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NASA finds rectangular ice-berg in Antarctica

#1
Yazata Offline
There were two of these rectangular icebergs, one very rectangular, the other not quite perfect.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/godda...dge-flight

The right angle corners and straight edges are extraordinary. This is the better one.


[Image: tab_iceberg_harbeck-sm.jpg?itok=HqzDDxaf]
[Image: tab_iceberg_harbeck-sm.jpg?itok=HqzDDxaf]



This is the not-so-good one. (The better one is behind the outboard aircraft engine in the picture.)


[Image: 20181016_6d_mg_1035-x4.jpg]
[Image: 20181016_6d_mg_1035-x4.jpg]



NASA photos.
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#2
C C Offline
Well, at least the imperfections in the 'berg of the second image made me feel a little less threatened by the prospect of having entered the Twilight Zone.

~
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#3
Yazata Offline
I wonder if they might be man-made. Perhaps somebody placed explosive charges to crack them off an ice-sheet, perhaps with a plan to tow them up to the Persian Gulf or someplace as a supply of fresh water. (They might serve as aircraft carriers too.)
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#6
Yazata Offline
(Oct 26, 2018 12:11 AM)Syne Wrote: If the good one were an actual rectangle, I'd be apt to claim in was the monolith, ala 2001.

[Image: mrjcniogbbftzv70mazl.jpg]
[Image: mrjcniogbbftzv70mazl.jpg]


Your photo makes that one look like a trapezoid. All of the edges look pretty straight.

There's some kind of physical process doing this. Do natural cracks in ice propagate through the ice in straight lines to produce fractures like this? If that were the case, why don't more icebergs have straight edges?

(Oct 26, 2018 02:29 AM)Magical Realist Wrote:

[Image: 61.png]
[Image: 61.png]


I thought of posting this to the 'weird' forum. But it does seem to me to be some kind of sea-ice phenomenon so I put it under oceanography.
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#7
Syne Offline
They're call tabular icebergs, and they seem to be fairly common.

But in fact, there is little that is particularly unusual about the iceberg photographed floating near the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica, as sea ice specialist Alek Petty explains. He is a research scientist with NASA's Operation IceBridge, the group that took the stunning photo, and is based at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

He says it's a kind of formation called a tabular iceberg, which forms in Antarctica, he says, "where we have these really wide floating ice shelves connected to land." The ice is "being kind of spread out in this very thin layer," Petty says, and "because it's ice and it's brittle, if that gets too weak or it comes into contact with something else, it can shatter and kind of break apart."
...
Petty compares the process to a fingernail that grows and grows, "then it gets very weak because really that ice is being kind of extended out into the ocean," leaving less support for the floating ice. At that point, tides or strong winds could break icebergs off.
...
But why such straight lines? Petty compares it to a glass plate that shatters — the lines are typically very straight. "You can just get these fracture lines that can form these interesting geometric structures," he says, and points out a different, triangle-shape iceberg spotted by NASA scientists recently.
- https://www.npr.org/2018/10/23/659799976...ar-iceberg

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#8
RainbowUnicorn Offline
(Oct 25, 2018 08:14 PM)Yazata Wrote: There were two of these rectangular icebergs, one very rectangular, the other not quite perfect.  

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/godda...dge-flight

The right angle corners and straight edges are extraordinary. This is the better one.


[Image: tab_iceberg_harbeck-sm.jpg?itok=HqzDDxaf]
[Image: tab_iceberg_harbeck-sm.jpg?itok=HqzDDxaf]



This is the not-so-good one. (The better one is behind the outboard aircraft engine in the picture.)


[Image: 20181016_6d_mg_1035-x4.jpg]
[Image: 20181016_6d_mg_1035-x4.jpg]



NASA photos.

conspiracy theories...
directly above the second engines leading edge is a circular ice berg which looks vaguely like a massive submerine conning tower.
lol
with 2 hatches open...
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