Scientists Solve Mystery Behind Antarctica's Blood Falls
Scientists Solve Mystery Behind Antarctica's Blood Falls
© Photo by National Science Foundation/Peter Rejcek Image via CNTraveler.com Exploring the frozen beauty of Antarctica —a.k.a. the White Continent—often involves sights of, well, white. But at Taylor Glacier , a 34-mile-long polar glacier, you’ll find startling sights of red—a blood-like deposit of iron-rich, salty water flowing into West Lake Bonney.
For years, Blood Falls (as the area has been aptly named) has been a mystery of nature to scientists. When a geologist named Griffith Taylor first discovered the frozen falls in the early 1900s, he thought algae was to blame for the red color (proof, perhaps, that life really can exist anywhere). But in 2003, researchers determined that red hue actually came from iron and water pulling from a super old (like, 5-million-year-old) lake. The flow would turn red when the iron came into contact with the air.
Now, a new study from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Colorado College adds the final piece to the century-old puzzle: Using radio-echo sounding (read: no drilling necessary!), researchers were able to track exactly where the water was flowing from.
Turns out Taylor Glacier doesn’t just have a lake under it, it also has its own unique, briney water system that has likely been in action for a million years. The research smashes the idea that flowing water can’t exist in a freezing cold glacier at the end of the world—the saltiness of the water means it has a lower freezing temperature, making that continuous flow possible.
“Taylor Glacier is now the coldest known glacier to have persistently flowing water,” co-author Christina Carr, a doctoral student at University of Alaska Fairbanks, said in a release about the study.
Cheers to science—and to brilliant geologists and scientists (and students ) who keep making fascinating discoveries about our planet. View our complete list of the best places to visit in the U.S.
One of the many mysteries of nature, solved.
A fascinating discovery not just for it means on this planet but for what it can mean on others. If flowing water can exist in a glacier, then it bolsters the idea that flowing water can exit in the ice of a planet like Mars which is now apparently emerging from an ice age. Where there is water, there may be at life.
Maybe some day we'll find out if there is or has been life on Mars, 1ofmany.
It has always struck me that the greatest contribution of intelligent life to the universe is the perpetuation of life itself. One day, we may be extinct. But before that day comes, we can hurl the basic building block of life into the cosmos like seeds to take root wherever it can. We can use space vehicles to target planets or put them on moving astrological bodies like comets and let them randomly seed any planet they crash into a million years from now. Who knows, maybe somebody seeded us the same way.
At the present rate of destroying the plant, it would probably be a good thing if we did as you suggested, Iofmany.
I remember studying this back in college-- I'm glad they have finally solved the puzzle!
The photos of the red waterfall against the white ice is striking.