Things that go bump in the night.

April 20, 2005 4:40 AM

As predicted and previously discussed, the world's largest collision took place in Antarctica when a 115km (71mile) long iceberg collided with the Drygalski ice tongue in McMurdo Sound. The resulting satellite photographs show the results of the collision quite clearly, but somehow fail to convey the sheer scale of the event.
posted by bap98189 (24 comments total)

A somewhat better picture here, also from New Scientist.
posted by zardoz at 5:16 AM on April 20, 2005

First of all: Wow! That's amazing.

Second: Oh no! Starving penguins!
posted by Kattullus at 5:24 AM on April 20, 2005

Considering that the iceberg is just a little smaller than Long Islang (84 miles long), I am amazed.
posted by Alison at 5:42 AM on April 20, 2005

I hate to say this, but my first thought was that it's an Absolut ad waiting to happen.

Can we break it up into smaller pieces? Should we?
posted by amberglow at 5:46 AM on April 20, 2005

What was stopping them from putting cameras on the berg and on land to record the collision?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:57 AM on April 20, 2005

The starving penguins.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:04 AM on April 20, 2005

Jeez - that's big. About twice as big as the Island on which I live. The mind boggles...

Imagine the noise it would have made?! Strange that none of the articles seem to mention how fast the 'berg was moving - although they imply that the two "smashed" together...
posted by Chunder at 6:07 AM on April 20, 2005

zardoz: "A somewhat better picture here, also from New Scientist."

That picture is from January, when the iceberg ran aground.
posted by Plutor at 6:16 AM on April 20, 2005

Won't someone think of the penguins?? The problem is, the fate of these penguins has been at the mercy of this iceberg before... Then again, perhaps the US Coast Guard can once again save these penguins, as they've saved others before them.

And then... there's this.
posted by AspectRatio at 6:52 AM on April 20, 2005

Heh - the Google locator thing gets confused when you search for any information about this iceberg...

It thinks I'm after "a iceberg" in the locality of B15 (Birmingham, England) :-) Oops!

Anyway - I found out that it was travelling at 2km per day. Not too fast, but *lots* of momentum... can't find anything that'll tell me the height of the ice protruding out of the water, but even if it's only 100m then that would imply that there's 3x10^11 cubic metres of ice above water (based on a surface area of 3,000 square kilometres).

If 90% of the ice is underwater, this means that there's 3x10^12 cubic metres of ice overall.

At 919kg per cubic metre, this amounts to 2.8x10^15 kilograms of ice... gosh.

Of course, my maths/physics is a probably a bit rusty... but it strikes me that a collision involving a lump of ice this massive would do more than just cause a slight "bump"...

As an aside, there's a whole load of worry that melting icebergs will cause sea levels to rise. But what about the consideration of the displacement of the sea by the ice. When the ice goes, the sea level will no longer be displaced as much, and thus the rise may not be as much.
Anyway, totally OT... this all just got me thinking :-)
posted by Chunder at 7:19 AM on April 20, 2005

AspectRatio, your third link reminded me of this.

[/further off topic]
posted by of strange foe at 7:26 AM on April 20, 2005

No, Chunder, the displacement is the same when it melts as when it's solid. It displaces its own mass, and the mass doesn't change when it goes from solid to liquid.

It raised the sea level a little bit when it broke off the Ross ice shelf. Previously it had been supported by land, and was not displacing as much.
posted by breath at 7:26 AM on April 20, 2005

Antarctic History.
posted by nthdegx at 7:27 AM on April 20, 2005

Mass doesn't matter so much. It's the density and volume that we should be concerned with.
posted by Alison at 7:35 AM on April 20, 2005

"World's largest collision"? I'm sure the dinosaurs would disagree.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 7:45 AM on April 20, 2005

Very interesting. Sea ice is tremendously noisy in general, grinding and squeaking as well as a near constant low rumble as it moves. The sound of a collision this big this must have been something else.
posted by fshgrl at 8:18 AM on April 20, 2005

Great post! So... if you press *your* tonge to the ice tongue, will it stick forever?
posted by dfowler at 8:20 AM on April 20, 2005

People get paid to track this stuff? I want in!
posted by bardic at 8:22 AM on April 20, 2005

woah...
posted by trinarian at 9:11 AM on April 20, 2005

“It was more of a bump in the night [than the] collision of the century,” admits Mark Drinkwater, head of ESA’s oceans and ice unit in The Netherlands.

Drinkwater. Heh.
posted by DakotaPaul at 9:37 AM on April 20, 2005

Great post! So... if you press *your* tonge to the ice tongue, will it stick forever?

Let's just hope the ice tongue doesn't collide with a flagpole.
posted by Dr. Zira at 9:40 AM on April 20, 2005

Largest collision? How about this?
posted by BrotherCaine at 2:43 PM on April 20, 2005

Chunder... I was working on your calculations in my head... looking at all the cool scienti... [HEAD ALL ASPLOOOOOOOOOODE]
posted by AspectRatio at 2:50 PM on April 20, 2005

Did ya ever notice that "scientists" go on and on about some major disaster about to happen, only to have the "disaster" fizzle like a wet bottle rocket?

Now, what really worries me is when they say "Nothing to worry about here, folks. Nothing can possibly go wrong."




(boom)
posted by Enron Hubbard at 4:32 PM on April 21, 2005