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How Icebergs Work (Very Cool) · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know?
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Speaker 1: From House Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant
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Speaker 1: and that makes this stuff you should know? How's it
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Speaker 1: killing everybody? It's a joy stage, Josh, so oh, I
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Speaker 1: don't know, it's just it's been a joy. Stay. Don't
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Speaker 1: you think? I'm very glad you think it's been a
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Speaker 1: joyous day. What do you think? You haven't had a computer,
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Speaker 1: so you don't care. I know my laptop has been
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Speaker 1: apparently too full of data to operate whatever that means. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: he's stuffed it up with fifty gigs of shady stuff.
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Speaker 1: It's right. Yeah, it's called research, I guess. So every
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Speaker 1: single bit of that it was hard facts buddy. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: And songs? Yeah? Videos is that? Well? There you go.
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Speaker 1: Videos tend 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? Cary? Answer? Computers? Why where are we talking
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Speaker 1: about this? I don't know you started it let's hear
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Speaker 1: the intro. Chuck, Yes, I'm quite sure that. Um, you'll
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Speaker 1: think I'm kind of stupid for mentioning probably the most
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Speaker 1: famous ship ever to be sunk by an iceberg, but
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Speaker 1: humor me. Of course. We all know the wreck of
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Speaker 1: the William Carson, which in seven went down off the
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Speaker 1: coast of Labrador. Uh. It had a number of cars
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Speaker 1: on board, but more importantly, a hundred and nine souls, right,
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Speaker 1: which is what they call you when you're to see. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: like a hundred and nine souls lost. I never really
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Speaker 1: hope heard that or paid attention. Really, I thought they
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Speaker 1: would say lives lost. They say souls. They say souls.
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Speaker 1: Are they used to old time, you wise, before Kennedy
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Speaker 1: in the separation of Church and date. I guess right, yeah,
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Speaker 1: I guess now they call them lives before they were
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Speaker 1: souls all souls lost. That's sad. Yeah, it makes it
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Speaker 1: even sader. It's like the saint crying right under certain circumstances. Um.
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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
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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 the Grand Banks on its way to Quebec with
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Speaker 1: seventy people on board, seventy souls. Um the s s
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Speaker 1: hush SHD toft hush and toft okay yeah, um off
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Speaker 1: the coast of Greenland in nineteen fifty nine on her
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Speaker 1: maiden voyage. Can you believe this? That makes it so
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Speaker 1: much worse that it's a maiden voyage. People dead all
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Speaker 1: because of icebergs. I mean, there's been other ships that
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Speaker 1: have hit icebergs, but um, all because a chunk of
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Speaker 1: floating ice took out an entire ship. Souls and souls
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Speaker 1: and souls were lost. Yeah. You know, we have a
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Speaker 1: young fan named Shelley Stein right now that is about
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Speaker 1: to throw her iPod through a window. Is that the
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Speaker 1: person who always wants to hear about that that other ships, thinking, yeah,
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Speaker 1: she's been begging for like two years leading into the anniversary.
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Speaker 1: That's right. Um. Anyway, what's crazy is that all of
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Speaker 1: these ships were lost. As a matter of fact, between
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Speaker 1: eighteen eighty two and eighteen passenger liners went down in
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Speaker 1: a place called Iceberg Galley. But it was only the
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Speaker 1: last twenty five years that we started tracking icebergs. What's
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Speaker 1: even more amazing, though, is that we have learned a
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Speaker 1: tremendous amount in those twenty five years, and we're still
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Speaker 1: learning and we will dispense with the learning forth with.
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Speaker 1: That's right. This is interesting. Was this a grabster? Yeah? Boy,
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Speaker 1: he puts together a nice article, then he he does.
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Speaker 1: He knows what he's doing. He's a professional. I never
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Speaker 1: feel uh, I never feel bad about about his. But
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Speaker 1: you feel bad about some of them. Yeah, like the
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Speaker 1: ones I write, like the ones you write. They're very adventurous.
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Speaker 1: They were for the Adventure Channel right at one point.
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Speaker 1: So chuck, um. I think people they're sitting there sitting
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Speaker 1: at home thinking right now, like they're talking about icebergs
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Speaker 1: and it's just a chunk of floating ice and You're
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Speaker 1: absolutely right. It is just a chunk of floating as
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Speaker 1: not just a chunk. There's so much more to us um.
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Speaker 1: For example, iceberg salt water, Nope, fresh water yep. Why well, Uh,
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Speaker 1: I learned virtually everything I've ever known about icebergs within
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Speaker 1: the past forty same here, by the way, Uh, it
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Speaker 1: is ice um, but it's not sea ice or pack ice.
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Speaker 1: Like when you see deadly sketching there motoring through that
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Speaker 1: that sea ice. Those those aren't little chunks of iceberg.
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Speaker 1: That's saltwater, right, that's frozen seawater. Frozen seawater and iceberg
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Speaker 1: was um is a piece of a glacier that has
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Speaker 1: busted off or calved, calved, calved like having a calf,
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Speaker 1: like giving birth to a cat is calving, calving, calving, calving. Yeah, man,
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Speaker 1: I had it until you threw me off. Well saying
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Speaker 1: cal I thought it would be calving, calving, caving away
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Speaker 1: from a glacier. How many times we just say calving
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Speaker 1: and a glacier. Uh, Let's talk about glaciers for a second.
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Speaker 1: Glaciers are packed snow basically. Well, yeah, but I mean
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Speaker 1: they're a little more interesting than that. Well, yeah, that's
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Speaker 1: the that's the base route. Though in certain latitudes, um,
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Speaker 1: it never gets warm enough for snow to fully melt
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Speaker 1: all the way in the summertime. So what you have
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Speaker 1: an accumulation of that snow that builds up over and
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Speaker 1: over and over again over the centuries, over the eons,
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Speaker 1: as old as ten thousand years old, sometimes right. Uh,
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Speaker 1: And that's a glacier. But glaciers are also additionally interesting
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Speaker 1: in that um, they become so heavy that they over
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Speaker 1: this freezing thaw cycle and um the accumulation of layers
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Speaker 1: that they all of the air bubbles are pressed out
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Speaker 1: of them. So glaciers are blue, the color of frozen
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Speaker 1: water with no air in it. Um. And they also
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Speaker 1: move under the force of their own weight. They moved downward,
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Speaker 1: downhill towards sea level, because sea levels as downhill as
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Speaker 1: it gets right until you hit the sea, that's right.
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Speaker 1: And um, So because of this, they they are this
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Speaker 1: ultra dense form of ice. So it slips down, floats
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Speaker 1: out into the sea. Tidal motions eventually will cause little
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Speaker 1: cracks and fissures, and then a piece of the glacier
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Speaker 1: will break off and boom there that's an iceberg. It's
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Speaker 1: a freshwater piece of the glacier freshwater glacier chunks, right,
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Speaker 1: And it's freshwater because it's made of snow, not seawater. Um.
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Speaker 1: And when you said that it floats out into the sea.
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Speaker 1: That's called an ice shelf. Um. And up north and
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Speaker 1: northern latitudes, Um, the biggest ice shelves are found on
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Speaker 1: the western coast of Greenland. Was there Arctic or northern
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Speaker 1: icebergs that are formed up there off of those glaciers
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Speaker 1: down south in Antarctica where there are penguins. But it's
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Speaker 1: not the only place there's penguins. I want to make
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Speaker 1: sure everybody knows. I know. And no polar bears. No,
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Speaker 1: only a pool would say that. Yes. Um, the pretty
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Speaker 1: much the continent of Antarctica is ringed with ice shelves
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Speaker 1: and there's a lot of open sea, so the icebergs
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Speaker 1: can get really big. They can keep extending, extending, extending,
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Speaker 1: But then like you said, yeah, they break off and
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Speaker 1: then you have an iceberg. Don't talk about ice. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: this is fascinating. Like I want over this again and
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Speaker 1: again and again until I finally got it, and I
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Speaker 1: feel like I got it. It's so easy though I
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Speaker 1: was making a lot of pot of it. Yeah. Uh, ice,
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Speaker 1: as we all know, is the solid phase of water
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Speaker 1: you have you know, liquid solid gas. Iis a solid
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Speaker 1: phase thirty two degrees fahrenheit for fresh water zero celsius.
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Speaker 1: Salt water is gonna need to be a little bit
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Speaker 1: colder because, um, there are basically salt molecules getting in
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Speaker 1: the way of the ice forming. Well. They they they
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Speaker 1: move faster I believe than water molecules, and it takes
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Speaker 1: a lower temperature to slow them down. And also it's
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Speaker 1: greater density if you're talking saltwater, right, which is important,
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Speaker 1: very important. But ice also is the is peculiar meaning unique,
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Speaker 1: and that it's the only solid phase of any substance.
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Speaker 1: I believe that is less dense than the liquid phase.
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Speaker 1: So ice is less sense the water, and then seawater
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Speaker 1: is denser than fresh water. So well, and it's easy
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Speaker 1: to remember the ice is less dense because when you
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Speaker 1: put a little ice cube in your little chardonnay this summer,
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Speaker 1: if you're a red neck, it'll float. Yeah, because there's
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Speaker 1: little uh, ice forms in a crystalline shape, so those
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Speaker 1: that leaves area for gaps, I guess, And so what
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Speaker 1: is the air in there? Uh? I'm sure there's just
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Speaker 1: less dense. It's just the it's just it's less dense. Basically,
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Speaker 1: if you take water and freeze it, you can think
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Speaker 1: of it as spreading out, so it gets bigger, has
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Speaker 1: it has a larger volume, but it'll weigh the same
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Speaker 1: as that lesser amount of water, right, And when you
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Speaker 1: put something, say ice, in water, it's buoyant in that
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Speaker 1: the amount of water displaces has to equal the weight
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Speaker 1: of the ice that's displacing it. But since there's more
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Speaker 1: ice than an equal weight of water, there's some leftover
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Speaker 1: that floats. And that is what we call the tip
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Speaker 1: of the iceberg. And when do you get confused, Yes,
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Speaker 1: the tip of the iceberg. That is the part that
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Speaker 1: sticks out, and it's about, depending on the iceberg, about
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Speaker 1: one six to one ninth. And I'm sure everyone's seen
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Speaker 1: those awesome pictures on the interwebs of you know, the
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Speaker 1: top of the water and under the water of the iceberg.
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Speaker 1: It's pretty cool, right, you've seen those. I have very
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Speaker 1: nice And the reason there's very variation between how much
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Speaker 1: iceberg is showing it is because of the variation in
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Speaker 1: the concentration of salt in seawaters or any particular part
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Speaker 1: of seawater. And and um. Also uh, some icebergs are
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Speaker 1: denser than others as more as he said, just like people. Yeah, exactly.
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Speaker 1: Uh that you mentioned earlier that glacial ice is blue. Um.
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Speaker 1: That is true. Um. During different melting and freezing cycles, though,
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Speaker 1: they will turn white because the air gets trapped in there. Um.
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Speaker 1: And then sometimes these really old icebergs that have formed
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Speaker 1: at the bottom of these thick Antarctic ice shelves like
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Speaker 1: that have been around for thousands of years might actually
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Speaker 1: have a greenish hue because it's just you know, soaked
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Speaker 1: up organic matter under there over the years, right and
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Speaker 1: then so which is kind of a dirty yellow brown.
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Speaker 1: But icebergs have the tendency to roll over without warning,
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Speaker 1: which is one reason why you wouldn't want to camp
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Speaker 1: on an iceberg. No, they're dangerous to be around. They are.
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Speaker 1: And actually there was one that floated down to New
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Speaker 1: Zealand and some helicopter charters were like selling flights to
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Speaker 1: go check them out, and one of them landed on
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Speaker 1: the iceberg and they realized prett quickly they shouldn't do
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Speaker 1: that anymore. Um. But did they like getting short did it? No?
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Speaker 1: They made it out okay, But when they got back
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Speaker 1: and told people, I'm sure some scientists like, wait, what
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Speaker 1: did you just do? Right? Don't ever do that again?
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Speaker 1: Tc um, but the iceberg will roll over. And so
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Speaker 1: you've got the green part up that's with the light
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Speaker 1: reflecting up through the blue park when you get this
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Speaker 1: brilliant emerald green. And that's some old ice right there, Bubby, Bobby, Yes, Bobby,
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Speaker 1: I've never said that before. Uh. The life cycle of
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Speaker 1: an iceberg is pretty interesting too. Why we mentioned they
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Speaker 1: can be as old as ten thousand years before they
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Speaker 1: ever reached the ocean, and um, this is like centuries
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Speaker 1: of compression. So that's why it's so so dense, that's
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Speaker 1: why it's blue. And then once it calves off though
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Speaker 1: and and from the glacier, you've got about three to
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Speaker 1: six years on average, right if it's like say, it's
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Speaker 1: up in the in iceberg galley and never strays below parallel,
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Speaker 1: which is apparently where the water starts to get a
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Speaker 1: lot warmer. Four Parallel goes for Americans through like the
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Speaker 1: tip of Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula Michigan. People below
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Speaker 1: that are like, it's still pretty cold. I imagine, um,
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Speaker 1: so ones that stay up there and never come back down,
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Speaker 1: can float around for like fifty years and just kind
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Speaker 1: of alt the way slowly and quietly. Right. Ones that
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Speaker 1: make it further south, like one made it to Bermuda once,
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Speaker 1: which I'm sure was quite a surprise. Um. Those go
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Speaker 1: away fairly quickly. Uh yeah, and I enjoyed this. Um.
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Speaker 1: One account of this expedition. Um. What's the guy's name?
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Speaker 1: Dr Gregory Stone witnessed and wrote about in his book
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Speaker 1: Ice Island um, which I believed the largest ones are
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Speaker 1: called ice island sometimes. Yeah. Right. Um. His quote is
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Speaker 1: in this iceberg basically became destabilized, and it sounds like
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Speaker 1: it exploded, like right in front of his face. Yeah.
13:35
Speaker 1: Well he said that there was an ice debris field
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Speaker 1: across two miles. Yeah, and he said it was like
13:40
Speaker 1: shards of crystal shattering. Right. But if you think about it,
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Speaker 1: that's what happens when you put in ice cuban water. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: You hear that noise, right, It's called thermal shock. Yeah,
13:48
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. And it's also because ice is less
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Speaker 1: dense than water. As it's liquefying, it shrinks because think
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Speaker 1: about it's contracting and it's pulling apart the outer warm
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Speaker 1: or layer from the inner colder layer, and this cracks
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Speaker 1: form and the ice cube essentially explodes. It sounds like
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Speaker 1: that's the same thing that happened. Yes, when you pour
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Speaker 1: that that twelve year old scotch on top of your
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Speaker 1: single cube of ice. If you're into that, I don't
14:13
Speaker 1: know if you should be doing that. But okay, I'm
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Speaker 1: not a neat guy. I like my I like it
14:17
Speaker 1: a little cold, and and I'm not so hardcore with
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Speaker 1: the single malts, so too remove that bite just a
14:24
Speaker 1: bit is good for me. You don't so you don't
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Speaker 1: like take it neat through your nose as that the
14:28
Speaker 1: way to do it. Yeah, the way you drink it
14:31
Speaker 1: with ice through your mouth. Yeah, I know, scotch pure
14:37
Speaker 1: scoff at me, but scalp away or whatever. Just do
14:39
Speaker 1: what you like exactly. Um, that it was very supportive.
14:44
Speaker 1: I meant you as like people in general. Okay, so
14:47
Speaker 1: that wasn't supportive. Um, let's talk about some factoids and
14:51
Speaker 1: this this is to me. The fact of the show
14:54
Speaker 1: is that there are actually six official classifications with their size,
14:59
Speaker 1: and the first two it sounds like they were having
15:01
Speaker 1: a lot to drink when they had the naming party
15:05
Speaker 1: and sobered up a bit, because the smallest one's about
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Speaker 1: the size of a car, maybe a little smaller, called growlers,
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Speaker 1: and then the next one, maybe about the size of
15:14
Speaker 1: your house, is called a burgie bit. I put the
15:18
Speaker 1: emphases on a bit like a burgie bit, a burgie bit.
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Speaker 1: Either way, it's pretty cute. It is very cute. And
15:23
Speaker 1: then they got I guess sobered up or got bored
15:25
Speaker 1: or ran out of whiskey, and then they said, all right,
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Speaker 1: then the next ones are small, medium, large, and very large,
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Speaker 1: which is really boring compared to burgie bit. It is,
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Speaker 1: but the very large ones are kind of interesting in
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Speaker 1: that they just keep going and going. The largest one
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Speaker 1: ever record is the B fifteen iceberg. Yeah, broke off
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Speaker 1: of the Ross ice shelf down in Antarctica. Apparently it
15:48
Speaker 1: was about the size of Jamaica. Yeah. I think it's
15:53
Speaker 1: it's broken apart into smaller piece of sense, but I
15:55
Speaker 1: think the original um area was about sixty square miles.
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Speaker 1: That's all. That's a big chunk of ice. Yeah, And
16:02
Speaker 1: in order to be I mean, that's the upper limit,
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Speaker 1: like it can just be as big as they're gonna get.
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Speaker 1: There's no like cap or anything like that. To call
16:11
Speaker 1: it super extra large. Um, but very large. You have
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Speaker 1: to be about twenty four stories tall and a little
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Speaker 1: longer than two football field six to be classified is
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Speaker 1: very large. Yeah, that's that's big man. If you think
16:26
Speaker 1: about that, Yeah, it's huge. UM. I'm sorry, it's very
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Speaker 1: large or it's huge huge. Um. The other two classifications
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Speaker 1: that icebergs can fall in are equally boring as the
16:36
Speaker 1: last four size names. They really could have done better
16:39
Speaker 1: than this if you ask me, But they're the t
16:41
Speaker 1: shape classifications are tabular and non tabular. And tabular is
16:46
Speaker 1: basically just like a well, it looks like a table,
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Speaker 1: like a or a tab tablet, writing tablet, and it's back.
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Speaker 1: It's like tall with steep sides and a flat tops
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Speaker 1: like a floating plateau. Um. And those tend to come
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Speaker 1: off of the ice sheets down in the act Antarctic.
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Speaker 1: I believe, Yeah those are um. I think they have
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Speaker 1: to have a with five times greater than their height
17:08
Speaker 1: to be tabular. And then non tabular have I think
17:13
Speaker 1: five different classifications. You got blocky flat top steep signs.
17:19
Speaker 1: They sound like characters they do wedged um flat with
17:23
Speaker 1: a steep surface on one side and a gradual slope
17:26
Speaker 1: on another. So it's like the high right haircut. Yeah,
17:29
Speaker 1: the gumby the gumby the dome which is round and
17:32
Speaker 1: smooth pinnacle, which means it has at least one big
17:35
Speaker 1: tall spiral sticking up, and then the ones that um
17:40
Speaker 1: deteriorate to where they form a big canyon. And it
17:43
Speaker 1: looks like two different icebergs, but it's really connected. Underneath
17:47
Speaker 1: those are dry docks, so that means they have two
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Speaker 1: tips sticking out, but they're connected underwater. It's like mind blowing.
17:55
Speaker 1: It's pretty much. It was. It's pretty neat at the
17:58
Speaker 1: very least. So, um, we've got northern icebergs, southern icebergs, um,
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Speaker 1: and there's plenty of icebergs like elsewhere, but for the
18:08
Speaker 1: most part, in northern icebergs, like we said, form off
18:12
Speaker 1: the western coast of Greenland, because Greenland, apparently I read this,
18:17
Speaker 1: Greenland and Antarctica are the only place where, um, there's
18:21
Speaker 1: ice sheets, glaciel glacial true glacial sheets, glacial sheets. Boy,
18:27
Speaker 1: that's a tough one, that was. It surprised me too.
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Speaker 1: I wasn't expecting that. Uh. And in Greenland there's about
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Speaker 1: twenty glaciers that cap the majority of the icebergs. Yeah,
18:38
Speaker 1: that was I thought pretty cool. I thought it was
18:40
Speaker 1: cool too. Um. Roughly forty thousand medium too large h
18:46
Speaker 1: calv from Greenland glaciers each year, is that right? And
18:51
Speaker 1: they are about ten percent as strong as concrete, which
18:55
Speaker 1: I thought sounded not super strong, but apparently that's like
18:58
Speaker 1: way harder than like freeze our ice. Oh yeah, like
19:01
Speaker 1: this ice is different than the ice you put in
19:04
Speaker 1: your scotch, right, which is why when icebergs run into
19:07
Speaker 1: one another, it tends to break it up into smaller icebergs.
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Speaker 1: They're very much subject to um wave motion uh storms,
19:17
Speaker 1: other icebergs land When they run into things, like they
19:20
Speaker 1: break up, and it's one of the things that has
19:22
Speaker 1: a big deletrious effect on their lifespan. But it's part
19:27
Speaker 1: of the it's part of the iceberg life cycle. Going
19:29
Speaker 1: with the okay, good, Um, they are pretty slow but um,
19:36
Speaker 1: to give you an idea, like a fast moving iceberg
19:39
Speaker 1: goes about two point two miles per hour and that's
19:41
Speaker 1: Hauland oh, I'm glad you bring this up because that
19:44
Speaker 1: raises a very important point because we see the tip
19:48
Speaker 1: of the iceberg and because we're so um anthropocentric, Um,
19:53
Speaker 1: we assume that wind drives icebergs, you would be dead wrong.
19:56
Speaker 1: And assuming that since most of the iceberg is underwater,
20:00
Speaker 1: it's currents that drive icebergs, makes sense. Yeah, um. And
20:04
Speaker 1: so that's how icebergs can be trapped, like in the Antarctic,
20:07
Speaker 1: because they're trapped in that current or up north in
20:10
Speaker 1: the Labrador Current, they kind of stay trapped up there. Um.
20:14
Speaker 1: But it also makes them subject to wave motion currents
20:19
Speaker 1: from other far far off storms. And I guess getting
20:22
Speaker 1: hung up on things underwater, yes as well. It's another
20:26
Speaker 1: good point is um, they apparently strike the bottom of
20:29
Speaker 1: land a lot. Yeah, and they can like wreck the seafloor,
20:32
Speaker 1: can't they. But if you think about it, like there's
20:35
Speaker 1: plenty of parts of North America where glacial movement carved
20:41
Speaker 1: geological features are of the land. The icebergs do the
20:44
Speaker 1: same thing when they're dragged along by the current. And
20:47
Speaker 1: say one's a thousand feet tall underwater and it hits
20:52
Speaker 1: a patch of sea that's less than a thousand feet
20:55
Speaker 1: it's gonna strike New York City and fast go to
20:58
Speaker 1: Central Park and look at the there. Oh yeah, yeah,
21:01
Speaker 1: they got all those little grooves cut out, that's ice.
21:05
Speaker 1: That's ice ice baby. Um no, no, it's not nice. Uh.
21:11
Speaker 1: The ecology this was sort of surprising to me because
21:14
Speaker 1: I just figured they're just floating along. Maybe they melt
21:18
Speaker 1: a little bit, what's the big whoop? But I didn't
21:20
Speaker 1: really consider the fact that it's melting this glacial fresh water,
21:24
Speaker 1: a lot of it at times, depending on the size
21:27
Speaker 1: of the iceberg, all around in the sea water. And
21:29
Speaker 1: that's got to have some sort of ecological effect. Yeah,
21:32
Speaker 1: And I couldn't find anything anywhere that said, like there's
21:35
Speaker 1: a lot of life that's adapted to living in fresh
21:37
Speaker 1: water even though it's home is sea water, and they
21:40
Speaker 1: live around icebergs. I couldn't find anything like that. But
21:42
Speaker 1: apparently it has little effect on these animals because icebergs
21:46
Speaker 1: are basically like floating time released nutrient capsules. Yeah, it's
21:51
Speaker 1: like teeming with life around it. So they must love it,
21:53
Speaker 1: these little krill and plankton. It's like a lot of
21:55
Speaker 1: small stuff generally, Well, what there's there's a there's a
22:00
Speaker 1: definite Um, what's that chain called food chain that iceberg support. Um.
22:05
Speaker 1: They bring a lot of iron rich nutrients from the
22:09
Speaker 1: land as a gift to the sea, and as they melt,
22:12
Speaker 1: they slowly release this stuff. This supports um algae, right,
22:18
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of algae that that grows on
22:20
Speaker 1: their krill. These little tiny shrimp like things eat the
22:23
Speaker 1: algae um, and then all these other animals eat the krill,
22:26
Speaker 1: and then the birds prey on the other fish that
22:29
Speaker 1: are eating the krill. So this whole food chain develops
22:31
Speaker 1: around this iceberg. It's pretty cool. But even even something
22:35
Speaker 1: that I think they've only recently begun to figure out
22:37
Speaker 1: is that icebergs are there a sign of climate chains,
22:41
Speaker 1: Like everybody's worried about all the icebergs melting in the
22:43
Speaker 1: sea levels rising, and for good reason. But they're also
22:47
Speaker 1: figuring out that they also aid in carbon sequestration in
22:51
Speaker 1: the ocean. That makes sense. So this algae and all
22:55
Speaker 1: this stuff is they're eating this iron. There's a transfer
22:58
Speaker 1: of carbon from the land to these uh that this
23:03
Speaker 1: life that eventually will die fall down to the bottom
23:06
Speaker 1: of the sea and keep the carbon trapped with it,
23:08
Speaker 1: So algae that wouldn't be there um is soaking up
23:12
Speaker 1: carbon and then being eaten and passed along in this
23:15
Speaker 1: undersea food chain, and they found that, Um, the carbon
23:18
Speaker 1: absorption around in iceberg is twice what it is elsewhere
23:22
Speaker 1: because this algae wouldn't be there if it weren't for
23:25
Speaker 1: the iceberg. So there it's soaking up the CEO too.
23:29
Speaker 1: That's crazy. Um, but they also take it away what
23:33
Speaker 1: icebergs giveth uh and not just boats and chips Like
23:37
Speaker 1: that's a tanic there, I said it, Okay, Um, they
23:42
Speaker 1: can actually, like I said, they can clog up shipping lanes.
23:46
Speaker 1: They can. In the case of B fifteen, I think
23:49
Speaker 1: it actually um had a pretty uh deliterious effect on
23:54
Speaker 1: Emperor Penguin's Yeah, in much of the March of the
23:57
Speaker 1: Penguins and they so you know what happens in that
24:01
Speaker 1: sad movie. I guess what. They have to walk around it. Yeah,
24:03
Speaker 1: and there's a they really have a tight schedule. When
24:06
Speaker 1: they hit an iceberg that's you know, taller than the
24:09
Speaker 1: penguins don't fly, remember, and it's really wide, they have
24:14
Speaker 1: to go around it. They learn to fly. Yeah, that
24:17
Speaker 1: would just solve a lot of problems. Um. So yeah,
24:21
Speaker 1: it can have negative effects on the little penguins, a
24:23
Speaker 1: cute little penguins, and um, it can rake the sea
24:27
Speaker 1: floor and just destroy it basically over the course of
24:31
Speaker 1: many years. No good, no another cool thing. And this
24:38
Speaker 1: I don't know. I couldn't find if they're actually moving
24:40
Speaker 1: on this. But the United States military UM called up
24:45
Speaker 1: the RAND Corporation said, hey, boy, these things are huge
24:49
Speaker 1: chunks of awesome drinking water, totally safe to drink because
24:53
Speaker 1: it's from the water. Boy. Yeah really I never saw
24:58
Speaker 1: that all the way through. That was pretty um it Uh.
25:02
Speaker 1: They called the rain corporations said, hey, can we study
25:05
Speaker 1: these things? And how viable is it too? I know
25:07
Speaker 1: it sounds crazy, but how viable is it to get
25:10
Speaker 1: one of these icebergs over here and provide fresh drinking
25:13
Speaker 1: water for people who need it? And it sounds like
25:16
Speaker 1: it's not the most ridiculous idea in the world. Um.
25:20
Speaker 1: Their study said that a system allowing a ten percent
25:23
Speaker 1: yield could provide water for five hundred million people at
25:27
Speaker 1: a cost of eight dollars per one thousand cubic meters,
25:31
Speaker 1: which is not too bad. I mean, it's way more
25:33
Speaker 1: expensive than it should be, I think, than than we
25:36
Speaker 1: pay for water now. But our water is artificially cheap,
25:41
Speaker 1: so as water becomes more expensive, if there's any icebergs left.
25:45
Speaker 1: We may want to go do that, And they say,
25:47
Speaker 1: I guess they just nudge it through the water closer
25:49
Speaker 1: and closer. Um. And this is where it gets a
25:52
Speaker 1: little hinky. It says in the article, using massive insulating
25:55
Speaker 1: sheets to slow the melting. I don't know what that
25:57
Speaker 1: looks like, but it looks like, um my l are
26:00
Speaker 1: like you used to reflect the sun on your car.
26:03
Speaker 1: That's what they would use. That's all it'll take, you know,
26:06
Speaker 1: like those um sun blankets or whatever, just something to
26:10
Speaker 1: reflect the sun sunlight radiation. Well, it's also moving into
26:14
Speaker 1: warmer water that was not gonna melt it from below,
26:16
Speaker 1: or it'll melt it from below for sure. Yeah, but
26:18
Speaker 1: I mean you protect what you can. I guess, I
26:22
Speaker 1: guess if you're harvesting icebergs, you're right, they're not the
26:25
Speaker 1: they're not the only ones looking at this. UM. I
26:27
Speaker 1: ran across an M I T proposal of building a
26:30
Speaker 1: pipeline from Alaska, where there's plenty of glaciers that the
26:33
Speaker 1: western US makes sense, but the author concluded it's like
26:37
Speaker 1: four and eighty seven billion dollars to build the pipeline
26:41
Speaker 1: and keep it going, and that just wouldn't be worth it,
26:44
Speaker 1: uh in canals to another Another group studied that and
26:48
Speaker 1: suggested a canal well and in the United States have
26:50
Speaker 1: exactly hurting for water. It would be nice that they
26:52
Speaker 1: did some of these studies and like pushed it to
26:54
Speaker 1: where they don't have fresh water right now at all.
26:57
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, it's been a little money for them,
26:59
Speaker 1: like straws oat. Um, well, I guess we already went over. Well,
27:05
Speaker 1: Iceberg Galley is actually a little more interesting. They started
27:07
Speaker 1: studying it. They formed the International Ice Patrol uh way
27:13
Speaker 1: later than they should have, I guess, but they probably
27:15
Speaker 1: didn't have the equipment they needed back in the day
27:17
Speaker 1: to do what they do now. Um, the Coastguard US
27:20
Speaker 1: Coastguard administers it and they worn ships. They kind of
27:25
Speaker 1: run it through their little program and say, we think
27:27
Speaker 1: this is where it's headed. This is how big it is. Uh,
27:30
Speaker 1: if you're in this area, you might want to watch
27:32
Speaker 1: out for this, for this guy floating your way. Well,
27:34
Speaker 1: they basically say, like there's ice up here, don't go
27:38
Speaker 1: above this these coordinates. That's called the limit of all
27:41
Speaker 1: known ice. Wow. And they the Coast Guard also does
27:46
Speaker 1: some other stuff for the I should say the Ice
27:48
Speaker 1: Patrol Um, they do other things like um bomb icebergs. Ye.
27:53
Speaker 1: Did you find out more about that? No? I looked
27:55
Speaker 1: it up on YouTube because I was like, surely somebody's
27:58
Speaker 1: videos everybody dropping obamba and iceberg. I couldn't find anything.
28:01
Speaker 1: Plenty of calving stuff. Um. And they also spray paint
28:07
Speaker 1: them with very bright paint, which it seems wrong to me,
28:10
Speaker 1: just so you can see him. Yeah. Yeah, that's like
28:12
Speaker 1: tagging like a new car or something, um, a beautiful
28:17
Speaker 1: new car made by nature, or putting like m radio
28:22
Speaker 1: transmitters on them, which makes sense. But then when they
28:25
Speaker 1: start to break up, it's like, well, there's a little
28:27
Speaker 1: chunk that has the radio transmitting three ft big. Uh.
28:32
Speaker 1: So I got nothing else? I don't either, I've got
28:36
Speaker 1: something else, all right, what you got? So it became um,
28:41
Speaker 1: I became interested in the idea of this article mentions
28:44
Speaker 1: a nautical mile, sure, well, like why why is there
28:48
Speaker 1: a nautical mile in a mile? And I found out why.
28:52
Speaker 1: So a nautical mile is um one point one five
28:56
Speaker 1: o eight miles And the reason why is because a
28:59
Speaker 1: notical mile, when going around the equator, takes into account
29:04
Speaker 1: the curvature of the Earth. A regular mile um or
29:09
Speaker 1: called a statute mile is what it's called. Goes from
29:13
Speaker 1: one point on the map to another through a straight line,
29:18
Speaker 1: which means that it's not taking into account the curvature
29:20
Speaker 1: of the earth, which means that the nautical mile accurate
29:24
Speaker 1: is more accurate and thus a little longer than the
29:26
Speaker 1: regular mile from minute to minute along a degree. So
29:30
Speaker 1: a mile is really not a mile. So if you're
29:32
Speaker 1: saying on land, huh, no, it's not because it's a
29:36
Speaker 1: it's it's it's like if you take the earth, cut
29:39
Speaker 1: in half of the equator and turn it over. You've
29:41
Speaker 1: got the two halves and you're looking in the molten
29:43
Speaker 1: center um and you divide it into three six degrees,
29:47
Speaker 1: divide those degrees in two minutes, and the measure a
29:50
Speaker 1: minute to a minute. If you do a straight line,
29:52
Speaker 1: it's not as accurate. If you do the curve line,
29:54
Speaker 1: it will be accurate. And a kilometer is this way
29:58
Speaker 1: out there. And seventeen the French Academy of Sciences said, okay,
30:04
Speaker 1: we're gonna designate a kilometers the amount of the length
30:08
Speaker 1: the distance from the north pole to the equator through
30:11
Speaker 1: Paris divided by ten thousand. Pretty clever. So there you
30:18
Speaker 1: have it, Um, nautical miles. I love it. Thanks man,
30:22
Speaker 1: I really uh went all out on this one. I
30:25
Speaker 1: think so too, kudos sir. Um. If you want to
30:28
Speaker 1: learn more about icebergs, you can type in that word
30:32
Speaker 1: I ce E b r g s in the search
30:35
Speaker 1: bars how stuff works dot com and I'll bring up
30:37
Speaker 1: this fine, fine article by A Grabowski. Um and I
30:41
Speaker 1: said search bar how stuff works, which means it's time
30:43
Speaker 1: for listener mail. Before listener mail quickly. I know we're
30:49
Speaker 1: going to Comic Con. Oh, yes, we are. This is exciting,
30:52
Speaker 1: It is very exciting. We've never been San Diego, California.
30:55
Speaker 1: Right July twelfth to fifteenth. We will be there, um,
30:59
Speaker 1: I believe on the today. Yeah, and we will be
31:01
Speaker 1: presenting and we are not quite sure the deats yet,
31:04
Speaker 1: but as we find out, you will find out excellent.
31:07
Speaker 1: So if you're gonna be there, come see us. Yes,
31:09
Speaker 1: come say hi to us. We're pretty friendly. We're gonna
31:12
Speaker 1: be pressing flesh, as they say, hands, baking hands and
31:19
Speaker 1: then okay, so I'll be listening, len okay, wait, wait,
31:23
Speaker 1: wait again, hold on, yes, uh we have a huge
31:27
Speaker 1: announcement dude. Yeah, um, we are running a pretty cool
31:33
Speaker 1: contest if you asked me, agreed, Chuck. You know how
31:36
Speaker 1: every Halloween we read a short story. So far we've
31:39
Speaker 1: read one by HP Lovecraft, the tune we read Barnice
31:43
Speaker 1: by a ground poet. Well, we thought, hey, why don't
31:46
Speaker 1: we see what our listeners can do. This is your
31:49
Speaker 1: brainchild and a great idea, Thank you very much. Sure,
31:52
Speaker 1: So we're holding a horror fiction contest um by our listeners. Uh.
31:58
Speaker 1: And you can say and then your submission. Uh. And
32:02
Speaker 1: if you win, we will read your story as our
32:05
Speaker 1: Halloween episode. That's right. Um, let's get down to brass
32:09
Speaker 1: tacks here. Here, here's what we're gonna be ranking on
32:12
Speaker 1: the scale of one to five in the following categories.
32:14
Speaker 1: This has all got to be, you know, on the
32:16
Speaker 1: level h interestingness, a plot, awesomeness of characters, well paced pacing.
32:24
Speaker 1: Well yeah, it's gonna be well paced, scariness, and overall
32:27
Speaker 1: quality of writing. And it's actually gonna be a bracket.
32:30
Speaker 1: You can follow this. We'll have you r l s
32:32
Speaker 1: later for you know where you can follow this bracket
32:34
Speaker 1: on the house to work site. Well, so you and
32:36
Speaker 1: I are going to judge all the submissions and we're
32:38
Speaker 1: gonna select based on these this criteria the top sixteen.
32:42
Speaker 1: Then the top sixteen gets put onto the bracket, and
32:45
Speaker 1: then it's up to everybody to read and vote, and
32:48
Speaker 1: then the one that's picked Democratic is number one. That's
32:51
Speaker 1: the one that wins. This is I mean, I'm really
32:54
Speaker 1: genuinely excited about this. Yes, Um, In speaking of genuine
32:57
Speaker 1: I want to see genuinely scary stuff. Agreed. Um. I
33:01
Speaker 1: don't want to give too many hints, but if you're
33:05
Speaker 1: creeping into like torture porn territory, you're not going to
33:08
Speaker 1: be impressing anyone with your literary skills. Agreed to get
33:12
Speaker 1: get creative. I'm glad you pointed that out. Uh so
33:15
Speaker 1: the if you want to submit your stuff, you jump,
33:19
Speaker 1: you want to send it to how Stuff Works Underscore
33:23
Speaker 1: Contests plural at Discovery dot com. Oh, and to qualify,
33:29
Speaker 1: the email has to have the words by participating in
33:31
Speaker 1: this contest, I agree to abide by the contest rules.
33:35
Speaker 1: It's kind of mouthful, but um, it has to be
33:37
Speaker 1: in the email that you send in your submission with
33:40
Speaker 1: and emails that don't have that in it are going
33:42
Speaker 1: to be disqualified. I'm afraid. Yes, And what is our limit.
33:45
Speaker 1: We have a limit here or character or not word
33:47
Speaker 1: limit three thousand to four thousand words and three thousand minimum.
33:50
Speaker 1: Don't go under disqualified the four thousand maximum. Don't go
33:54
Speaker 1: over disqualified. Yeah, we gotta be sticklers on the rules
33:57
Speaker 1: here because it's official, right exactly. Um. So the whole
34:00
Speaker 1: thing starts um, Monday, June eighteenth, and it goes until
34:04
Speaker 1: even pm Friday, July. Okay, you have the within that
34:10
Speaker 1: time to submit your um, your stories, and uh after that,
34:15
Speaker 1: after the deadline, sorry, it's closed. I mean you and
34:18
Speaker 1: I get to judging. I might submit under a pseudonym
34:22
Speaker 1: just for fun. Okay, I don't know if pseudonyms are Okay, no,
34:26
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, sorry, no pseudonyms allowed, Chuck. Yeah, no,
34:30
Speaker 1: pseudonym is allowed. Uh. You have to be eighteen to enter,
34:35
Speaker 1: and it's open only to America. It is as usual,
34:40
Speaker 1: one submission per person. Um. We'll post all the rules
34:43
Speaker 1: on a blog post and put it on Facebook. Um,
34:46
Speaker 1: but that's generally the criteria. So get to writing, see
34:50
Speaker 1: if you can scare our socks off, and um, we
34:53
Speaker 1: look forward to reading. This is gonna be awesome. Yeah,
34:55
Speaker 1: this is gonna be really make Halloween wonderful. Wow, there
35:00
Speaker 1: we go. Ready, yep, now, I guess it's time for listener. Indeed, Josh,
35:04
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this one um good email from a Chicago,
35:09
Speaker 1: Chicago guy. That's a terrible Just yesterday, guys, I was
35:15
Speaker 1: finished reading a book Robin Dunbar wrote called Grooming, Gossip
35:19
Speaker 1: and the Evolution of Language. Her argument is that language
35:23
Speaker 1: evolved out of a need to keep up social relationships
35:26
Speaker 1: with group members. Put in its most basic form, Over time,
35:30
Speaker 1: our brains evolved to be larger, which made our average
35:32
Speaker 1: group size increase. At the same time. Once our group
35:36
Speaker 1: size became large enough, today our average group size is
35:39
Speaker 1: about one. We didn't have enough time in the day
35:42
Speaker 1: to groom one on one with that many group members
35:46
Speaker 1: to keep up our social bonds with them. So we
35:49
Speaker 1: have all language, so we could use language as a
35:52
Speaker 1: way to verbally groom with more members at a time
35:55
Speaker 1: to keep the group strong. That's interesting. It was my
35:58
Speaker 1: understanding that our brains have actually decreased in size and
36:01
Speaker 1: the last years because of group group size, because it's
36:07
Speaker 1: increased and we have to rely less on our like
36:09
Speaker 1: instincts and run from thunder and stuff like that. I
36:12
Speaker 1: smell a cage match. Um. Another interesting experiment I read
36:16
Speaker 1: about is this to Scientists were studying vervet monkeys in
36:20
Speaker 1: their natural habitat. They started recording the sounds of the
36:24
Speaker 1: vervets um and make notes about what they were doing
36:27
Speaker 1: when they made the noise. After examining a large sample
36:30
Speaker 1: of noises, they found a correlation between the sound they
36:33
Speaker 1: made and what was happening when they made it. I
36:35
Speaker 1: believe the noises were difficult to distinguish by the naked
36:37
Speaker 1: human ear, but the pattern was obvious when they compared
36:40
Speaker 1: large numbers of them together. The verbets made a different
36:44
Speaker 1: noise for when an error predator was spotted, when a
36:47
Speaker 1: ground predator was spotted, when approaching a dominant male, etcetera.
36:51
Speaker 1: It's not quite language where it like syntax, but it's
36:54
Speaker 1: still more advanced than I thought they were. Um, and
36:58
Speaker 1: that's pretty much to hope it wasn't too dense, but
37:02
Speaker 1: if it was, and that has revenge for the Sun
37:04
Speaker 1: podcast as a listener right there, that's right, and that
37:08
Speaker 1: is from Matt Schunk from Chicago. Thanks Matt SHUNKA go bears.
37:14
Speaker 1: Yeah seriously, bear. Um. I guess I always like to
37:19
Speaker 1: hear about new books that I should be reading. I'm
37:21
Speaker 1: sure like we have any time for that anymore. Did
37:26
Speaker 1: you hear that that was a limit? It was? Um
37:29
Speaker 1: send us your book recommendation, suck us. You can turn it.
37:33
Speaker 1: You can turn it into uh s y s K
37:35
Speaker 1: podcast on Twitter. Uh. You could send it to Facebook
37:39
Speaker 1: dot com slash stuff you should know. Don't send it.
37:42
Speaker 1: I guess you'd post it on that um. Or you
37:44
Speaker 1: can send us an email good old fashioned electronic mail,
37:48
Speaker 1: wrap it up, spanking on the bottom, and send it
37:50
Speaker 1: off to Stuff Podcasts at Discovery dot com. For more
37:59
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how Stuff
38:02
Speaker 1: works dot com. Mhmm. Brought to you by the reinvented
38:12
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you