Antarctica’s Hidden Brine: Blood Falls Reveals a Subglacial Microbial World
Blood Falls, a blood-red plume at Antarctica’s Taylor Glacier, is not surface algae but a million-year-old briny reservoir beneath the ice that rises to the surface and oxidizes upon contact with air; this subglacial water hosts microbes thriving without sunlight, expanding our understanding of life's limits and suggesting analogs for life beneath icy worlds.