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!
