Blood Falls of Antarctica: A 100-Year-Old Mystery Finally Solved

Is there a dead body buried under Antarctica? Or maybe it's an alien?

I know it looks spooky and I know it creeps you out. I also know that it's not from a dead body. And no, it's not from an alien, either.

Once upon a time, tough, intelligent, and adventurous weather-beaten explorers with huge fur hats and heavy winter coats descended upon an icy cliff in Antarctica. They were cold, hungry, and discouraged because they had been hiking all day and hadn't found anything worth investigating. Just when they wanted to turn around to go back to camp, geographer Griffith Taylor discovered an icy cliff stained with blood-red water in 1911. Two questions arose: 1) What was causing such a gory color? and 2) Why is the water running when it should be frozen?

The ecosystem underneath Taylor Glacier is isolated from the rest of the world. Bacteria have been living there for approximately 1.5 million years!

The water that slowly oozes out from beneath is so salty, it's more accurate to call it brine. The red brine escapes from a glacier that's around 1.5 million years old! The glacier (Taylor Glacier, named after the discoverer) was formed when sea levels rose and flooded the area, forming a salty lake. This lake was covered by layers and layers of snow and ice, which accumulated into a huge glacier sitting on top of the lake. Scientists were able to figure this out after roughly 100 years by using a method called radio-echo sounding (RES), which is used to collect data about glaciers.

Two scientists study the brine on Taylor Glacier, located in the McMurdo Dry Valley Region in Antarctica. 

Although the red color was thought to have been caused by red algae, it is actually due to the high concentration of iron, which oxidizes when it comes in contact with both water and oxygen. The oozing water is due to an interesting property of water; water releases heat as it freezes, the heat warms the surrounding ice, and voilà--you have trickling water at a freezing temperature!

More so than the crimson color of the water, it's actually what lives inside the glacier that interest scientists. There are ancient microbes that have been living in the brine for thousands of years, cut off from the rest of the living world. There is no light nor oxygen, and there's almost no heat. Even under extreme pressure, they survive by obtaining energy from sulfate by breaking it down. The by-products react with iron to restore the sulfate, essentially recycling it.

Although Blood Falls has one of the most hostile environments on Earth, the ecosystem is teeming with microscopic life; some say it may hint at how life could be on other planets with similar environments, such as Mars, and others say it does not.

Blood Falls, as shown above, is located in Southern Antarctica. 

Blood Falls of Antarctica sounds spooky, but it is yet another one of Mother Nature's spectacular wonders. As Atlas Obscura calls it, it's a "natural time capsule containing an alien ecosystem." These ancient microbes in the "alien ecosystem" are being released, causing concern for some scientists. Scientific American states that microorganisms living in glaciers are in a way "immortal," because the ice preserves genetic material and allows ancient creatures that have disappeared to return. The appearance of these microbes raise questions about how they can survive such a brutal temperature and how they can affect the planet.

Some call Blood Falls a "portal into a subterranean world."

Although it may seem as if Antarctica is hostile to life, it is teeming with organisms that we cannot see with a naked eye. Blood Falls is an entryway to a whole new world that is brimming with microbial life!