So what can we expect when they collide?
Thank you -- I was waiting for someone to ask that question -- what happens when they collide?
"It's a clash of the titans, a radical and uncommon event," says Robert Bindshadler, a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and if the two giant slabs of ice collide, we could see one of the best demolition derbies on the planet. "Even a 'tap' from a giant can be powerful. It will certainly be a blow far larger than anything else the ice tongue has ever experienced," says Bindshadler.
When the iceberg and the ice tongue collide, the impact will likely "dent their bumpers," says Bindshadler. The edges could crumple and ice could pile or drift into the Ross Sea. But if the B-15A iceberg picks up enough speed before the two collide, the results could be more spectacular. The Drygalski Ice Tongue could break off.
The ice tongue is thick ice that grows out over the Ross Sea from a land-based glacier on Antarctica's Scott Coast. "Ice tongues do break off on occasion," says Bindshadler. "It would only take one thin area on the ice tongue to make it break off." There's no guarantee that the Drygalski Ice Tongue will break off, but "this is the toughest blow it has ever had to deal with."
"That Ice tongue has no reason for staying intact" says Waleed Abdalati, researcher with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, but Bindshadler points out, it may not break up either. The results depend on the movement of the B-15A iceberg.
The B-15A iceberg is a 3,000-square-kilometer (1,200-square-mile) behemoth that has a history of causing problems. It is the largest fragment of a much larger iceberg that broke away from the Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000. Scientists believe that the enormous piece of ice broke away as part of a long-term natural cycle (every 50-to-100 years, or so) in which the shelf, which is roughly the size of Texas, sheds pieces much as human fingernails grow and break off.