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.
Especially the spine. If you had shown me a portion of the video with that thing moving as such, I would have believed it to be some leviathan.
Which brings us to the video itself - horrible. Presumably the original sound was recorded, because we hear it under the music. Just let us hear the sound! The people watching this video are people who appreciate nature, not people who need a dramatic soundtrack to be entertained.
And what is with changing the speed of the video every 60 seconds? Either show it at real speed, or speed it up, but not both intermittently! At first I thought there was an issue with the video playback hanging.
I would absolutely love to watch the original, unedited source.
My immediate reaction to a "what is with this loud music, I can barely hear the actual audio" comment on YouTube was to assume the channel was afraid of being copystruck by the iceberg's lawyers.
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
> 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 :)
Lots of things change density when temperature changes. Water is unique that below 4°C, it gets less dense as it cools - and that trend continues even through the phase change. That's why, as you mention, ice floats, and the surface freezes first, and fish can live below a frozen surface.
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.
That's what I thought too. The sudden stop is actually two phenomenon compounded. One, the mountain of ice contacts bottom. Two, the video speed changes from ~8x to 1x.
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.
Which brings us to the video itself - horrible. Presumably the original sound was recorded, because we hear it under the music. Just let us hear the sound! The people watching this video are people who appreciate nature, not people who need a dramatic soundtrack to be entertained.
And what is with changing the speed of the video every 60 seconds? Either show it at real speed, or speed it up, but not both intermittently! At first I thought there was an issue with the video playback hanging.
I would absolutely love to watch the original, unedited source.
First seen https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26201160
My immediate reaction to a "what is with this loud music, I can barely hear the actual audio" comment on YouTube was to assume the channel was afraid of being copystruck by the iceberg's lawyers.
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.
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 :)
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.
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 isn't that interesting, but the source! That’s the sad part.
Edit: Did a quick background check, video seems legit.