In a pale world of ice and snow, the last color you expect to see on the horizon is red.
on the chemistry and microbes living in the discharge leaking from Antarctica's Blood Falls, a full breakdown of its mineralogical make-up had yet to be undertaken. Using an array of analytical equipment, the researchers uncovered a few surprises that helped better explain the iconic red hue.
"As soon as I looked at the microscope images, I noticed that there were these little nanospheres and they were iron-rich,"The minuscule particles come from ancient microbes and are a hundredth of the size of human red blood cells. They are highly abundant in the meltwaters of Taylor Glacier, which was named after the British scientist Thomas Griffith Taylor who first noticed the Blood Falls on the 1910 to 1913 expedition.
Along with iron, the nanospheres also contain silicon, calcium, aluminum, and sodium, and this unique composition is part of what turns the briny, subglacial water red as it slips off the glacier's tongue and meets a world of oxygen, sunlight, and warmth for the first time in a long time.Livi. "These nanospheres aren't crystalline, so the methods previously used to examine the solids did not detect them."The Taylor Glacier in Antarctica hosts an ancient microbial community hundreds of meters under its ice, which has evolved in isolation for millennia, orAs such, it's a useful 'playground' for astrobiologists, hoping to discover hidden life forms on other planets, too.
The spectroscopic equipment used to identify the nanospheres in the current study, for instance, could not be taken to Antarctica. Instead, samples had to be sent to labs overseas.
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