A ‘Bleeding’ Glacier

In today’s world where we cannot survive without our cell phones, TV, computers, Facebook, Twitter, and many such supposedly necessities, scientist have found microbes existing below the glacier for millions of years! In the Taylor Valley of McMurdo Dry Valleys in Victoria land of East Antartica, the Taylor glacier was caught spitting ‘blood’ like liquid into the frozen West lake Bonney.

To the normal eye is seems like blood but scientifically speaking its saline water very rich in iron and hence the red color. The theory behind this oozing of ‘blood’ goes like this…

Most glaciers are frozen right from the ground, but the Taylor glacier is found to bury a natural pool of liquid, chemically similar to sea water. This pool is persevered below hundreds of meters of ice and isolated from light, heat and oxygen. Even at such low temperatures, microbes similar to marine life managed to live. Researchers believe that over million of years, without enough provisions for food, the microbes tailored to survive with sulfur and iron compounds. A fissure in the glacier above has led to this highly saline pool of microbes pour out. And thanks to its rich red color that we can distinctly observe this ‘bleeding’ glacier!

Though this discovery raised more questions for researchers like, existence of such pools below other glaciers, survival mechanisms of these microbes without oxygen, imprisonment of the pool below the glacier and much more… we can enjoy the natural phenomenal phenomenon!

Life might exist under unimaginable conditions on other such least inhabitable places on Earth or within our neighbors in the solar system, who knows!

Marbled Icebergs

Nature unfolds surpassed beauty with some thing as simple as ice and transforming it into marvelous marbled icebergs! The creativity of nature to make an iceberg look as beautiful as this is phenomenal...


I can assure you that none of the Antarctic inhabitants have gone innovative and created these patterns. And also there is no trick photography behind this picture. One can very well say its science… and a perfect logical explanation for the existence of these marbled icebergs does exits.


The icebergs appear in marble like patterns due to the weathering effect; else it could have been as clear as the ice we get from our ice dispensers at home. The gorgeous imperfections created on iceberg are a combined effort of sun, air, water, different temperatures, humidity, pressure, sediments, algae and many such things surrounding it.

As we know, the icebergs are white, as they reflect all colors of visible light, in all directions, that combine to give us a pure white color. The partial melting, refreezing and compressions can lead to variations in white and blue color.

The blue part is basically ice with less air bubbles and more density. Sometimes the gaps in the iceberg are filled with water and then it freezes real fast, so that no bubbles are formed and hence, resulting in a bluish layer.

When the iceberg meets the sea, a layer of salty sea water forms a translucent layer on the bottom or underside of the iceberg. The green, brown, black and other shades in between are normally sediments and algae in the salty sea water compressed between ice sheets.

Thus, we get a beautifully marbled piece of work by nature! No matter how many scientific explanations are behind the marbled icebergs… we know for sure that everything on earth is created with utmost care and beauty. Thus, nature unfolds the surpassed beauty of marbled icebergs through a phenomenal phenomenon!