BLOOD FALLS

Blood Falls is a waterfall that bleeds.

By WILLIAM NIGH

The water under Taylor’s glacier hosts at least 17 different microorganisms that live without oxygen, air, or light in an extremely salty, ferrous brine. In fact, it’s the high iron content that turns the water red when it contacts air, just like blood. So why is this a big discovery? Because it means everything we think we know about “the building blocks of life” is garbage. From webecoist:

“The working theory is that the organisms evolved to use sulfate to “breathe” the ferric iron, and lived on the very small amounts of organic matter that were trapped in the subglacial pocket with them millions of years ago. The discovery is significant because similar conditions are present on some extraterrestrial bodies; knowing that such life forms exist here on Earth make it easier to believe that somewhere out there in space, there could be similar colonies of microbes surviving at extreme temperatures with no oxygen and no light.”

That’s right, aliens. Didn’t see that coming, did you?

By WILLIAM NIGH 1 year ago

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