Scientists unravel the mystery of bloody waterfalls in Antarctica

In 1911, members of a British expedition to Antarctica were amazed to see a blood-red stream of water flowing from a glacier into an ice-bound lake. This place was dubbed the Taylor Glacier by the name of the geologist who discovered it, Griffith Taylor, and the streams of water were called bloody waterfalls.

In 2006 and 2018, a team of American researchers took several water samples from the glacier and analyzed the composition under a microscope. This made it possible to detect a high content of iron oxide, which explained the color of the water. Now scientists have been able to look even deeper and found a more precise reason for the coloring of the water from the glacier.

Most of the existing research is devoted to the chemical composition and microbes living in melt water. from a bloody waterfall, while the full mineralogical composition has not been clarified - before that moment. When examining under a microscope, Johns Hopkins University materials scientist Ken Leavey noticed many tiny nanospheres saturated with iron. These particles come from ancient microbes and are about a hundredth of a

erythrocyte in human blood.

In addition to iron, these nanospheres also contain silicon, calcium, aluminum and sodium. It is because of them that salty under-ice water turns red when it comes into contact with oxygen and sunlight for the first time in a long time.

These nanospheres have previously been neglected because their atoms do not form a crystal lattice, and the methods used to detect solid minerals do not work on them.

In addition to clarifying exactly how bloody waterfalls work on Earth, this research also helps to improve the mechanics of finding life outside of our planet. It is likely that vehicles like the Martian rovers simply do not have the right equipment to find life, even if the rover passes right over it.

For example, if Curiosity or Perseverance sent to Antarctica, they won't be able to detect the microbial nanospheres that scientists have been able to spot in the lab. That is, the analysis of samples by the rover is not enough to determine the presence of life. This is especially true for relatively cold planets like Mars, where it is important to look for nano-sized non-crystalline materials.

Unfortunately, attaching an electron microscope to the rover will not work. These devices are too massive and consume a lot of energy, so the only option left is to return the samples to Earth and analyze them in local laboratories.