Why Yellowstone’s Grand Prismatic Spring Has Vibrant Rainbow Colors?

The Grand Prismatic Spring is one of the famous tourist destinations in the Yellowstone National Park. It's the largest hot spring in the country and the third one in the world, and it's popular for its rainbow color.

Grand Prismatic Spring Vibrant Color Explained

The Grand Prismatic Spring exhibits a rainbow-like color range ranging from red to blue. The earliest legally recognized description and name of the spring comes from the 1871 Hayden Expedition, the first government-financed investigation of what would eventually become Yellowstone.

These extraordinary prismatic springs have a unique vividness and delicate hue that no human artwork has ever been able to match. According to expedition leader Ferdinand Hayden, "life becomes a privilege and a blessing after one has seen and thoroughly felt these incomparable types of nature's cunning skill."

Behind the hot spring's amazing coloring are reportedly the bacteria that love the heat and live in the hot spring. When heated water seeps through surface fissures, hot springs are created.

Hot spring water flows freely, producing a continuous cycle of hot water rising, cooling, and lowering, in contrast to geysers, which have blockages at the surface (hence their outbursts). This continuous cycle in the Grand Prismatic Spring produces rings of varying temperatures around the center: extremely hot water bubbles out from the center. It progressively cools as it spreads out across the huge surface (370 feet across) of the spring.

The water at the spring's center, which bubbles up 121 feet from subterranean chambers, can reach approximately 189 degrees Fahrenheit, which is too hot for most life to survive. Some do, but they are restricted to organisms that feed on inorganic chemicals like hydrogen gas.

The water's stunning deep blue color and exceptional clarity are caused by the sparse growth of blue wavelengths in the pool's center, so lakes and oceans appear blue to the unaided eye. However, as the water cools and spreads out, it forms concentric circles of differing temperatures, resembling stacking Matryoshka dolls if each doll represents a different temperature.

The distinct temperature rings are also crucial because they each produce a completely different environment home to various bacterial species, including cyanobacteria. Furthermore, the prismatic spring colors are attributed to the multiple microorganisms.

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More About Grand Prismatic Spring

Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone's largest hot spring. It is 200-330 feet in diameter and more than 121 feet deep. Microscopic creatures can also live and flourish in hydrothermal characteristics. The term "thermophiles" refers to them; "thermo" stands for heat and "phile" for lover.

Trillions are gathered together and seem like masses of color, even though they are too small to be seen with the human eye. Chemical building blocks and energy are their sources of nourishment.

Thermophiles that are yellow and colorless flourish in the warmest water. Thermophiles that are orange, brown, or green flourish in colder waters.

Envision residing in temperatures that are almost boiling, in hydrothermal features that are as alkaline as baking soda, or in water that is so acidic that it can burn holes in clothes. To survive, microorganisms in Yellowstone require these extremes.