The perfectly rectangular NASA found is more normal than you think – Quartz



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At one point, someone said: "There is no right angle in nature", believed this person. It can be difficult to find precise right angles, but approximate right angles are everywhere. Salt crystals are cubic in nature. Many trees form approximately right angles to the ground. And recently, NASA discovered an Antarctic iceberg of rectangular absurdity, even square, difficult to define from the photo. In any case, he would like to ask for a referendum on this notion of impossible natural geometry.

The iceberg floats afloat in the Weddell Sea, right next to the Larsen C ice floe on the Antarctic Peninsula. It has probably been separated from Larsen C recently – its edges are sharp and sharp, not yet eroded by waves and water.

The photo was taken last week aboard a NASA topography flight. You may remember Larsen C, who made the headlines last year about a huge iceberg breaking away from the crumbling pack ice. Larsen C is one of the largest ice platforms in Antarctica.

The rectangular iceberg in question is another crumbling of the Larsen C plateau. Its shape may seem shocking, but scientists accustomed to icebergs are not at all surprised by its sharp edges. In fact, cake-shaped icebergs are quite common.

"So here's the deal," Kelly Brunt, an ice scientist at NASA and the University of Maryland, told Live Science. "We have two types of icebergs: we have the type that everyone can imagine who sank the Titanic. They look like prisms or triangles on the surface and you know they have a crazy basement. And then you have what we call "tabular icebergs". "

Tabular icebergs, like this one, have a flat top. They crack at the end of a layer of ice, leaving a flush edge, similar to the way a fingernail could split once it's become too long, said Brunt.

So that's it: some icebergs look like pieces of rubble, some to patties. They are here, they are pure, get used to it.

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