Mysterious 70-Mile Crack Opens Up In Antarctica

A mysterious 70-mile crack has opened up in an ice sheet in Antarctica which scientists say threatens to destroy a nearby research station.  The Halley VI research station is currently being relocated as the crack continues to grow bigger. “If [the crack] continues to move and the ice breaks off, the station would be on the wrong side of the crack,” Athena Dinar, a spokesperson for the British Antarctic Survey said. Livescience.com reports: Snapped by scientists on NASA’s IceBridge mission, the shot shows a rift in Larsen C, an ice shelf that is floating off the Antarctic Peninsula. When the crack eventually spreads across the entire ice shelf, it will create an iceberg the size of the state of Delaware, according to IceBridge. That’s around 2,491 square miles (6,451 square kilometers). As of Nov. 10, when the IceBridge scientists observed this crack, it was 70 miles (112 km) long and more than 300 feet (91 meters) wide. The dark depths of the crack plunge down about a third of a mile (0.5 km), all the way through the ice to the ocean below. According to NASA Ice, an Earth sciences program at NASA, this rift is relatively new — it showed [...]

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