Posted on 02/01/2012 7:03:57 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Researchers recently uncovered a startling phenomenon — a set of teardrop-shaped lakes in Antarctica that mysteriously move, jogging along at a pace as fast as 5 feet (1.5 meters) per day.
The lakes sit atop the George VI ice shelf — a massive floating plain of ice larger than Vermont, composed of the mingled fronts of glaciers that flow off the edge of the continent and rest on the ocean.
Glaciologist Doug MacAyeal at the University of Chicago, and student researcher C.H. LaBarbera, noticed the traveling bodies of water while studying satellite images of 11 ice shelf lakes captured between 2001 and 2010.
"We compiled 10 images for the last 10 years and literally made a movie," MacAyeal told OurAmazingPlanet, "and as we looked at the loop, the lakes moved up the coast."
The discovery was something of shock, he said. "We walked into our research with an expectation that has been completely defied by what we observed."
MacAyeal said he had expected the lakes to move over time, but only because the ice shelf underneath them also moves, as ice flows from the interior of the continent out to sea.
Instead, "we found a subset of lakes that defied this in a spectacularly curious and interesting way, by moving parallel to a coastline of the George VI ice shelf," MacAyeal said.
Syrupy maneuvers
It turns out the mechanism at work is something that nearly everyone would recognize from TV or the breakfast table — that gooey, back-and-forth folding action often shown in ads for chocolate or maple syrup, and known in scientific parlance as viscous buckling.
But in this case, the chocolate or maple syrup is the ice shelf, and it's "pouring" horizontally and smashing into and oozing around nearby Alexander Island, enfolding the large island ..
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
I’ve heard that there may be ancient cities underneath the antarctic ice.
Be cool if it was true.
Wait a minute. Isn’t that where they dropped off the Blob in the 50’s?
What you’ve read about is Lake Vostok and the magnetic anomaly at one end of it. Try google searches on ‘lake vostok magnetic anomaly’. The thing which usually pegs magnetometers is a (modern) city, with large quantities of steel structure.
***I’ve heard that there may be ancient cities underneath the antarctic ice.***
AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS by H P LOVECRAFT.
According to an article I just googled, around the area of Vostak, is a ringed metal structure 65 miles in diameter.
Interesting.
Who knows what else they might find? Jim Arness.
LOL! I’d love to see that fight.
...the Scottish map-makers responsible for the disappearance of 115,830 square miles of polar ice have admitted publicly they were wrong... We're sorry -- that we got caught... The Glasgow-based map-maker said: "We're very disappointed at the way it happened..."
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Illegal alien lakes trying to sneak into the US?
Invasion of the giant paramecium-men?
Link if you would please. Sounds interesting.
I just typed into Google.
Lake Vostok anomalies.
Larger than Vermont?
The mind reels...
I know every time I try to impress somebody about somethings humongously ginormous mind-boggling size, I compare it to Vermont!!
;-)
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