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Huge Iceberg Nine Times As Large As Singapore

Posted by timothy on from the lemon-flavored-would-be-better dept.

DeadBugs writes: "From CNN and the actual National Ice Center press release, a huge iceberg 2130 square miles in size has broke off of Antartica. Satellite pictures are included at each site. This iceberg is larger than the state of Rhode Island and about the same size as Delaware."

6 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Tiddler! by Account+10 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's only half the size of this one

  2. iceberg FAQ by LordSah · · Score: 4, Informative

    Curious to learn more about icebergs, I found this nifty FAQ. Figured I'd share.

    1. Re:iceberg FAQ by LordSah · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The Coast Guard has done some experiments on breaking ice bergs up, and apparently [quote]:

      a 1,000 lb charge of TNT would be needed to break up approximately 70,000 cubic ft of ice (1,960 tons) and a hundred such charges would be needed for the destruction of an average berg. Furthermore, to melt a medium size berg of 100,000 tons would require the complete theoretical heat of combustion of 2.4 million gallons of gasoline. Such methods are, of course, economically, as well as practically unsound.

  3. Re:Nice units by bscott · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ah, just my thought when I saw this on CNN - if it's "about the size of Delaware", WHY does American media use "9 times the size of Singapore" as a comparison?

    That's akin to saying a meter is "roughly the size of two Australian pizzas". Thanks, Media. I feel informed now.

    --
    Perfectly Normal Industries
  4. Re:Nice units by dimator · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm amazed they didn't use the most standard unit of long measurment in America: the length of a football field.

    --
    python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
  5. Promotional Stunt by alex.shultz · · Score: 4, Funny

    I can't help thinking that this is some kind of promotional thing for Fox's _Ice Age_. It happened about the same time as the movie was released, right? Has anybody gotten a good close look at the satellite photo? I'm pretty sure I can see "ICE AGE - COMING TO A THEATER NEAR YOU" carved in to the ice.

    I think the facts are overwhelming here. I'd better go put on my tinfoil hat or they'll start stealing thoughts from my brain again.

    It would almost make those high movie ticket prices worthwhile if the studios would do cool stuff like this. Plus it would provide for scienterifically interesting things to study.