Carlos Espinosa (b. 1924, lives and works in Antofagasta, Chile) is the inventor of atrapanieblas, or “mist traps,” disseminated by the physicist throughout the Atacama Desert in Chile where his invention became a model in the field before spreading to the most arid regions in the world.

Able to capture humidity, these traps can channel water in order to direct it towards areas where it doesn’t flow. These inventions thus help the development of organic life in places where the mineral world was predominant. Developed in the 1960s after a terrible year of drought, Carlos Espinosa’s research consisted in “finding lasting cohabitation solutions for man and his environment while the whole of humanity was already embarking on the conquest of space.”

Thanks to his mist catchers, Espinosa succeeded in meeting an almost Promethean challenge: capturing an invisible material omnipresent and fleeting and offering it to men. The invention was patented in 1963 and its system offered for free use to UNESCO.