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SYSK Selects: How Icebergs Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Hi everyone, it's me Josh and for this week's s
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Speaker 1: Y s K Selects. It's how Icebergs work. It's a good,
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Speaker 1: straight ahead stuff you should know based on a grab
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Speaker 1: store article, so you know it's quality that anyway, kickback, enjoy.
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Speaker 1: Maybe you put on a sweater, a little scarf. Here'
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Speaker 1: still some hot coco. Maybe a little those those marshmallows.
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Speaker 1: Maybe treat yourself and get the colored marshmallows that are
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Speaker 1: like in the shapes of stars and moons and stuff
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Speaker 1: that might actually just be lucky charms I'm thinking of
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Speaker 1: at any rate, and enjoy this episode. Welcome to Stuff
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Speaker 1: you Should Know, a production of Five Heart Radios How
0:42
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:51
Speaker 1: There's Charles W Chuck Bryant and that makes this stuff
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Speaker 1: you should know. How's it killing everybody? It's a joy stage? Josh,
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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, how so? Oh? I don't know. It's just
1:00
Speaker 1: it's been a joys day. Don't you think I'm very glad?
1:02
Speaker 1: Do you think it's been a joyous day? What do
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Speaker 1: you think? You haven't had a computer so you don't care.
1:07
Speaker 1: I know my laptop has been apparently too full of
1:11
Speaker 1: data to operate whatever that means. Yeah, he's stuffed it
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Speaker 1: up with two gigs of shady stuff. It's right. Yeah,
1:19
Speaker 1: it's called research, I guess. So every single bit of
1:23
Speaker 1: that it was hard facts, buddy. Yeah. And songs. Yeah
1:29
Speaker 1: those videos is there? Well, there you go. Videos tend
1:33
Speaker 1: to stop stuff up by especially high res ones. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: that's probably what it was. I would imagine. So on
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Speaker 1: your work computer? No less, Well what am I going
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Speaker 1: to do? Carry on two computers? Why where are we
1:44
Speaker 1: talking about this? No? I don't know you started it.
1:47
Speaker 1: Let's hear the intro. Chuck. Yes, I'm quite sure that. Um,
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Speaker 1: you'll think I'm kind of stupid for mentioning probably the
1:55
Speaker 1: most famous ship ever to be sunk by an iceberg,
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Speaker 1: but humor me. Of course. We all know the wreck
2:02
Speaker 1: of the William Carson, which in seven went down off
2:07
Speaker 1: the coast of Labrador. Uh. It had a number of
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Speaker 1: cars on board, but more importantly a hundred and nine souls, right,
2:15
Speaker 1: which is what they call you when you're ap to see. Yeah,
2:19
Speaker 1: like a hundred nine souls lost. I never really have
2:23
Speaker 1: heard that or paid attention. Really, I thought they would
2:26
Speaker 1: say lives lost. They say souls they say souls a lot.
2:29
Speaker 1: Are they used to old time? You wise, before Kennedy
2:32
Speaker 1: in the separation of church and state. I guess right, yeah,
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Speaker 1: I guess now they call them lives before they were souls.
2:37
Speaker 1: All souls lost. That's sad. Yeah, it makes it even sadder.
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Speaker 1: It's like the Saints crying right under certain circumstances. Um.
2:46
Speaker 1: But the luckily a hundred and nine souls were not lost.
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Speaker 1: Zero souls were lost on the William Carson. As everybody knows.
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Speaker 1: The cars went down though, which is a tragedy for
2:57
Speaker 1: the insurance companies covering those cars. But as I said,
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Speaker 1: like every school child knows the story of the William Carson.
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Speaker 1: Did you know that there were other ships that have
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Speaker 1: hit icebergs? I was not aware of any. It's true.
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Speaker 1: The Lady of the Lake Okay, yeah, I didn't know
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Speaker 1: about that. One went down in the Grand Banks. Didn't
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Speaker 1: make a movie about that. Uh no, no, you're thinking
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Speaker 1: of ex caliber um. The Lady of the Lake went
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Speaker 1: down on the Grand Banks on its way to Quebec
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Speaker 1: with seventy people on board. Seventy souls. Seventy souls, um.
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Speaker 1: The s s hush should toft hushed. Toft ok yeah,
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Speaker 1: um off the coast of Greenland in ninety nine on
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Speaker 1: her maiden voyage. Can you believe this? That makes it
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Speaker 1: so much worse than it's a maiden voyage? People dead
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Speaker 1: all because of icebergs. I mean there's been other ships
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Speaker 1: that have hit icebergs, but um, all because a chunk
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Speaker 1: of floating ice took out an entire ship. Souls and
3:52
Speaker 1: souls and souls were lost. Yeah. You know, we have
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Speaker 1: a young fan named Shelley Stein right now that it
3:57
Speaker 1: is about to throw her iPod through and there is
4:01
Speaker 1: that the person who always wants to hear about that,
4:03
Speaker 1: um that other ships thinking, Yeah, she's been begging for
4:06
Speaker 1: like two years leading out of the anniversary, that's right. Um. Anyway,
4:11
Speaker 1: what's crazy is that all of these ships were lost.
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Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, between eighteen eighty two and
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Speaker 1: eighteen nine, fourteen passenger liners went down in a place
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Speaker 1: called Iceberg Galley. But it was only the last twenty
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Speaker 1: five years that we started tracking icebergs. What's even more amazing, though,
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Speaker 1: is that we have learned a tremendous amount in those
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Speaker 1: twenty five years, and we're still learning and we will
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Speaker 1: dispense with the learning forth with. That's right, this was interesting.
4:39
Speaker 1: Was this a grapstor? Yeah? Boy, he puts together a
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Speaker 1: nice article, didn't he. He He does. He knows what he's doing.
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Speaker 1: He's a professional. I never feel uh, I never feel
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Speaker 1: bad about about his You feel bad about some of them, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: like the ones I write, Like the ones you right,
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Speaker 1: they're very adventurous. They were for the Adventure Channel right
5:00
Speaker 1: at one point, So chuck um. I think people they're
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Speaker 1: sitting there sitting at home thinking right now, like they're
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Speaker 1: talking about icebergs and it's just a chunk of floating ice.
5:09
Speaker 1: And you're absolutely right, it is just a chunk of
5:12
Speaker 1: floating ice, not just a chunk. There's so much more
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Speaker 1: to us um for example, iceberg saltwater? Nope, fresh water yep?
5:22
Speaker 1: Why well, uh, I learned virtually everything I've ever known
5:27
Speaker 1: about icebergs within the past. By the way, uh, it
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Speaker 1: is ice um, but it is not sea ice or
5:34
Speaker 1: pack ice. Like when you see dead least catch in
5:36
Speaker 1: their motoring through that that sea ice. Those those aren't
5:40
Speaker 1: little chunks of iceberg. That's saltwater, right, that's frozen seawater.
5:45
Speaker 1: Frozen seawater and iceberg was um is a piece of
5:48
Speaker 1: a glacier that has busted off or calved, calved, calved
5:54
Speaker 1: like having a calf, like giving birth to a cat.
5:57
Speaker 1: It's calfing, calving, calving, having Yeah, man, I had it
6:02
Speaker 1: until you threw me off. Well saying cal I thought
6:05
Speaker 1: it would be calving, calving, caving away from a glacier.
6:10
Speaker 1: How many times we just said calving and a glacier. Uh.
6:13
Speaker 1: Let's talk about glaciers for a second. Glaciers are packed
6:18
Speaker 1: snow basically, well yeah, but I mean they're a little
6:21
Speaker 1: more interesting than that. Well, yeah, that's the that's the
6:23
Speaker 1: base route though right in certain latitudes, Um, it never
6:27
Speaker 1: gets warm enough for snow to fully melt all the
6:30
Speaker 1: way in the summertime. So what you have is an
6:32
Speaker 1: accumulation of that snow that builds up over and over
6:35
Speaker 1: and over again over the centuries, over the eons, as
6:39
Speaker 1: old as ten thousand years old. Sometimes yeah, uh, and
6:42
Speaker 1: that's a glacier. But glaciers are also additionally interesting in that, um,
6:47
Speaker 1: they become so heavy that they over this freezing thaw
6:52
Speaker 1: cycle and um, the accumulation of layers that they all
6:56
Speaker 1: of the air bubbles are pressed out of them. So
6:59
Speaker 1: glaciers are blue, the color of frozen water with no
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Speaker 1: air in um. And they also move under the force
7:08
Speaker 1: of their own weight. They moved downward, downhill towards sea level,
7:12
Speaker 1: because sea levels as downhill as it gets right until
7:15
Speaker 1: you hit the sea, that's right. And um. So because
7:19
Speaker 1: of this, they are this ultra dense form of ice. Yeah.
7:24
Speaker 1: So it slips down, floats out into the sea. Tidal
7:28
Speaker 1: motions eventually will cause little cracks and fissures and then
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Speaker 1: a piece of the glacier will break off and boom,
7:35
Speaker 1: there's ice. That's an iceberg. It's a freshwater piece of
7:39
Speaker 1: a glacier. Freshwater glacier chunks, right, and it's freshwater because
7:42
Speaker 1: it's made of snow, not seawater. Um. And when you
7:45
Speaker 1: said that it floats out into the sea. That's called
7:49
Speaker 1: an ice shelf. Um. And up north and northern latitudes, um.
7:54
Speaker 1: The biggest ice shelves are found on the western coast
7:57
Speaker 1: of Greenland Lizard arc or northern icebergs that are formed
8:01
Speaker 1: up there off of those glaciers down south in Antarctica
8:05
Speaker 1: where there are penguins. But it's not the only place
8:07
Speaker 1: there's penguins. I want to make sure everybody knows, I know,
8:10
Speaker 1: and no polar bears. No, only a fool would say that. Yes, Um,
8:14
Speaker 1: the the pretty much the continent of Antarctica is ringed
8:18
Speaker 1: with ice shelves and there's a lot of open sea,
8:21
Speaker 1: so the icebergs can get really big. Yeah, they can
8:24
Speaker 1: keep extending extending, extending, But then like you said, yeah,
8:27
Speaker 1: they break off and then you have an iceberg. Do
8:30
Speaker 1: you wanna talk about ice? Yeah? This is fascinating. Like
8:33
Speaker 1: I went over this again and again and again until
8:35
Speaker 1: I finally got it, and I feel like I got it.
8:37
Speaker 1: Oh it's so easy though I was making a lot
8:40
Speaker 1: oft of it. Yeah. Uh, ice, as we all know,
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Speaker 1: is the solid phase of water. You have you know,
8:47
Speaker 1: liquid solid gas, iis the solid phase thirty two degrees
8:51
Speaker 1: fahrenheit for fresh water or zero celsius. Salt water is
8:55
Speaker 1: gonna need to be a little bit colder because, um,
8:59
Speaker 1: there are basically salt molecules getting in the way of
9:03
Speaker 1: the ice forming. Well, they they they move faster I
9:06
Speaker 1: believe than water molecules. It takes a lower temperature to
9:10
Speaker 1: slow them down. And also it's a greater density if
9:12
Speaker 1: you're talking saltwater, right, which is important, very important. But
9:17
Speaker 1: ice also is the is peculiar, meaning unique, and that
9:23
Speaker 1: it's the only solid phase of any substance. I believe
9:28
Speaker 1: that is less dense than the liquid phase. So ice
9:33
Speaker 1: is less dense the water, and then seawater is denser
9:37
Speaker 1: than fresh water. So well, And it's easy to remember
9:40
Speaker 1: that ice is less dense because when you put a
9:43
Speaker 1: little ice cube in your little chardonnay this summer, if
9:46
Speaker 1: you're a redneck, it'll float. Yeah, because there's little uh,
9:51
Speaker 1: ice forms in a crystalline shape, So those that leaves
9:54
Speaker 1: area for gaps, I guess, And so what is the
9:57
Speaker 1: air in there? Uh? Yeah, I'm sure there's just less dense.
10:01
Speaker 1: It's just the it's just it's less dense. Basically, if
10:04
Speaker 1: you take water and freeze it, you can think of
10:06
Speaker 1: it as spreading out, so it gets bigger, has it
10:09
Speaker 1: has a larger volume, but it'll weigh the same as
10:12
Speaker 1: that lesser amount of water. Right, And when you put something,
10:16
Speaker 1: say ice, in water, it's buoyant, and that the amount
10:22
Speaker 1: of water displaces has to equal the weight of the
10:25
Speaker 1: ice that's displacing it. But since there's more ice than
10:30
Speaker 1: an equal weight of water, there's some leftover that floats
10:34
Speaker 1: and that is what we call the tip of the iceberg.
10:36
Speaker 1: And when do you get confused, Yes, the tip of
10:39
Speaker 1: the iceberg, that is the part that sticks out, and
10:43
Speaker 1: it's about, depending on the iceberg, about one six to
10:46
Speaker 1: one ninth. And I'm sure everyone's seen those awesome pictures
10:50
Speaker 1: on the interwebs of you know, the top of the
10:54
Speaker 1: water and under the water of the iceberg. It's pretty cool, right,
10:57
Speaker 1: you've seen those. I have. It's very nice. And the
10:59
Speaker 1: reason there's vary variation between how much iceberg is showing
11:04
Speaker 1: it is because of the variation in the concentration of
11:07
Speaker 1: salt in seawater, any particular part of seawater. And and um. Also, uh,
11:13
Speaker 1: some icebergs are denser than others, as Morrissey said, just
11:17
Speaker 1: like people. Yeah, exactly. Uh. That you mentioned earlier that
11:21
Speaker 1: glacial ice is blue. Um. That is true. Um during
11:24
Speaker 1: different melting and freezing cycles, though, they will turn white
11:27
Speaker 1: because the air gets trapped in there. Um. And then
11:30
Speaker 1: sometimes these really old icebergs that have formed at the
11:34
Speaker 1: bottom of these thick Antarctic ice shelves like that have
11:38
Speaker 1: been around for thousands of years might actually have a
11:41
Speaker 1: greenish hue because it's just you know, soaked up organic
11:46
Speaker 1: matter under there over the years, right and then so
11:50
Speaker 1: which is kind of a dirty yellow brown. But icebergs
11:54
Speaker 1: have the tendency to roll over without warning, which is
11:57
Speaker 1: one reason why you wouldn't want to camp on an iceberg.
12:00
Speaker 1: You know, they're dangerous to be around. They are. And
12:02
Speaker 1: actually there was one that floated down to New Zealand
12:05
Speaker 1: and some helicopter charters were like selling flights to go
12:10
Speaker 1: check them out. One of them landed on the iceberg
12:12
Speaker 1: and they realized pretty quickly they shouldn't do that anymore. Um.
12:15
Speaker 1: But did they like getting short? Did it? No? They
12:17
Speaker 1: made it out okay. But when they got back and
12:19
Speaker 1: told people, I'm sure some scientists like, wait, what did
12:21
Speaker 1: you just do? Right? Don't ever do that again? Tc um.
12:27
Speaker 1: But the iceberg will roll over. And so you've got
12:30
Speaker 1: the green part up that's with the light reflecting up
12:34
Speaker 1: through the blue part. Then you get this brilliant emerald
12:37
Speaker 1: green and that's some old ice right there, Bubby, Bobby, Yes, Bobby,
12:41
Speaker 1: I've never said that before. The life cycle of an
13:05
Speaker 1: iceberg is pretty interesting too. We mentioned they can be
13:08
Speaker 1: as old as ten thousand years before they ever reached
13:12
Speaker 1: the ocean, and um, this is like centuries of compression.
13:18
Speaker 1: So that's why it's so so dense, that's why it's blue.
13:21
Speaker 1: And then once it calves off though and and from
13:24
Speaker 1: the glacier, you've got about three to six years on
13:27
Speaker 1: average if it's like say, it's up in the Iceberg
13:31
Speaker 1: galley and never strays below Parallel, which is apparently where
13:35
Speaker 1: the water starts to get a lot warmer. Four Parallel
13:38
Speaker 1: goes for Americans through like the tip of Minnesota and
13:41
Speaker 1: the upper Peninsula of Michigan. People below that are like,
13:45
Speaker 1: it's still pretty cold, yeah, I imagine. Um. So ones
13:49
Speaker 1: that stay up there and never come back down can
13:51
Speaker 1: float around for like fifty years and just kind of
13:54
Speaker 1: melt away slowly and quietly. Right. Ones that make it
13:57
Speaker 1: further south, like one made it to Bermuda once, which
13:59
Speaker 1: I'm sure was quite a surprise. Um, those go away
14:03
Speaker 1: fairly quickly. Uh yeah, And I enjoyed this. Um. One
14:06
Speaker 1: account of this expedition, Um, what's the guy's name? Dr
14:09
Speaker 1: Gregory Stone witnessed and wrote about in his book Ice Island, um,
14:15
Speaker 1: which I believe the largest ones are called ice Island sometimes.
14:18
Speaker 1: Yeah right, Um. His quote is in this iceberg basically
14:24
Speaker 1: became destabilized, and it sounds like it exploded, yes, like
14:28
Speaker 1: right in front of his face. Yeah. Well he said
14:30
Speaker 1: that there was an ice debris field across two miles. Yeah,
14:34
Speaker 1: and he said it was like shards of crystal shattering. Right.
14:38
Speaker 1: But if you think about it, that's what happens when
14:39
Speaker 1: you put in ice cuban water. Yeah. You hear that noise, right,
14:42
Speaker 1: It's called thermal shock. Yeah, it's pretty cool. And it's
14:44
Speaker 1: also because ice is less dense than water. As it's liquefying,
14:49
Speaker 1: it shrinks because think about it's contracting and it's pulling
14:53
Speaker 1: apart the outer warmer layer from the inner colder layer,
14:57
Speaker 1: and this cracks form in the ice cube essentially explodes.
15:01
Speaker 1: It sounds like that's the same thing that happened. Yes,
15:02
Speaker 1: So when you pour that that twelve year old Scotch
15:05
Speaker 1: on top of your single cube of ice, if you're
15:07
Speaker 1: into that, I don't know if you should be doing that.
15:09
Speaker 1: But okay, I'm not a neat guy. I like my
15:11
Speaker 1: I like it a little cold, and and I'm not
15:14
Speaker 1: so hardcore with the single malt, so two remove that
15:18
Speaker 1: bite just a bit is good for me. You don't,
15:20
Speaker 1: so you don't like take it neat through your nose
15:22
Speaker 1: and as that the way to do it. Yeah, the
15:25
Speaker 1: way you drink it with ice through your mouth. Yeah,
15:30
Speaker 1: I know, Scotch pure scoff at me, but scoff away
15:33
Speaker 1: or whatever. Just do what you like exactly. Um No,
15:37
Speaker 1: it's very supportive. I meant you as like people in general. Okay,
15:41
Speaker 1: so that wasn't supportive. Um let's talk about some factoids,
15:46
Speaker 1: and this this is to me. The fact of the
15:48
Speaker 1: show is that there are actually six official classifications for
15:52
Speaker 1: their size, and the first two it sounds like they
15:55
Speaker 1: were having a lot to drink when they were had
15:58
Speaker 1: the naming party and sobered up, sobered up a bit,
16:01
Speaker 1: because the smallest one's about the size of a car,
16:04
Speaker 1: maybe a little smaller called growlers. And then the next one,
16:07
Speaker 1: maybe about the size of your house, is called a
16:10
Speaker 1: burgie bit. I put the emphasoe on a bit like
16:14
Speaker 1: a burgie bit, a burgie bit. Either way, it's pretty cute.
16:17
Speaker 1: It is very cute. And then they got I guess
16:19
Speaker 1: sobered up or got bored or ran out of whiskey,
16:21
Speaker 1: and then they said, all right, then the next ones
16:22
Speaker 1: are small, medium, large, and very large, which just really
16:26
Speaker 1: boring compared to Burgie bit it is, but the very
16:29
Speaker 1: large ones are kind of interesting in that they just
16:33
Speaker 1: keep going and going. The largest one ever record is
16:36
Speaker 1: the B fifteen iceberg. Yeah, broke off of the Ross
16:40
Speaker 1: ice shelf down in Antarctica. Apparently it was about the
16:43
Speaker 1: size of Jamaica. Yeah. I think it's it's broken apart
16:48
Speaker 1: into smaller piece of scents, but I think the original
16:51
Speaker 1: um area was about sixty square miles. That's that's a
16:55
Speaker 1: big chunk of ice. Yeah. And in order to be
16:58
Speaker 1: I mean that's the per limit, Like it can just
17:01
Speaker 1: be as big as they're gonna get. There's no like
17:04
Speaker 1: cap or anything like that. To call it super extra large. Um.
17:09
Speaker 1: But very large you have to be about twenty four
17:12
Speaker 1: stories tall and a little longer than two football field
17:16
Speaker 1: six seventy if to be classified is very large. Yeah,
17:19
Speaker 1: that's that's big man. If you think about that, Yeah,
17:22
Speaker 1: it's huge. Um. I'm sorry, it's very large or it's
17:25
Speaker 1: huge huge. Um. The other two classifications that icebergs can
17:29
Speaker 1: fall in are equally boring as the last four size names.
17:32
Speaker 1: They really could have done better than this if you
17:34
Speaker 1: ask me. But they're the two shape classifications are tabular
17:38
Speaker 1: and non tabular. And tabular is basically just like a well,
17:43
Speaker 1: it looks like a table, like a or a tab tablet,
17:48
Speaker 1: writing tablet that's back, and it's like tall with steep
17:51
Speaker 1: sides and the flat tops like a floating plateau. UM
17:55
Speaker 1: and those tend to come off of the ice sheets
17:57
Speaker 1: down in the act Antarctic, I believe. Yeah, those are UM.
18:00
Speaker 1: I think they have to have a width five times
18:02
Speaker 1: greater than their height to be tabular, and then non
18:05
Speaker 1: tabular have I think five different classifications. You got blocky,
18:11
Speaker 1: flat top steep signs. They sound like Dick Tracy characters.
18:15
Speaker 1: They do wedged um flat with a steep surface on
18:19
Speaker 1: one side and a gradual slope on another. So it's
18:21
Speaker 1: like the high right haircut. Yeah, the gumby the gumby
18:26
Speaker 1: the dome which is round and smooth pinnacle, which means
18:28
Speaker 1: it has at least one big tall spiral sticking up,
18:32
Speaker 1: and then the ones that um deteriorate to where they
18:36
Speaker 1: form a big canyon and it looks like two different icebergs,
18:39
Speaker 1: but it's really connected. Underneath those are dry docks, so
18:43
Speaker 1: that means they have two tips sticking out, but they're
18:47
Speaker 1: connected underwater. It's like mind blowing. It's pretty it was.
18:51
Speaker 1: It's pretty neat at the very least. So, Um, we've
18:56
Speaker 1: got northern icebergs, southern icebergs, um, and there's plenty of
19:01
Speaker 1: icebergs like elsewhere, but for the most part, in northern icebergs,
19:05
Speaker 1: like we said, form off the western coast of Greenland
19:10
Speaker 1: because Greenland apparently I read this that Greenland and Antarctica
19:14
Speaker 1: are the only place where, um, there's ice sheets, glacial
19:18
Speaker 1: glacial true glacial sheets, glacial sheets. Boy, that's a tough one,
19:23
Speaker 1: that was. It surprised me too. I wasn't expecting that. Um.
19:26
Speaker 1: And in Greenland there's about twenty glaciers that cav the
19:31
Speaker 1: majority of the icebergs. Yeah, that was I thought pretty cool.
19:34
Speaker 1: I thought it was cool too. Um, roughly forty thousand
19:38
Speaker 1: medium too large uh calv from Greenland glaciers each year,
19:44
Speaker 1: is that right? And they are about ten percent as
19:48
Speaker 1: strong as concrete, which I thought sounded not super strong,
19:51
Speaker 1: but apparently that's like way harder than like your freezer ice.
19:55
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like this ice is different than the ice
19:58
Speaker 1: you put in your Scotch, right, which is why when
20:01
Speaker 1: icebergs run into one another, it tends to break it
20:04
Speaker 1: up into smaller icebergs. They're very much subject to um
20:09
Speaker 1: wave motion, uh storms, other icebergs land when they run
20:14
Speaker 1: into things, like they break up, and it's one of
20:16
Speaker 1: the things that has a big deletrious effect on their lifespan.
20:21
Speaker 1: But it's part of the it's part of the iceberg
20:23
Speaker 1: life cycle. We're still going with deletrius. Okay, good, um.
20:28
Speaker 1: They are pretty slow, but um, to give you an idea,
20:31
Speaker 1: like a fast moving iceberg goes about two point two
20:34
Speaker 1: miles per hour and that's holland, Oh, I'm glad you
20:38
Speaker 1: bring this up because that raises a very important point.
20:41
Speaker 1: Because we see the tip of the iceberg, and because
20:44
Speaker 1: we're so um anthropocentric um, we assume that when drives icebergs,
20:50
Speaker 1: you would be dead wrong. And assuming that since most
20:53
Speaker 1: of the iceberg is underwater, it's currents that drive icebergs
20:56
Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah, um. And so that's how icebergs can
21:00
Speaker 1: be trapped, like in the Antarctic, because they're trapped in
21:03
Speaker 1: that current or up north in the Labrador current, they
21:06
Speaker 1: kind of stay trapped up there. Um. But it also
21:11
Speaker 1: makes them subject to wave motion currents from other far,
21:15
Speaker 1: far off storms, and I guess getting hung up on
21:17
Speaker 1: things underwater. Yes as well. It's another good point is um,
21:21
Speaker 1: they apparently strike the bottom of land a lot. Yeah,
21:25
Speaker 1: and they can like wreck the sea floor, can't they.
21:28
Speaker 1: But if you think about it, like there's plenty of
21:30
Speaker 1: parts of North America where glacial movement carved geological features
21:37
Speaker 1: out of the land, the icebergs do the same thing.
21:39
Speaker 1: When they're dragged along by the current. And say, once
21:42
Speaker 1: a thousand feet tall underwater and it hits a patch
21:48
Speaker 1: of sea that's less than a thousand feet it's gonna
21:50
Speaker 1: strike New York City and fast. Go to Central Park
21:54
Speaker 1: and look at the rocks there. Oh yeah, yeah, they
21:56
Speaker 1: got all those little grooves cut out. That's ice. That's
22:00
Speaker 1: ice ice baby. Um No, that was not nice. Uh.
22:05
Speaker 1: The ecology this was sort of surprising to me because
22:09
Speaker 1: I just figured they're just floating along. Maybe they melt
22:13
Speaker 1: a little bit, what's the big whoop? But I didn't
22:15
Speaker 1: really consider the fact that it's melting this glacial fresh water,
22:19
Speaker 1: a lot of it at times, depending on the size
22:21
Speaker 1: of the iceberg, all around in the sea water. And
22:24
Speaker 1: that's got to have some sort of ecological effect. Yeah,
22:26
Speaker 1: and I couldn't find anything anywhere that said, like, there's
22:30
Speaker 1: a lot of life that's adapted to living in fresh
22:32
Speaker 1: water even though it's home is sea water, and they
22:34
Speaker 1: live around icebergs. I couldn't find anything like that. But
22:36
Speaker 1: apparently it has little effect on these animals because icebergs
22:41
Speaker 1: are basically like floating time released nutrient capsules. Yeah, it's
22:45
Speaker 1: like teeming with life around it, so they must love it,
22:48
Speaker 1: these little krill and plankton. It's like a lot of
22:50
Speaker 1: small stuff generally. Well, what there's there's a there's a
22:54
Speaker 1: definite um. What's that chain called food chain? Yeah, that
22:58
Speaker 1: iceberg support um. They bring a lot of iron rich
23:02
Speaker 1: nutrients from the land as a gift to the sea,
23:06
Speaker 1: and as they melt, they slowly release this stuff. This
23:09
Speaker 1: supports um algae. Right, there's a lot of algae that
23:14
Speaker 1: that grows on their krill. These little tiny shrimp like
23:17
Speaker 1: things eat the algae um, and then all these other
23:20
Speaker 1: animals eat the krill, and then the birds prey on
23:22
Speaker 1: the other fish that are eating the krill. So this
23:25
Speaker 1: whole food chain develops around this iceberg. Yeah, it's pretty cool.
23:28
Speaker 1: But even even something that I think they've only recently
23:31
Speaker 1: begun to figure out is that icebergs are there is
23:34
Speaker 1: a sign of climate change. Like everybody's worried about all
23:37
Speaker 1: the icebergs melting in the sea levels rising, and for
23:40
Speaker 1: good reason. But they're also figuring out that they also
23:44
Speaker 1: aid in carbon sequestration in the ocean. That makes sense.
23:48
Speaker 1: So this algae and all this stuff is they're eating
23:51
Speaker 1: this iron. There's a transfer of carbon from the land
23:54
Speaker 1: to these Uh that this life that eventually will die
23:59
Speaker 1: fall down into the bottom of the sea and keep
24:02
Speaker 1: the carbon trapped with it. So algae that wouldn't be there, um,
24:05
Speaker 1: is soaking up carbon and then being eaten and passed
24:09
Speaker 1: along in this undersea food chain. And they found that, um,
24:12
Speaker 1: the carbon absorption around in iceberg is twice what it
24:16
Speaker 1: is elsewhere because this algae wouldn't be there if it
24:19
Speaker 1: weren't for the iceberg. So there it's soaking up the
24:22
Speaker 1: CEO too. That's crazy. They also take it away what
24:46
Speaker 1: icebergs giveth uh and not just boats and chips like
24:51
Speaker 1: the Titanic. There I said it okay, Um, they can actually,
24:56
Speaker 1: like I said, they can clog up shipping lanes. They
25:00
Speaker 1: can in the case of B fifteen, I think it
25:03
Speaker 1: actually um had a pretty uh deleterious effect on Emperor Penguins. Yeah,
25:09
Speaker 1: in March of the March of the Penguins and they
25:13
Speaker 1: so you know what happens in that sad movie. I
25:15
Speaker 1: guess what. They have to walk around it. Yeah, and
25:17
Speaker 1: there's a they really have a tight schedule. When they
25:20
Speaker 1: hit an iceberg that's you know, taller than the penguins
25:23
Speaker 1: don't fly, remember, and it is really wide. They have
25:27
Speaker 1: to go around it. But they should learn to fly. Yeah,
25:30
Speaker 1: I would just solve a lot of problems. Um. So yeah,
25:34
Speaker 1: it can have negative effects on the little penguins a
25:36
Speaker 1: cute little penguins, and um it can rake the c
25:40
Speaker 1: floor and just destroy it basically over the course of
25:44
Speaker 1: many years. No good, no another cool thing. And this
25:51
Speaker 1: I don't know. I couldn't find if they're actually moving
25:54
Speaker 1: on this, but the United States Military um called up
25:58
Speaker 1: the Rand Corporation said, hey, yeah, boy, these things are
26:02
Speaker 1: huge chunks of awesome drinking water, totally safe to drink
26:06
Speaker 1: because it's from the water. Boy. Yeah, really I never
26:11
Speaker 1: saw that all the way through um it uh. They
26:16
Speaker 1: they called the Rain Corporation said Hey, can we study
26:18
Speaker 1: these things? And how viable is it too? I know
26:21
Speaker 1: it sounds crazy, but how viable is it to get
26:23
Speaker 1: one of these icebergs over here and provide fresh drinking
26:26
Speaker 1: water for people who need it? And it sounds like
26:29
Speaker 1: it's not the most ridiculous idea in the world. Um.
26:34
Speaker 1: Their study said that a system allowing a ten percent
26:36
Speaker 1: yield could provide water for five hundred million people at
26:40
Speaker 1: a cost of eight dollars per one tho cubic meters,
26:44
Speaker 1: which is not too bad. I mean, it's way more
26:47
Speaker 1: expensive than it should be, I think, than than we
26:50
Speaker 1: pay for water now. But our water is artificially cheap. Yeah,
26:54
Speaker 1: so as water becomes more expensive, if there's any icebergs left,
26:58
Speaker 1: we may want to go do that. And they say,
27:00
Speaker 1: I guess they just nudge it through the water closer
27:02
Speaker 1: and closer. Um. And this is where it gets a
27:05
Speaker 1: little hinky. It says in the article using massive insulating
27:08
Speaker 1: sheets to slow the melting. I don't know what that
27:11
Speaker 1: looks like, but oh it looks like, um my lar,
27:13
Speaker 1: like you used to reflect the sun on your car.
27:16
Speaker 1: That's what they would use. It's all it'll take, you know,
27:20
Speaker 1: like those um, sun blankets or whatever, just something to
27:23
Speaker 1: reflect the sun sunlight radiation. Well, it's also moving into
27:27
Speaker 1: warmer water that's not gonna melt it from below, or
27:29
Speaker 1: it'll melt it from below for sure, you know. But
27:31
Speaker 1: I mean you protect what you can. I guess, I
27:35
Speaker 1: guess if you're harvesting icebergs, you're right, they're not the
27:38
Speaker 1: They're not the only ones looking at this. Um. I
27:40
Speaker 1: ran across an M I T proposal of building a
27:43
Speaker 1: pipeline from Alaska, where there's plenty of glaciers that in
27:46
Speaker 1: the western US makes sense, but the author concluded it's
27:50
Speaker 1: like four and eighty seven billion dollars to build the
27:53
Speaker 1: pipeline keep it going, and that just wouldn't be worth it.
27:57
Speaker 1: Uh in canals to another Other groups study that and
28:01
Speaker 1: suggested a canal well and in the United States have
28:03
Speaker 1: exactly hurting for water. It would be nice that they
28:05
Speaker 1: did some of these studies and like pushed it to
28:07
Speaker 1: where they don't have fresh water right now at all.
28:10
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, it's been a little money for them,
28:12
Speaker 1: like life straws O great, Um well, I guess we
28:17
Speaker 1: already went over. Well, Iceberg Galley is actually a little
28:20
Speaker 1: more interesting. They started studying it. They formed the International
28:23
Speaker 1: Ice Patrol. Uh way later than they should have, I guess,
28:27
Speaker 1: but they probably didn't have the equipment they needed back
28:29
Speaker 1: in the day to do what they do now. Um,
28:32
Speaker 1: the Coastguard US Coastguard administers it and they worn ships.
28:37
Speaker 1: They kind of run it through their little program and say,
28:39
Speaker 1: we think this is where it's headed. This is how
28:41
Speaker 1: big it is. Uh, if you're in this area, you
28:44
Speaker 1: might want to watch out for this, for this guy
28:47
Speaker 1: floating your way. Well, they basically say, like there's ice
28:49
Speaker 1: up here, don't go above this these coordinates. It's called
28:53
Speaker 1: the Limit of All Known ice. Wow. And they the
28:58
Speaker 1: Coast Guard also does some other stuff for the I
29:00
Speaker 1: should say the Ice Patrol. Um. They do other things like, um,
29:05
Speaker 1: bomb icebergs. Did you find out more about that? No?
29:08
Speaker 1: I looked it up on YouTube because I was like,
29:10
Speaker 1: surely somebody's video everybody dropping obamba an iceberg. I couldn't
29:14
Speaker 1: find anything. Plenty of calving stuff. Um. And they also
29:19
Speaker 1: spray paint them with very bright paint, which it seems
29:22
Speaker 1: wrong to me, just so you can see him. Yeah. Yeah,
29:25
Speaker 1: that's like tagging, uh, like a new car or something. Yeah. Um,
29:29
Speaker 1: a beautiful new car made by nature. That wasn't good
29:33
Speaker 1: analogy or putting like um radio transmitters on them. It
29:37
Speaker 1: just makes sense. But then when they start to break up,
29:39
Speaker 1: it's like, well, there's a little chunk that has the
29:41
Speaker 1: radio transmitter three ft big. Yeah, uh so I got
29:46
Speaker 1: nothing else. I don't either, I've got something else, all right?
29:51
Speaker 1: What you got? So it became um, I became interested
29:55
Speaker 1: in the idea of this article mentions a nautical mile. Sure,
30:00
Speaker 1: we like, why why is there a nautical mile in
30:03
Speaker 1: a mile? And I found out why. So a nautical
30:06
Speaker 1: mile is um one point one five o eight miles,
30:11
Speaker 1: and the reason why is because a nautical mile, when
30:14
Speaker 1: going around the equator, takes into account the curvature of
30:19
Speaker 1: the Earth. A regular mile UM or called a statute
30:24
Speaker 1: mile is what it's called, goes from one point on
30:28
Speaker 1: the map to another through a straight line, which means
30:31
Speaker 1: that it's not taking into account the curvature of the earth,
30:34
Speaker 1: which means that the nautical mile more accurate, is more
30:37
Speaker 1: accurate and thus a little longer than the regular mile
30:40
Speaker 1: interesting from minute to minute along a degree, So a
30:44
Speaker 1: mile is really not a mile. So if you're saying
30:45
Speaker 1: on land. No, it's not because it's a it's it's
30:50
Speaker 1: it's like if you take the earth cut in half
30:52
Speaker 1: of the equator and turn it over. You've got the
30:55
Speaker 1: two halves and you're looking in the molten center, UM,
30:58
Speaker 1: and you divide it into three in sixty degrees, divide
31:01
Speaker 1: those degrees in two minutes, and the measure a minute
31:03
Speaker 1: to a minute. If you do a straight line, it's
31:06
Speaker 1: not as accurate. If you do the curve line, it
31:07
Speaker 1: will be accurate. And a kilometer is just way out there.
31:12
Speaker 1: In seventeen, the French Academy of Sciences said, okay, we're
31:18
Speaker 1: going to designate a kilometers the amount the length the
31:22
Speaker 1: distance from the North Pole to the equator through Paris,
31:27
Speaker 1: divided by ten thousand. Pretty clever. So there you have it, UM,
31:31
Speaker 1: nautical miles. I love it, Thanks man, I really uh
31:37
Speaker 1: went all out on this one, you asked me. I
31:39
Speaker 1: think so too. Kudos, sir um. If you want to
31:42
Speaker 1: learn more about icebergs, you can type in that word
31:45
Speaker 1: I ce E b r g s in the search
31:49
Speaker 1: bars how stuff works dot com. I'll bring up this
31:51
Speaker 1: fine fine article by A Grabanowski. Um, And I said,
31:54
Speaker 1: search bar, how stuff works which means it's time for
31:57
Speaker 1: listener mail. Josh, I'm gonna call this one, um. Good
32:04
Speaker 1: email from a Chicago, Chicago guy. That's a terrible Just yesterday, guys,
32:11
Speaker 1: I was finished reading a book Robin Dunbar wrote called Grooming,
32:16
Speaker 1: Gossip and the Evolution of Language. Her argument is that
32:19
Speaker 1: language evolved out of a need to keep up social
32:22
Speaker 1: relationships with group members put in its most basic form.
32:26
Speaker 1: Over time, our brains evolved to be larger, which made
32:29
Speaker 1: our average group size increase. At the same time, Once
32:33
Speaker 1: our group size became large enough, today our average group
32:36
Speaker 1: size is about one. We didn't have enough time in
32:39
Speaker 1: the day to groom one on one with that many
32:43
Speaker 1: group members to keep up our social bonds with them,
32:46
Speaker 1: So we evolved language so we could use language as
32:49
Speaker 1: a way to verbally groom with more members at a
32:51
Speaker 1: time to keep the group strong. That's interesting. It was
32:55
Speaker 1: my understanding that our brains have actually decreased in size,
32:58
Speaker 1: so we last like twenty years really because of group
33:03
Speaker 1: group size, because it's increased and we have to rely
33:06
Speaker 1: less on our like instincts and run from thunder and
33:08
Speaker 1: stuff like that. I smell a cage match. Um. Another
33:12
Speaker 1: interesting experiment I read about is this to Scientists were
33:15
Speaker 1: studying vervet monkeys in their natural habitat. They started recording
33:20
Speaker 1: the sounds of the vervets um and make notes about
33:24
Speaker 1: what they were doing when they made the noise. After
33:26
Speaker 1: examining a large sample of noises, they found a correlation
33:29
Speaker 1: between the sound they made and what was happening when
33:31
Speaker 1: they made it. I believe the noises were difficult to
33:33
Speaker 1: distinguish by the naked human ear, but the pattern was
33:36
Speaker 1: obvious when they compared large numbers of them together. The
33:39
Speaker 1: vervets made a different noise for when an air predator
33:43
Speaker 1: was spotted, when a ground predator was spotted, when approaching
33:46
Speaker 1: a dominant male, etcetera. It's not quite language where it
33:50
Speaker 1: like syntax, but it's still more advanced than I thought
33:53
Speaker 1: they were. Um, and that's pretty much it. Hope it
33:57
Speaker 1: wasn't too dense, but if it was, that has revenge
34:00
Speaker 1: for the Sun podcast as a listener right there. That's right,
34:05
Speaker 1: And that is from Matt Schunk from Chicago. Thanks Matt
34:09
Speaker 1: SHUNKA go bearts, Yeah, seriously, go beart. Um. I guess
34:15
Speaker 1: I always like to hear about new books that I
34:17
Speaker 1: should be reading. O, sure like we have any time
34:21
Speaker 1: for that anymore? Did you hear that that was a limit?
34:25
Speaker 1: It was, um send us your book recommendation, suckers. You
34:29
Speaker 1: can turn it. You can turn it into U S
34:32
Speaker 1: Y s K podcast on Twitter. Uh, you could send
34:35
Speaker 1: it to Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know.
34:38
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34:41
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34:44
Speaker 1: electronic mail, Wrap it up spanking on the bottom, and
34:47
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