Century-old mystery of 'Blood Falls' may be solved
The waters under the glacier are home to ancient strains of bacteria that have remained untouched for centuries, potentially providing insight into life on other planets.
In 1911, British geologist Thomas Griffith Taylor discovered a phenomenon in Antarctica that would dazzle and confound scientists for years: a strange waterfall that appeared to be dripping blood.
The water in the waterfall, at the base of a glacier now called, aptly, "Blood Falls" starts clear but quickly turns red.
Researchers have been trying to solve the mystery for more than a century, with a new analysis from John Hopkins providing further insight. The findings appear in the journal Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences.
With the help of sensitive transmission electron microscopes, a research team examined water samples from the falls, detecting "an abundance" of small, iron-laden nanospheres that oxidize, turning the water red.
"As soon as I looked at the microscope images, I noticed that there were these little nanospheres, and they were iron-rich, and they have lots of different elements in them besides iron—silicon, calcium, aluminum, sodium—and they all varied," research scientist Ken Livi said in a statement.
The nanospheres have likely evaded scientists due to their miniscule size and also because it was widely believed minerals were causing the discolouration, not nanospheres.
"In order to be a mineral, atoms must be arranged in a very specific, crystalline, structure. These nanospheres aren't crystalline, so the methods previously used to examine the solids did not detect them," Livi said.
Fueling space exploration
The waters under the glacier are home to ancient strains of bacteria that have remained untouched for centuries, potentially providing insight into life on other planets.
In fact - the renewed interest in Mars exploration is what inspired the recent analysis of the waters at Blood Falls. Researchers wanted to study the water as if it were a Martian landing site.
"What would happen if a Mars Rover landed in Antarctica? Would it be able to determine what was causing the Blood Falls to be red? It's a fascinating question and one that several researchers were considering," Livi said.
While the team solved the Blood Falls mystery, the research revealed the analysis is incomplete - and this is notable had the work been been conducted on a cold planet like Mars, where environmental materials may be nanosized. It suggests that if Martian rovers aren't fitted with all the right equipment, they may miss things when analyzing samples.
In the Blood Falls study, the spectroscopic equipment that found the nanospheres could not travel to Antarctica and was sent to an overseas lab.
"To truly understand the nature of rocky planets' surfaces, a transmission electron microscope would be necessary, but it is currently not feasible to place one on Mars," Livi said.
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Header image: Peter Rejcek/Wikipedia public domain
