Amazing Things

Blood Falls in Antarctica

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Antarctica is the world’s coldest place. Blood Falls is an outflow of water, flowing from the Taylor Glacier onto the ice-covered surface of West Lake Bonney in the Taylor Valley of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Victoria Land, East Antarctica. The reddish falls were first discovered in Antarctica in 1911, by the Australian geologist Griffith Taylor, where he noticed a river had stained the surrounding cliff of ice with a deep red color. Previously, he had believed it was due to algae discoloring the water, however that hypothesis was never verified.
It was the longstanding mystery surrounding Antarctica’s Blood Falls. Now, thanks to research by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, this mystery has finally been solved. The true origin of the Blood Falls’s deep red coloring is due to oxidized iron in brine saltwater, the same process that gives iron a dark red color when it rusts. When the iron bearing saltwater comes into contact with oxygen the iron oxidizes and takes on a red coloring, in effect dying the water to a deep red color.. d Falls