TIL About The Blood Falls Of Antarctica

As you probably know by now, I love sharing weird and bizarre animals every now and then.

But today I have a weird yet really cool and unique natural phenomena I just heard thanks to Reddit.

Meet the Blood Falls of Antarctica:

source

Damn. Just damn!

Of course this phenomenon has nothing to do with actual blood. But, they share a common ingredient that gives both of them their distinctive red color. Iron!

Blood Falls is an outflow of an iron oxide–tainted plume of saltwater, flowing from the tongue of Taylor Glacier onto the ice-covered surface of West Lake Bonney in the Taylor Valley of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Victoria Land, East Antarctica. source

The phenomenon was first witnessed in 1911 by the Australian geologist Thomas Griffith Taylor and initially it was thought the red color was the result of some sort of red algae.

Imagine being the first man to witness this! I wonder what his thoughts were!

The source of the brine appears to be a reservoir of seawater that has been trapped beneath the glacier for millions of years. A reservoir that is super rich in iron.

Due to its extreme salinity, this water doesn't freeze despite the subzero temperatures below the glacier. But it does seep out through fissures and fractures here and there. And when it comes in contact with the oxygen in the atmosphere, the iron oxidizes hence the red coloration.

But the interesting things don't end here. The reservoir was apparently sealed about 1.5 to 2 million years ago. And it wasn't just water that was trapped. But also life.

And some of this life has managed to survive. And since we talk about a sealed and unique system, this life evolved essentially independent from the rest of life in planet earth!

There's not much research on it yet but as expected all these microbes are extremophiles as they spend all their life in subzero temperatures combined with high salinity and a total absence of light and oxygen. Yeah. Any of those would kill a human in a matter of minutes yet they thrive in all of them...combined. Just too hard to die 👀

But how do they survive without oxygen? Here's a proposed theory:

An explanation may be that the microbes use sulfate to respire with ferric ions and metabolize the trace levels of organic matter trapped with them. Such a metabolic process had never before been observed in nature. source

Yeah, I quoted that because I pretty much don't understand it. 😂

Anyways, fun stuff :D

Here's a video with actual video footage and more info on the phenomenon

Ok, hoped you enjoyed this quick read. There are plenty of articles written on the matter by smarter people then me so feel free to google "Blood Falls of Antarctica" if you want to learn more!

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