Blood Falls

You all must have heard a waterfalls, or in sundanese is curug. But how about bloodfalls? It may sounds scary or weird for some of you. But actually there is a bloodfalls. It is one of the most amazing natural phenomenon that happened on earth. It is so unique until the scientist become confused because of this phenomenon. For a long time, they cannot discover the cause of this phenomenon.

Blood falls is an outflow of a high iron oxide saltwater from the taylor glacier on to the frozen bonney lake in taylor valley, victoria land, east antartica. It was first discovered in 1911 by an australian geologist named Griffith Taylor. He was so amazed and in the same time confused by what he saw. It took decades for the scientist to learn and solve this natural phenomenon.

As i said, blood falls is an outflow of a high iron oxide saltwater. Under the taylor glacier is quite a bit unusual, its actually salt water. The water comes from an iron rich brine lake beneath the glacier. The high salt content makes the freezing point of the water drops. So it don’t freeze in the cold environment. At certain point the iron oxidized, making the water becomes red. It is actually the same process that gives iron a dark red color when it rusrts.

Scientist also finds an array of microbes that can survive in extreme condition. These microbes create energy from the sulfate reduction, the same process that humans do to convert food to energy, but in this case they use sulfate. It may resemble the beginning of life on earth, before the oxygen become abundant.

Behind the uniqueness of the Blood Falls, it holds nature greatest secret that are amazing to learn. From this phenomenon we can get many useful knowledge of oxidation and amazing creature that can withstand a cruel environment.