Grand Prismatic Spring – Third Largest Hot Spring In The World

Located in one of the most popular national parks in America, Grand Prismatic Spring is the third-largest hot spring in the world.

Besides its size, it reflects the entire rainbow spectrum just like a prism. Its blue center spreads into a red ring around the edge.

The color shift is due to heat-loving microbes in the water.

What Makes The Grand Prismatic So Grand?

Deeper Than A 10-Story Building

Extremely hot water travels 121 feet from a crack in the Earth to reach the surface of the spring.

Football Field On Steroids

The third-largest spring in the world, the Grand Prismatic is bigger than a football field at 370 feet in diameter. A gridiron is 360 feet long and 160 feet wide.

Rainbow Of Colors

The hot spring has bright bands of orange, yellow, and green ring the deep blue waters in the spring. The multicolored layers get their hues from different species of thermophile (heat-loving) bacteria living in the progressively cooler water around the spring. And the deep blue center? That’s because water scatters the blue wavelengths of light more than others, reflecting blues back to our eyes.

A Living Thermometer

What living thing in Yellowstone has helped investigators solve crimes and NASA search for extraterrestrial life on seemingly inhospitable planets? Heat-loving microbes living in the Yellowstone’s thermal pools. In 1968, researcher Thomas Brock discovered a microbe living in one of Yellowstone’s extremely hot springs. In the years since, research on Yellowstone’s microbes has led to major medical and scientific advances, including the sequencing of the entire human genome.