The Earth is a mysterious place with various phenomena taking place. And while some mysteries solve themselves, there are still some that remain unresolved and have piqued the interest of travellers and scientists. One such mystery is that of the Blood Falls in Antarctica which has remained unsolved for a long duration.
While Antarctica is known for its pristine white snow cover, there is a part that stands out for its blood-red colour.
Blood Falls is a waterfall of vibrant red water that oozes out of the Taylor Glacier in Victoria Land, East Antarctica.
Bloods Fall was first found in 1911 by British explorer Thomas Griffith “Grif” Taylor during one of the early Antarctic expeditions by Europeans. At the time, Taylor and his crew thought the vibrant colour was due to red algae.
Iron-rich hypersaline water sporadically emerges from small fissures in the ice cascades. The saltwater source is a subglacial pool of unknown size overlain by about 400 metres of ice several kilometers from its tiny outlet at Blood Falls.
The Antarctica pioneers first attributed the red colour to red algae, but later it was proven to be due to iron oxides.
Unlike most Antarctic glaciers, the Taylor Glacier is not frozen to the bedrock, probably because of the presence of salts concentrated by the crystallisation of the ancient seawater imprisoned below it. Salt cryo-concentration occurred in the deep relict seawater when pure ice crystallised and expelled its dissolved salts as it cooled down because of the heat exchange of the captive liquid seawater with the enormous ice mass of the glacier. As a consequence, the trapped seawater was concentrated in brines with a salinity two to three times that of the mean ocean water.
The minuscule particles come from ancient microbes and are a hundredth of the size of human red blood cells. They are highly abundant in the meltwaters of Taylor Glacier.
Researchers used to believe that Taylor Glacier was frozen solid from the surface to its bed. But that changed as measuring techniques have advanced over time. Now scientists have been able to detect huge amounts of hypersaline liquid water at temperatures that are below freezing underneath the glacier. And the large quantities of salt in hypersaline water enable the water to remain in liquid form, even below zero degrees Celsius.
Along with iron, the nanospheres also contain silicon, calcium, aluminum, and sodium, and this unique composition is part of what turns the briny, subglacial water red as it slips off the glacier’s tongue and meets a world of oxygen, sunlight, and warmth for the first time in a long time.
The existence of the Blood Falls ecosystem shows that life can exist in the most extreme conditions on Earth.