I'm not sure why I think conveyor belts are cool, but I do, I always have.

I like the little ones at the grocery store, I like the big luggage loops, the airport,

even the Jamiraquai video, where it looks like he's sliding around the room.

Today, we're going big. I'm taking you to the world's largest conveyor belt.

The 61 mile conveyor belt system rolling across the western Sahara, the longest conveyor belt in the world.

Except that this conveyor belt, it turns out it's more than just a conveyor belt.

And I have to tell you, neither the belt nor this episode went where I thought they would.

I'm Dylan Thores, and this is Atlas Obscura, your guide to the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

Today's episode is part one of a two-part series, because while this conveyor belt may start out in western Sahara,

it ends on your dinner plate.

We'll go into part one, the belt, after this.

So today and tomorrow, we're talking about the world's longest conveyor belt.

And like most of the world's other oversized conveyor belts, this belt is part of a mining operation.

It stretches 61 miles across the desert of western Sahara, and it carries tons and tons of this one specific natural resource that's mined from the earth.

But before we can really zoom in on the story of the world's longest conveyor belt, we need to zoom way out to understand the extremely precious and important resource this belt was built to carry.

So here we go.

We're going to zoom way, way out, like far out, man.

So out there in space, there are stars.

Our Sun, for example, that's one of them you might be familiar with.

Now, imagine a star five times bigger than our Sun.

For billions of years, it's been burning all of this nuclear fuel in its core.

And then, instead of dying quietly, it explodes in a supernova.

...