Their most striking reddish color has earned them the nickname “Blood Falls” or “Blood Falls”. These are located in the McMurdo Dry Valleys and rise from the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica.
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Discovered in 1911 during a British expedition, the color of these glacial waterfalls has long remained a mystery.
However, Ken JT Livi, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland (USA), believes the mystery has now been solved. The scientist took part in an investigation, the conclusions of which were published in Astronomy and Space Science at the end of May, before being recently published on the university institution’s website.
Using powerful electron microscopes, Ken JT Livi and his colleagues examined Blood Falls water samples in detail. Through their research, they were able to determine that this liquid was particularly rich in iron particles, according to a press release from several media outlets.
Solved: Using the powerful transmission electron microscopes at our materials characterization and processing facility, Hopkins engineer Ken Livi has found the iron-rich nanospheres responsible for the “Blood Falls” in Antarctica. https://t.co/pDmJeZb76w
— Johns Hopkins Engineering (@HopkinsEngineer) June 26, 2023
Very special properties
Specifically, these are “rich nanospheres” that make water look bloody after oxidation. This one is clear as it comes out of the glacier. Then it gets a blood red color a second time.
In their report, the researchers said the nanospheres are very small, about one-hundredth the size of an average human red blood cell. In addition, they have specific chemical and physical properties.
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In this press release, Ken JT Livi spoke at length on the subject. “I noticed these nanospheres […] rich in iron, he explained. They contained many elements [dont] silicon, calcium, aluminum and sodium.
The researchers went in search of minerals
In the same vein, Ken JT Livi pointed out that these nanospheres came from ancestral microbes found in glacier meltwater. According to him, because of their extremely small size, these particles escaped the attention of other scientists who had studied this red color in the past.
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On the other hand, Ken JT Livi also reminded that his colleagues had assumed that the color of the water was caused by minerals. For this reason, they had focused their investigations on the search for such elements in the water. However, nanospheres are not minerals.
“To be a mineral, the atoms must be arranged in a very specific crystalline structure,” summarized Ken JT Livi, quoted in the same press release. These nanospheres are not crystalline, [alors] Previous methods for examining solids could not prove them.
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