Science conquered another frontier

Several people use these words "Things beyond science's understanding", " Things scientists are unable to understand", "Things that baffled the scientists", "Things that are supernatural" to attract people towards their write-ups.

I told these people, "One by one these things will fall to science. It is just a matter of time. When scientists find time and the right equipment, they will definitely  shatter your  .... "

Now one more thing has met its reality grave. One more thing has fallen to scientific inquiry. What is it? 

The Eerie Mystery of 'Blood Falls' in Antarctica Is Finally Solved. Yes!

In 1911, during a British expedition to Antarctica, researchers were shocked to notice a glacier 'bleeding' from its tongue onto an ice-covered lake. The crimson drool is known as Blood Falls, and it's taken experts more than a century to figure out what is actually causing the eerie colouring.

When a team of  scientists took samples from Taylor Glacier's rusty tongue in November 2006 and mid and late November 2018, and analyzed the contents using powerful electron microscopes, they found out the truth. Using an array of analytical equipment, the researchers uncovered a few surprises that helped better explain the iconic red hue.

 The microscope images, scientists noticed,  were of those little nanospheres that were iron-rich.

The minuscule particles come from ancient microbes and are a hundredth of the size of human red blood cells. They are highly abundant in the meltwaters of Taylor Glacier, which was named after the British scientist Thomas Griffith Taylor who first noticed the Blood Falls on the 1910 to 1913 expedition.

Along with iron, the nanospheres also contain silicon, calcium, aluminum, and sodium, and this unique composition is part of what turns the briny, subglacial water red as it slips off the glacier's tongue and meets a world of oxygen, sunlight, and warmth for the first time in a long time.

In order to be a mineral, atoms must be arranged in a very specific, crystalline, structure. These nanospheres aren't crystalline, so the methods previously used to examine the solids did not detect them.

The Taylor Glacier in Antarctica hosts an ancient microbial community hundreds of meters under its ice, which has evolved in isolation for millennia, or possibly even millions of years.

As such, it's a useful 'playground' for astrobiologists, hoping to discover hidden life forms on other planets, too.

But the new findings suggest that if robots like the Mars Rover don't have the right equipment on board, they might not be able to detect all the lifeforms present beneath a planet's icy bodies.

The findings support a previous hypothesis, which suggests the reason scientists haven't yet detected life on Mars is because current technology can't always spot the signatures of life, even when a rover rolls right over them. If a Mars rover landed in Antarctica right now, for instance, it wouldn't be able to detect the microbial nanospheres that turn Taylor Glacier's terminus into a fan of red.

Environmental samples were collected in the field and analyzed in the laboratory using Fourier transform infrared, Raman, visible to near-infrared, and Mössbauer spectroscopies. Samples were further characterized using microprobe and inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy for chemistry, and x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy for mineralogy, crystallography, and chemistry. The mineralogy of these samples is dominated by the carbonate minerals calcite and aragonite, accompanied by quartz, feldspar, halide, and clay minerals. There is no strong evidence for crystalline iron oxide/hydroxide phases, but compositionally and morphologically diverse iron- and chlorine-rich amorphous nanospheres are found in many of the samples. These results showcase the strengths and weaknesses of different analytical methods and underscore the need for multiple complementary techniques to inform the complicated mineralogy at this locale.

These analyses suggest that the red colour at Blood Falls arises from oxidation of dissolved Fe²⁺ in the subglacial fluid that transforms upon exposure to air to form nanospheres of amorphous hydroxylated mixed-valent iron-containing material, with colour also influenced by other ions in those structures. Finally, the results provide a comprehensive mineralogical analysis previously missing from the literature for an analogue site with a well-studied sub-ice microbial community. Thus, this mineral assemblage could indicate a habitable environment if found elsewhere in the Solar System.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspas.2022.843174/full