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Blood Falls pouring into Lake Bonney. A tent can be seen in the lower left for size comparison. Photo from the United States Antarctic Program Photo Library.

Source photolibrary.usap.gov Click to Enlarge

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Photo taken by, and displayed with the permission of, Hassan Basagic

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Source YouTube

Category Natural Wonders, Watery Wonders, Martian Landscapes, Fascinating Fauna, Wonders of Salt

This five-story, blood-red waterfall pours very slowly out of the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica's McMurdo Dry Valleys. When geologists first discovered the frozen waterfall in 1911, they thought the red color came from algae, but its true nature turned out to be much more spectacular.

Roughly 2 million years ago, the Taylor Glacier sealed beneath it a small body of water which contained an ancient community of microbes. Trapped below a thick layer of ice, they have remained there ever since, isolated inside a natural time capsule. Evolving independently of the rest of the living world, these microbes exist in a world with no light or free oxygen and little heat, and are essentially the definition of "primordial ooze." The trapped lake has very high salinity and is rich in iron, which gives the waterfall its red color. A fissure in the glacier allows the subglacial lake to flow out, forming the falls without contaminating the ecosystem within.

The existence of the Blood Falls ecosystem shows that life is indeed possible in the most extreme of conditions. Life could perhaps exist on other planets with similar environments and similar bodies of frozen water - notably Mars and Jupiter's moon Europa. But regardless of extraterrestrial life, the earth's Blood Falls are a wonder to behold both visually, and scientifically.

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• Hours Accessible only during Antarctic summer
• Address Taylor Glacier, Antarctica
• Cost none

• The Antarctic Sun, Ancient Microbes, May 2009 http://antarcticsun.usap.gov/science/contenthandler.cfm?id=1765
• NASA and the International Polar Year, Multimedia Feature on Blood Falls http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/IPY/multimedia/ipyimg_20081009.html

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The Dry Valleys are only accessible by helicopter from McMurdo Station (US), Scott Base (New Zealand) or a cruise ship in the Ross Sea.

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Comments

• Anonymous March 6, 2010
  Removed Vandalism
• godriguezilla March 5, 2010
  OMGZ I wanna get McMurdered in this scary earthy blood fountain!
• gavinkiely March 3, 2010
  It's amazing to think that life could both survive and continue to evolve in such a confined and isolated region. I'd really love to see this, some day.
• Anonymous February 26, 2010
  SECOND IMPACT
• Anonymous February 24, 2010
  BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! BLOOD! FOR THE BLOOD GOD!
• Anonymous February 24, 2010
  RAINING BLOOOOOD FROM A LACERATED GLACIER...BLEEDING ITS HORROR NOW I SHALL REIGHN IN BLOOD!!!
• Anonymous February 24, 2010
  are they studying that shit? they better be fucking studying that shit
• Anonymous January 16, 2010
  omg they're playing stars of the lid in that video.
• Anonymous July 23, 2009
  This is amazing and beautiful!