January 7, 2013

Trembling Ice: The largest glacier you’ve ever seen collapse

Posted by Austin Elliott

An iceberg calves off of Ilulissat glacier in Greenland. Photo credit: Martin Truffer/University of Alaska-Fairbanks

Straying briefly into the hydrosphere, I’d like to bring to your attention a video of an event that no doubt trembled the Earth for miles around, and wrought seismic and tectonic havoc on the Ilulissat glacier in Greenland.

In the course of capturing footage and ice-cap scenes for their new and acclaimed movie “Chasing Ice“, a team of young sciency filmmakers/photographers witnessed the most enormous collapse of a glacier ever recorded on video. And they had dozens of cameras rolling. It just doesn’t get better than this.

The scale of what unfolds in this video is simply incredible, and I will be booking my ticket to go see this film as soon as possible.

I could go on marveling at the sheer scale and scope and sound and sight of the ice breaking up, but the video speaks for itself, so I’ll stop here and let you all go admire. Keep in mind two things: ice is less dense than water (more buoyant), but only just enough that a mere 10% of an icy mass rises above the liquid water it floats in. Secondly… you’ve never seen anything like this, at least outside of Spielberg.

(High-definition version at link below)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoA_Z7y8f6Q]

Head over to The Guardian to watch the original high-def clip and enjoy. I know I did. Over and over.

Chasing Ice movie reveals largest iceberg break-up ever filmed – Guardian UK