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A common depiction of an iceberg is one that has a short head peeking out of the water and a deep spike underneath. However, as Megan Thompson-Munson pointed out, that’s not how icebergs actually float. Because physics.
Inspired by Thompson-Munson’s comment, Joshua Tauberer made Iceberger, which is a fun interactive that lets you draw an iceberg of your own and the shape floats accordingly.
Posted by in float, iceberg, Infographics
The world’s biggest iceberg, A68a, is on track to crash into a remote island in the Atlantic. For Reuters, Marco Hernandez and Cassandra Garrison show the path, the scale, and what might happen with A68a:
The iceberg is comparable in size to many well-known islands. A68a is very similar in size and shape to Jamaica, almost as long as the U.S. territory Puerto Rico, and dwarfs China’s Hong Kong Island as well as the Southeast Asian city state of Singapore.
Observers from the British Antarctic Survey told media that a flight last year over the A68a took about one and a half hours. The berg is so big, Royal Air Force pilots this week were unable to capture it all in one, single photograph.
Using the thermal signature, NASA provides a detailed view of the break:
The false-color image was captured by Landsat’s Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS). It shows the relative warmth or coolness of the landscape. Orange indicates where the surface is the warmest, most notably the mélange between the new berg and the ice shelf. Light blues and whites are the coldest areas, including the ice shelf and the iceberg.
It’s like something out of a movie.