THE BLOOD

FALLS OF
ANTARCTICA
By: Valentina Tamayo.
 THE BLOOD FALLS OF
ANTARCTICA
• They were discovered in 1911 by the Australian geologist Griffith Taylor.
 • The reason for this unique phenomenon is that a 5
million year old salt lake is located here under the ice.
Here the water can remain liquid inside the glaciers
thanks to the fusion between ice and salt that produces
a constant heat that allows it not to freeze. Scientists
mention that when the water in this lake remains on
The first explorers of Antarctica the surface, a process that takes around 1.5 million
attributed the red color to red years, the salt water oxidizes when it comes into
algae, but later it has been contact with the air.
shown that this phenomenon is
produced by the presence of
iron oxide.
 BUT THE REAL MISTERY IS THAT:
Chemical and biological analyzes indicate that there is
a strange subglacial ecosystem of autotrophic bacteria
that metabolizes sulfur and iron ions. According to
geomicrobiologist Jill Mikucki, there are at least 17
different types of microbes in water samples, which
live practically without oxygen. Never before has the
metabolic process by which microbes use a sulfate as
a catalyst to breathe in ferric ions and metabolize
microscopic organic matter trapped with this chemical
compound has never been observed in nature.