Antarctica is bleeding?…

Antarctica is one of the mysterious place in the Earth. In Antarctica, your life depends on the nature not on you.

Everything about Antarctic?

Antartica, the fifth largest continent. the southernmost continent and site of the South Pole, is a virtually uninhabited, ice-covered landmass. Antartica has a land mass 14.2 million km². The total population lies between 1000 to 5000. Antartica’s lowest and highest temperatures ever recorded are -89.6°C and 18.3°C respectively.

What is antartica bleeding?

In 1911, Australian geologist Griffith Taylor, who first explored the valley that bears his name(Taylor glacier). The antartica pioneers first attributed the red color to red algae, but later it was proven to be due to iron oxides.

The reasons can be understand by two ways -

1. Geochemistry

2. Microbiology

Geochemical way —

Poorly soluble hydrous ferric oxides are deposited at the surface of ice after the ferrous ions present in the unfrozen saltwater are oxidized in contact with atmospheric oxygen.

Microbiological way —

Chemical and microbial analyses both indicate that a rare subglacial ecosystem of autotrophic bacteria developed that metabolizes sulfate and ferric ions. According to geomicrobiologist Jill Mikucki at the University of Tennessee, water samples from Blood Falls contained at least 17 different types of microbes, and almost no oxygen. An explanation may be that the microbes use sulfate to respire with ferric ions and metabolize the trace levels of organic matter trapped with them. Such a metabolic process had never before been observed in nature.

What can we learn from it?

If microbes are able to live in the harsh environment of earth that means life can be possible on other extraterrestrial object like Mars or Europa(an ice-covered moon of Jupiter). Scientists of the NASA Astrobiology Institute speculate that these worlds could contain subglacial liquid water environments favorable to hosting elementary forms of life, which would be better protected at depth from ultraviolet and cosmic radiation than on the surface.