Unique Blood Falls in Antarctica

Antarctica usually conjures images of white and blue, but this icy continent can sometimes be affected by abnormal color. More than a century ago, when geologist Griffith Taylor first explored Antarctica, he found a strange red stain from the tip of the glacier spilled like a waterfall. The whole of this region suggests the image of a blood extraction.

The origin of blood extraction is a salty lake trapped under huge glaciers appear at least 1.5 million years ago. Unlike other glaciers in Antarctica, Taylor does not freeze completely but the bulk into the surface. Beneath the still water, because a few million years ago, Taylor Valley is surrounded by the sea like a fjord.

As climate change and sea retreated, a saltwater lake occupied the valley. Iron-containing salt from sea water remains in the bottom of the tank. The water temperature is -5 degrees C in lake water is very salty. Salinity than 2 to 3 times higher than normal seawater. Therefore, it never freezes, water can only slowly penetrate the ice makes them especially red. Blood Falls is a glacier high in iron rust.

However, blood extraction also owns a secret anymore, the researchers from Harvard discovered. It took many years, they get a sample of water in the tank is below the Taylor Glacier. They found the whole blood extraction is an ecosystem of ancient bacteria trapped by millennia underground, with no nutrients to nourish them from the outside world. Analysis of water samples, including chemicals and microorganisms, the scientists said that this is the ecology of rare autotrophic bacteria under the surface of the glacier.

Water samples have at least 17 different bacteria and no oxygen. But they still live, still survive in a harsh environment with extreme temperatures and sunlight can not penetrate a thick ice layer of glaciers many Taylor sunlight down to the lake, below 400 m deep. The only iron and sulfur compounds as sources of primary energy feed stock bacterial community existed millions of years. But a crack in the glacier made lake below the ice melted, forming operation without contaminating the ecosystem within the lake.

When geologists first discovered the waterfall at Taylor Glacier in the McMurdo Dry Valley in 1911, they thought the red color of water is produced by algae, but its true nature turns out to be due iron oxide caused more spectacular than the original iPhone guess.

This place is not normally give scientists a unique opportunity to study life beneath the surface of Taylor Glacier, the life of ancient microorganisms in extreme conditions without having to drill holes Deep drilling in the polar ice caps, the risk of pollution associated with fragile environment around the platform bang.Mot

Blood Images of unique operators: