From a crack in the Taylor Glacier in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of
Antarctica flows a curious blood-red colored water. When it was first
discovered by geologist Griffith Taylor in 1911, the color was thought
to have come from an algae. The source of the red color was later
discovered to be an iron-rich underground saltwater lake that was
trapped by the encroaching glacier at least 1.5 million years ago. The
temperature of the water is -5 Celsius, but it's so salty that it
doesn't freeze.
But the Blood Falls houses another secret,
which scientists from Harvard University have started to uncover - it's
home to an entire ecosystem of bacteria, trapped for millennia in
conditions that are extremely inhospitable to life.