Friday, April 23, 2010

The Bleeding Glacier

Today's true but really really weird story is "Blood Falls," in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, eastern Antarctica. The water seeping from the glacier is tinted red by iron oxide (rust). Its source is an "iron-rich hypersaline lake" hidden underneath 400 meters of ice, several kilometers from Blood Falls. The water of this strange lake contains a whole ecosystem of bacteria that metabolize sulfur and iron ions.

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