dominant pizzeria in the area, which must signify the most fun-loving towns in America.
