New Research Finds Pressurized Iron-Rich Brine Beneath Taylor Glacier Powers Antarctica's Mysterious 'Blood Falls'

New research shows that a hidden network of pressurized, iron-rich brine beneath Antarctica's Taylor Glacier is driving the eerie red outflow known as Blood Falls, finally explaining one of the continent's most mysterious natural sights.

Scientists have long known that the waterfall's "blood-red" color does not come from real blood but from iron in very salty water that seeps out of the glacier and rusts when it hits the air.

The latest studies confirm that this brine rises under pressure from a subglacial reservoir several kilometers upstream and is forced through cracks and channels inside the glacier until it reaches the surface at Blood Falls. As the brine emerges and freezes, it stains the ice red-orange and forms a growing apron of frozen deposits at the glacier's edge, according to Wired.

The water feeding Blood Falls is not ordinary meltwater but a hypersaline brine, meaning it is far saltier than seawater. Because it contains so much salt, and because heat is released as some of the water freezes, the brine can stay liquid even though air temperatures around Taylor Glacier average about minus 17 degrees Celsius.

Geophysical surveys have shown that much of the valley floor beneath the glacier is saturated with this salty groundwater, forming an extensive, connected aquifer that stores and moves the brine under the ice.

Researchers report that the brine is routed toward Blood Falls by pressure differences and the shape of the glacier's surface and bed, which guide flow along specific paths.

A debris-rich layer at the glacier base and surrounding ice-cored moraines block most escape routes, causing the liquid to pool in a pressurized subglacial pool just upstream from the falls, Earth reported.

When cracks and basal crevasses open in the moving ice, they act like pipes, allowing the pressurized brine to inject into the glacier and eventually burst out at the visible red waterfall.

The iron-rich brine also carries a community of microbes that survive without sunlight, using chemical reactions with iron and sulfur for energy.

Scientists say this makes Blood Falls an important natural laboratory for studying life in extreme environments and may offer clues to how life could exist in hidden brine systems on icy worlds like Mars or Jupiter's moon Europa.

The new work shows that even very cold, "dry" Antarctic glaciers can hide active groundwater systems powered by pressure and salt, changing how researchers think about water flow beneath the ice, as per Science Direct.