Beautiful and scary at the same time. Almost like the iceberg was a planet on its own with mountains, valleys, crevices. Then everything goes haywire. The fall of a majestic titan. The destruction of a world.
> My take would be that underwater temps cannot get below freezing
Yep, density of water changes with temperature—it's the only thing that has that phenomenon—and therefore the colder water is always at the surface. That's actually what made life possible since life could survive despite a frozen surface.
Happy to be proven wrong, but that's what I learnt making cocktails and investigating clear ice :)
Freezing point of water changes with salinity and impurities. By definition a liquid cannot be below its freezing point until it has completed its phase change.
Yes. My point was that it's easier(?) to get below freezing point above water than below. So while the cold air keeps the upper part of the iceberg (relatively) intact - it will slowly melt below the sea until the center of gravity changes enough to flip over.
I would have thought it would generate enormous wave, but that's clearly not the case. I think some of the biggest waves was generated by a mountain sliding or collapsing in the sea. I expected something similar here. Anyone know why not?
It is not a very energetic event for its size. The iceberg is floating, it can't accumulate a lot of potential energy before flipping, so when it happens, there is not enough to make big waves. The center of gravity of the iceberg barely moves.
A mountain sliding into the sea is different, these higher up rocks have a lot of potential energy, that convert into kinetic energy as they fall, which is transferred to the water as they splash down, making big waves.
All its mass is already on the water so it's not displacing anything. It probably made some splashes but it seems like a fairly round object rotating rather than smashing into anything
One of the comments said just that. "Grounded near disko bay" iirc.
Another comment said that icebergs melt blow water faster than in the air and that flipping is a fairly common thing to do because the center of gravity changes.
You can see bathtub rings on the underside as it's lifted up. The rings are caused by it's melting faster under the water than in the air, so there's a discontinuity at the waterline.
Honestly, my first thought watching this video is "I want a root beer float." Something in the way the icefalls as the iceberg is flipping over just makes me think of that...
I would have described flipping it over before collapsing. The title seems a clickbait, but is no quite that.
Keep in mind that most of the iceberg is off camera, as shown during the first minutes. It lost 80% or 90% of its total mass but most of it isn't seen until the end, when the iceberg goes back to the right.
Glaciers have been calving huge icebergs into the sea for as long as glaciers have met ocean. Those icebergs eventually melt and collapse just like this.
Rising temps contribute to the rate at which icebergs are produced and the speed at which they melt, but there's nothing in this video in particular that wouldn't have happened 200 years ago aside from the motorboat going by at the beginning.
I'd have assumed it would be colder and more compacted (being toward the bottom and further under water), and therefore harder.
Water below ”sea” level tends to stay around -1C (salt water) to 4C. Below that, water becomes ice…
Ambient temperature can drop to -40C … internally these ice blocks hoover around -10C.
Yep, density of water changes with temperature—it's the only thing that has that phenomenon—and therefore the colder water is always at the surface. That's actually what made life possible since life could survive despite a frozen surface.
Happy to be proven wrong, but that's what I learnt making cocktails and investigating clear ice :)
Artificial Intelligence isn't the issue. Natural Stupidity is.
A mountain sliding into the sea is different, these higher up rocks have a lot of potential energy, that convert into kinetic energy as they fall, which is transferred to the water as they splash down, making big waves.
Another comment said that icebergs melt blow water faster than in the air and that flipping is a fairly common thing to do because the center of gravity changes.
Edit: Did a quick background check, video seems legit.
Rising temps contribute to the rate at which icebergs are produced and the speed at which they melt, but there's nothing in this video in particular that wouldn't have happened 200 years ago aside from the motorboat going by at the beginning.
Any particular iceberg is t that interesting, but the source! That’s the sad part.