A Giant, Mysterious Hole Has Opened Up In Antarctica (vice.com)

Scientists are perplexed over a giant hole that has opened up in Antarctica. According to Motherboard, the "gigantic, mysterious hole" is as large as Lake Superior or the state of Maine. From the report: The gigantic, mysterious hole "is quite remarkable," atmospheric physicist Kent Moore, a professor at the University of Toronto's Mississauga campus, told me over the phone. "It looks like you just punched a hole in the ice." Areas of open water surrounded by sea ice, such as this one, are known as polynyas. They form in coastal regions of Antarctica, Moore told me. What's strange here, though, is that this polynya is "deep in the ice pack," he said, and must have formed through other processes that aren't understood. "This is hundreds of kilometers from the ice edge. If we didn't have a satellite, we wouldn't know it was there." (It measured 80,000 km^2 at its peak.) "This is now the second year in a row it's opened after 40 years of not being there," Moore said. (It opened around September 9.) "We're still trying to figure out what's going on."

Comments

Water currents.

[Z00L00K]

It's most likely water currents causing this phenomenon. Unless there's a volcano that's erupting, but that would be detected seismologically.

Re:Water currents.

[Anonymous Coward]

Underwater volcanism is my first guess. There is probably a convective current starting from the heated area at sea floor beneath the hole. The heat source was probably always there, but now the temperature of sea water has risen enough that with additional heating it is enough to melt the ice.

Re: Water currents.

[rmdingler]

Don't be silly. It's not completely unreasonable that one of the research scientists posted this story to tap the unparalleled hive mind at /..

"...gigantic, mysterious hole" is as large as Lake Superior or the state of Maine.

Clearly, the real story here is that Lake Superior and the State of Maine are interchangeable units of measuring area. Who Knew?

Re:Water currents.

[sheramil]

My guess is it's a promotional stunt for the film "Iron Sky 2: The Coming Age", that got out of hand.

Re:Water currents.

[lucm]

It's most likely water currents causing this phenomenon.

You should email the atmospheric physicist quoted in the article and let him know.

https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/cp...

Re: Water currents.

[drinkypoo]

Scientists don't know what's going on, and this guy doesn't either, but he went ahead and made a guess. It's a pretty good guess, too, because it doesn't require any new understandings of the universe.

Re: Water currents.

[Maritz]

Scientists don't know what's going on BUT THIS GUY DOES! If only the researchers only read TFS before pontificating we would solve all the mysteries of the universe.

If you knew what the word 'guess' meant, you wouldn't have had to embarrass yourself like that. You should look up 'probably' as well.

Dumbass.

Re:Water currents.

[houghi]

Well, that was easy. I wonder if the scientists already contacted you to solve other problems.

Re: Water currents.

[jellomizer]

It depends if you are an east coast or a mid west type of person.

Re: Water currents.

[rmdingler]

I had not considered the regional angle.

Perhaps the author would have been better served to use a more ubiquitous USian measurement of area, such as Olympic-sized swimming pools or football fields.

Re:Water currents.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Wow! With just the head lines and a couple of photos, you deduced this! Amazing Sherlock. Usually Sherlock explains his reasoning and deductions 38 minutes into the episode, Wrap up, a mood lightening sardonic humor piece and dangler for the next episode at minute 42. So it is high time you explain it all to the dimwitted scientists with mere PhDs who worked all their life studying this.

Re:Water currents.

[hey!]

That's like saying the bug in this software is probably due to a subroutine.

Re: Water currents.

[Bing Tsher E]

it doesn't require any new understandings of the universe.

That would require it to be science.

And as Malibu Stacy once said: "Science is hard!"

Re:Water currents.

[Bing Tsher E]

I bet if we dropped some sensors in the water, we would learn that the water is slightly above the freezing point.

Measurements. That would make it science.

Re:Water currents.

[Bing Tsher E]

If people were forced to right more straight in-line code, in Assembler, there would be less bugs in software (because far less software would get written)

Re: Water currents.

[codeButcher]

Clearly, the real story here is that Lake Superior and the State of Maine are interchangeable units of measuring area. Who Knew?

Well, I for one prefer the lake as a unit of measurement because obviously it is .... Superior!

Re:Water currents.

[Ol Olsoc]

Underwater volcanism is my first guess. There is probably a convective current starting from the heated area at sea floor beneath the hole. The heat source was probably always there, but now the temperature of sea water has risen enough that with additional heating it is enough to melt the ice.

Perhaps. I'm a firm believer in the laws of thermodynamics, but I certainly wouldn't declare this as related to AGW. This despite the denialists rushing to declare that people are saying it is, so they can have a strawman to beat up.

And yes folks, we are allowed to speculate. Scientists do this all the time in order to eliminate unlikely candidates for the phenomenon, like the open water being caused by the pancake syrup at iHop.

You are correct that volcanic activity is a good first guess. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Antarctica is a pretty busy place in that way. A group has claimed to have found 91 previously unknown volcanoes, https://www.engadget.com/2017/... but these have not been confirmed as of yet.

This one is active and confirmed https://www.livescience.com/41... .

Global warming? I seriously doubt it. A problem for humans? Not unless this is the initial bowshots of a nascent super-volcano. Interesting as all hell, and it surely wouldn't hurt to find out the cause.

Re:Water currents.

[ilguido]

now the temperature of sea water has risen enough that with additional heating it is enough to melt the ice.

From the featured (?) article: "[a hole] was observed in the same location, in Antarctica's Weddell Sea, in the 1970s, [...] back then, scientists' observation tools weren't nearly as good, so that hole remained largely unstudied".

Re: Water currents.

[mysticgoat]

From here in the Upper Left Coast, these are all the same size: Lake Superior, Maine, and Rhode Island.

If you are far enough away, everything else is small.

Re: Water currents.

[mysticgoat]

Are those English football fields or USian football fields?

Re:Water currents.

[mysticgoat]

I'm pretty sure the cause of the Antarctic waterhole is heat.

I leave it as an exercise for the Reader to determine where the heat is coming from.

Re: Water currents.

[sexconker]

Up North
Down South
Back East
Out West

Re:Water currents.

[sexconker]

Have you ever played knifey-spoony?

Re:Water currents.

[sycodon]

But it does provide all the Pearl Clutches something to fret about.

Re: Water currents.

[I'm New Around Here]

Those of us from a certain upper midwest state just show our palm and point.

Re:Water currents.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

EVEN if the initial bowshots of a nascent super-volcano.,.Antartica is a bloody long way from anything civilized. At worst we might see some climate disruption.

Re: Water currents.

[dissy]

Clearly, the real story here is that Lake Superior and the State of Maine are interchangeable units of measuring area. Who Knew?

A little known fact is that Lake Superior and the state of Maine are also physically interchangeable!
This is the reason neither of those things are labeled by name on Google Maps.

Re:Water currents.

[I'm New Around Here]

Do toilets on the equator simply drain straight down?

Re: Water currents.

[ElizabethGreene]

What is the conversion factor for States of Maine to Libraries of Congress?

Re:Water currents.

[Ol Olsoc]

Global warming? I seriously doubt it. A problem for humans? Not unless this is the initial bowshots of a nascent super-volcano. Interesting as all hell, and it surely wouldn't hurt to find out the cause.

I love your ignorance-induced coolness. What if a great pocket of liquid ice has formed because of the thermal activity and is making its way to the ocean?

Search 'Lake Agassiz' and you will find that the Black Sea was formed 12,000 years ago, at once, due to a similar phenomenon in NORTH AMERICA.

Amusing. I'm having trouble imagining this liquid Ice. Are you referring to supercooled water, or the fictional ice-9? Certainly if your scenario does happen, it will be a natural event that we cannot do much about, except the useless thoughts and prayers.

Re:Water currents.

[Ol Olsoc]

"I'm a firm believer in the laws of thermodynamics"

Your belief is unnecessary and misplaced.

As is your comment. You have to have some way of introducing a subject. And it is quite fashionable these days to deny science.

Re:Water currents.

[PinkyGigglebrain]

I'd be more worried about an Antarctic super volcano causing the land bound ice to melt. The resulting sea level rise would affect things on a global scale unlike the ash fallout.

Re: Water currents.

[Mab_Mass]

Also, please note that nobody has ever seen the State of Maine and Lake Superior in the same place! Obviously, something is up!

Re:Water currents.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Maybe in the coastal cities- but the sea would go back down just as quickly as the localized nuclear winter refroze Antarctica.

Re:Water currents.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> bowshots

I humbly submit you meant bow shocks, as in the waves ahead of a ship from the bow.

Re:Water currents.

[Quirkz]

Once, ironically. I had ten-thousand spoons and no knife.

Re:Water currents.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I was mimicing the grandfather post, but I took him to mean bowshots- as in the warning shots across a bow with an arrow, and later a canon, common to early seafaring piracy. Also known as warning shots.

Re:Water currents.

[phantomfive]

The article clarifies somewhat. This is ongoing:

A polynia was observed in the same location, in Antarctica's Weddell Sea, in the 1970s, according to Moore, who's been working with the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modelling (SOCCOM) group, based at Princeton University, to analyze what's going on. Back then, scientists' observation tools weren't nearly as good, so that hole remained largely unstudied. Then it went away for four decades, until last year, when it reopened for a few weeks. Now it's back again.

Re: Water currents.

[kenh]

And it is quite fashionable these days to accuse others of denying science.

FTFY

Re:Water currents.

[Gussington]

It's most likely water currents causing this phenomenon.

What water? Antarctica is mostly ice on rock. Where this is happening there is no water.

Re:Water currents.

[Ol Olsoc]

> bowshots

I humbly submit you meant bow shocks, as in the waves ahead of a ship from the bow.

No, its from an old Navy saying, a shot over the bow, meaning a warning, and that the next one won't be a warning.

Re: Water currents.

[Ol Olsoc]

And it is quite fashionable these days to accuse others of denying science.

FTFY

Okay, here's the thing. Somewhere in the deep dark past, I wrote that I believe in science. And believing in sciences doesn't mean you have faith in it, as the first commenter appeard to imply. and what a monumental task of trying to agree with anythig at all if belief means faith and only faith.

But as for anti-science? Well let's see. We have Lysenkoism, which postulates that plants and animals immediately change in response to the environment, we have creationism, which discards almost ll las of physics, and invents new ones, we have anti-vaxxers, who claim that ingredients not even in vaccines at present cause a disability that has been proven not to be caused by vaccines, we have ernergy retention by atmospheric composition deniers, who still haven't come up with the failure mechanism for teh greenhouse effect. We have GMO deniers who have managed to make Monsanto's stupid Roundup Ready BS into an indictment of any food manipulated to be more nutritious. We have people who believe that living near a cell phone tower causes cancer. There are more examples, but I'm getting bored.

So yeah, There is no need to "accuse" these people of anything. They are deniers.

Re:Water currents.

[lucm]

Water above the freezing point would not explain the hole, it would merely *describe* it.

And I'm not convinced that it would even be that meaningful. For instance, it is completely possible for water temperature to be below the freezing point without freezing, especially in an environment where there is no major weather fluctuations and no major animal activity. Temperature itself does not automatically trigger the transition.

See this explanation from Wikipedia:

The melting point of water at 1 atmosphere of pressure is very close to 0 C (32 F, 273.15 K), and in the presence of nucleating substances the freezing point of water is close to the melting point, but in the absence of nucleators water can super cool to 40 C (40 F, 233 K) before freezing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

There is a famous (alleged) case of flash freeze that happened in Russia during WWII: horses found in the bottom of a frozen lake. Someone made a demonstration, see:
http://www.radiolab.org/story/...

Re: Water currents.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Global warming also increases evaporation rates- which changes the water to clouds.....and rural folks aren't quite the heartless bastards you make them out to be

Re: Water currents.

[Ol Olsoc]

we have creationism, which discards almost ll las of physics, and invents new ones

As someone who calls himself a creationist, that's not creationism. Creationism is simply "God created the universe". How it works, i.e. the laws of physics, is not in doubt. Well, in any more doubt than they already are (reconciling GR and QM, anyone?).

My grandparents were creationists, and member of a Christian sect that tells us that they have the real truth, aand all others will go to hell.

Your definition of creationism is the weak model, brought out as a talking point when arguing for creationism. My grandparents used the strong model, in which god told them in the book that was sealed to man, as being created in 4004 B.C. Every single word written in the bible is truth as stated, so Adam and Eve begat, and their sons begat and we ended up here. The biblical flood happened just as described in the Bible, the entire world was covered up past Everest in 40 days and nights of rain, and every animal on earth that is here today was on that boat. And evolution does not exist.

You do not have the right to question their faith.

And I do not want to question yours either, because as long as you don't insist that your faith trumps my rights, You can believe whatever you want.

Or is there a law of physics that says "God is impossible"? If so, I missed that one in school.

No, but there is one that tells us that some foilks will use equal parts stupidity and irrelevance as a talking point. We can have good discussions, or we can have religious-right discussions, but not with statements like that.

The fact is, I cannot prove there is no god just as you cannot prove there is one. God is a matter of faith, and no evidence at all is needed for faith. In the end, faith is all you need - which is probably why there are so many different gods.

Re:Water currents.

[RockDoctor]

EVEN if the initial bowshots of a nascent super-volcano.,.Antartica is a bloody long way from anything civilized.

Being a long way from anything doesn't mean a jot in terms of a supervolcano. Homo sapiens has not seen a supervolcano eruption since Toba around 70 kyr ago (and that is arguable - was it a supervolcano, or just a large regular volcano). As a geologist, I'd struggle to come up with a meaningful dividing line between a regular eruption and a supervolcano - if indeed there is one. I've scuba-dived in the Santorini caldera for example, and it's not significantly diffeent to other calderas I've walked around in and examined rocks in.

Regular volcanic eruptions have effects felt around the world. The Pinatubo eruption of 1991 led to cooling around the world of about 0.5degC - and incidentally produced the darkest lunar eclipse I've ever seen in 1992. The Tambora eruption of 1815 similarly had global effects - famine in Europe and the newly-formed United States, wars and rebellions, generally bad shit. All over the world.

The bandying around of superlative-laden terms such as "Plinian / Ultra-Plinian", "Super-colossal", "Mega-colossal" in descriptions of volcanic eruptions tells me that people just keep on finding bigger ones, and don't think about future terminology when they try to describe the new thing they're studying. We don't seem to have found the largest possible eruptions, just the largest measured so far.

Re:Water currents.

[RockDoctor]

we would learn that the water is slightly above the freezing point.

The freezing point of seawater is around minus2degC (not sure what that is in the US measure - there are conversion programs somewhere if you want to make a conversion to that system).

I bet if we dropped some sensors in the water,

... which, utterly astonishingly, is exactly how this polynya was discovered. "SOCCOM float surfaces inside rare Antarctic sea ice opening"

This is a recurrent feature of the Antarctic sea ice. It's tied to undersea features that well explain it's existence and location.

Polynyas are regions of open water that occur in the Arctic and Southern Oceans where youâ(TM)d expect to see ice, typically around coastlines that experience fierce wintertime winds. The Weddell polynya is unusual in that it occurs far offshore, in a shallow water region known as the Maud Rise. It was first spotted in the winter of 1974, when a hole roughly the size of Oregon emerged in the Antarctic sea ice in the dead of winter. The polynia cropped up again for the next two winters, before going dormant for decadesâ"although low sea ice concentrations persisted in the region.

Like all polynyas, it has considerable effects on both air temperatures and sea water temperatures in its area and wherever the cooled sea water goes to.

Re:Water currents.

[RockDoctor]

You're forgetting the presence of around 35ppt of dissolved salts in the water - principally sodium chloride. The freezing point of seawater is around 2degC BELOW zero.

Re:Water currents.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Interesting. Your link on the Toba supervolcano shows the idea that a 10 year volcanic winter, while bad, is certainly survivable (perhaps MORE survivable for a species now capable of 25 year food storage). Even relatively close civilizations like India show little to no difference in tool usage above or below the Toba Ash layer; homo flourensis has now been shown to have not only survived the Toba event, but flourished for another 60,000 years after.

So I'd have to think that no, a bowshot from a supervolcano is not something to worry an awful lot about- just be prepared.

Re:Water currents.

[RockDoctor]

One of the things that annoys me about this terminology is, there is no way of knowing if a particular volcanic eruption is going to be a "supervolcano eruption" until after the event has finished. Sure, we can say that the last eruption from a particular volcanic centre was a supervolcano (more than 1000 cu.km dense-rock-equivalent of ejecta - that's the definition), but telling if the next eruption from that complex will be ... effectively impossible.

A 1000cu.km magma chamber would have a radius of 6.2km. But from the surface (gravity, seismic, conductivity measurements), you generally can't see through the uncertainties at the top to detect the bottom. So you simply do not know the volume of your magma charge to start with. Then, absent samples, you don't know the gas content. And you don't know how efficient the chamber would be at emptying. Because we know that we find many solidified magma chambers underneath piles of geochemically compatible lavas and pyroclastic deposits, what we do know is that some magma chambers produce very voluminous ejecta deposits without emptying completely. (Though we do often see kilometres of movement on bounding faults which suggest kilometres of movement during that eruption.) Before the event, we've no real way of knowing how bad an eruption is going to be- very much the same problem as knowing how big the "next big one" on [insert name of fault] will be.

My oft-made prediction of the first megadeath (million casualty) earthquake being on the Himalayan Front complex under the Gangeatic foredeep is just an educated guess, and the Sumatran quarter-million deaths blind-sided me - an experienced and cautious geologist. The more I think about it, the more foolishly over-precise the term "super-volcano" becomes. We simply do not have (and probably never will have) enough information to predict if the next eruption of VolcanoX will be 1cu.km (Pinatubo, IIRC), 100cu.km (one to two Santorini 1600-ish BCE), or 1000cu.km (Toba, maybe Yellowstone).

Re: Queue up the jokes

[dj245]

It's fairly obvious. The Goa'uld are coming.

Not news.

[Qbertino]

It's always been there!
It's the hole that leads to Nazi occupied Hollow-Earth, where they have there domesticated dinosaurs to ride on and keep their UFOs. Every educated person knows this.

Re:Not news.

[dywolf]

SSSSHHHHHH!!!!!
You fool!
Now they're going to come for you!
FLEE!

Re:Not news.

[fortiustechnologies]

What will be the effect of this phenomenon?

Re:Not news.

[hey!]

Actually I've long been a fan of both Hyperborean and hollow-Earth theories, which are often found together and some people sincerely believed back in the 1800s (and probably still do). Antarctica fired many peoples' imaginations which is why I suppose people sent expeditions there; it was just on the edge of what could be accessible, like the Moon was in the 1960s. WIthout satellites it was just a big blank spot on the map; anything could be there. Maybe event Lovecraft's Mountains of Madness.

The combination of a (warm) antarctic subterranean civilization occurs in at least one proto-sci-fi story I read from the late 1800s, although I suppose the term should be Hypoaustral rather than Hyperborean.

These stories, and I suppose I should throw in King Kong as well, represent the end of an era for our species. When Landsat 1 was launched in 1972 physical geography was permanently demystified. There is no such thing as an uncharted isle where pirates bury their treasure or giant apes are worshipped by the natives. If there were such a thing as Skull Island it'd have an airport and visitor center.

I suppose that's why we've transplanted so much of our mythology to space.

Re:Not news.

[GameboyRMH]

TFS says the hole opened September 9th. Notice the increase in Nazi rallies since late last year. Coincidence? I think not!

Re: Queue up the jokes

[Anonymous Coward]

I second that:
http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Antarctica

Wild Mass Guessing

[mentil]

Underwater thermal vents. And/or aliens.

Re: Wild Mass Guessing

[DontBeAMoran]

No problem, we got our giant robots ready to fight. ... do we?

The Hole

[earthloop]

Not knowing where it came from, scientists are looking into it.

Any scifi fan will know

[Chrisq]

Giant holes in Antarctica are where the ice has melted because of the warmth from a recently reactivated alien spacecraft trapped beneath the ice millions of years ago.

Re:Any scifi fan will know

[jellomizer]

If there is any time for Alien overlords it is now.
Heck I would be happy with Richard Nixon Head in a headless robot body of Agnew.

Re:Any scifi fan will know

[Bing Tsher E]

You are just being an effete intellectual. Go put on your plain cloth coat and sit down!

Re:Any scifi fan will know

[guruevi]

If you wanted alien overlords, you should've voted for Clinton!

Re:Any scifi fan will know

[jellomizer]

Like most of the voting American Public, I did.

Re:Any scifi fan will know

[quintus_horatius]

Anime fans will know that it's because someone accidentally woke up Adam

Re:Any scifi fan will know

[guruevi]

Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

Re:Any scifi fan will know

[david_thornley]

What's not fair is that the votes in small states count more than votes in larger states. Everyone's vote should be equal.

Supervolcano

[dicobalt]

It's about to go off.

The Kraken Awakes!

[chthon]

Reminds me also of the X-Man somewhere at the end of the eighties, but that could have been in Siberia.

Re:Youtube link or it didn't happen

[CeasedCaring]

As requested:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
BTW, have the cats pushed everything off your flat earth yet?

Re:Leibstandarten David Icke?

[schleimkeim]

Good. I hope they fucking kill us all.

How thick is the ice?

[Flu]

I would guess it's quite thick - several meters or so, but that's just a wild guess. If so, it's even more remarkable.

Do any of you fellow slashdotter have any insight on how thick the ice actually is, around there?

Re:How thick is the ice?

[rmdingler]

The Arctic Sea's ice thickness is likely just a few meters, even though the inland ice sheet can be thousands of meters thick.

Re: How thick is the ice?

[bestweasel]

Um, this is the Antarctic and "hundreds of kilometres from the ice edge".

Re:How thick is the ice?

[RockDoctor]

You're confusing sea ice (floating on the sea surface, formed by cooling to the air and freezing oof seawater onto the bottom of the ice sheet) and glacier ice (formed by snowfall in the mountains, compressing under it's own weight and moving downhill.) The physics of the two are the same, but because of the different formation processes and locations, the implications are different.

Re:How thick is the ice?

[rmdingler]

You're confusing sea ice (floating on the sea surface, formed by cooling to the air and freezing oof seawater onto the bottom of the ice sheet) and glacier ice (formed by snowfall in the mountains, compressing under it's own weight and moving downhill.) The physics of the two are the same, but because of the different formation processes and locations, the implications are different.

Probably; yet the polynya is described as being in the Weddell Sea, so for the purpose of differentiating the ice's thickness, the comparison is not completely unreasonable.

alien vs predator

[Idimmu Xul]

viral marketing?

Re:IT'S NO JOKE !!

[Opportunist]

Again already? But it just ended on Sept 23.

It's the Gods of Climate Change

[nospam007]

...acting out. We must immediately throw in all the orange Climate.Change Deniers to appease them,

Re:It's the Gods of Climate Change

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't make a damn bit of difference if you "believe" in climate change if you're not acting on it in a personal fashion. I'm so sick of hearing crap like this from people who still haven't addressed their own carbon footprint. These people are crazy (and lazy) if they think for a second that they're going to buy a Tesla (they'll all buy one when they cost 10k USD, charge for free in 2 minutes and have a thousand mile range) , have the government sign some document that is unenforceable and not have to change anything about their lifestyle.

Own up to the lifestyle changes that need to take place today and stop making excuses for your over-consumption and sloth. Without that there is no point in talking about it and making it a political talking point only makes you look more foolish. I'm simply sick of the people who are preaching it like fire and brimstone but don't ante up. Live the lives that you're talking about!

Re:It's the Gods of Climate Change

[jellomizer]

A government actions or lack of action are a multiplier effect of the people ability to act personally on helping environmental problems.
If the government signs papers that will put funding into Electric Car R&D. Help local communities update their infrastructure for more efficient methods. Insure education and training are modern and up to date, so high school graduates don't feel they will have to work in the coal mine for the next 20 years.

If they are a bunch of available electric cars (Suited for different types of jobs) out there and power stations setup in convenient locations then people would buy them. If Upgrading to Solar on your home, will have a payoff within 5 years then people may invest into upgrading their homes.

Re: It's the Gods of Climate Change

[datavirtue]

Dude....this had me cackling with laughter.

Re:It's the Gods of Climate Change

[hyades1]

It's not a good idea to pollute the ocean like that.

Re:It's the Gods of Climate Change

[I'm New Around Here]

We don't all live in the People's Republic of California.

Re:It's the Gods of Climate Change

[twosat]

Don't they normally want virgins? I understand that there are a lot of them to be found at computer centers.

Weddell Polynya

[Anonymous Coward]

The Weddell Polynya is reasonably well understood

"The Southern Ocean is strongly stratified. A very cold but relatively fresh water layer covers a much warmer and saltier water mass, thus acting as an insulating layer," explains Prof. Dr. Mojib Latif, head of the Research Division at GEOMAR. Under certain conditions, the warm water of the lower layer can reach the surface and melt the ice. "This is like opening a pressure relief valve - the ocean then releases a surplus of heat to the atmosphere for several consecutive winters until the heat reservoir is exhausted," adds Professor Latif

Re:Weddell Polynya

[tomxor]

I don't mean to be alarmist but this sounds like another one to add to the list of warming runaway effects, or is this supposed to be a more frequent and normal occurrence?

Re:Weddell Polynya

[RockDoctor]

It's probably something we'll see more of, but how much of that is due to there being more shipping (fishing boats in particular) and satellite coverage that can report on them isn't so clear.

This polynya was (re-)discovered by a passive sea-properties float surfacing in the gap and managing to upload it's data load to a satellite. Those floats (and the communications satellites) didn't exist in the 1970s when this polynya was previously reported.

Where's the goatse image

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's the goatse image ... the one time where it forms an appropriate illustration and it's gone!

Re: Queue up the jokes

[Anonymous Coward]

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

Giant Crack

[Bruha]

So the giant crack in the image is not a concern?

Re:IT'S NO JOKE !!

[ClickOnThis]

Newsweek is telling us about some religious wacko who claims that the world will end in 4 (four) days !

FTFY. Interesting article, though. That guy is truly unhinged.

Re:Polynyas?

[temcat]

Russian hentai, not Japanese. The word is Russian.

Re:IT'S NO JOKE !!

[stealth_finger]

Again already? But it just ended on Sept 23.

It's a buy one get one free deal.

Re: Queue up the jokes

[stealth_finger]

Quite clearly the lizard people are getting ready for their attack on the over world.

Poll flip?

[grahamm]

Maybe it heralds the flipping of the magnetic poles, which has happened in the past and according to some is overdue.

Re:Poll flip?

[RockDoctor]

One is the result of electrical currents around 4000km down in the Earth's lithosphere, and the other due to water currents in the top kilometre of the hydrosphere.

Yes, a magnetic pole flip is probably due - today plus-or-minus a hundred thousand years.

Magnetostratigraphy (studying the sequences of magnetic reversals in history) is a standard industrial technique, often associated with techniques of palynology and micro- and nanno- palaeontology for correlation of time slices. (NB : I know that nannopalaeontologists don't follow normal spelling conventions in their field's name. As far as I can tell, it's a shibboleth.)

Re:IT'S NO JOKE !!

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Everyone knows that the world will end in 2038, on January 19.

AVP is a documentary!

[kfh227]

It's happening!

Polynia

[Shompol]

"polynia" is a Russian word that stands for "naturally-formed hole in the ice". They are formed due to current.

Re:Polynia

[I'm New Around Here]

That's funny. Using google translate, Russian "polynia" translates in English to "polynia".

Re:Polynia

[micahraleigh]

I thought Polynia is where Moana lived.

Re:IT'S NO JOKE !!

[chill]

Upgrade the universe to 64-bits already!

In the right light...

[Torodung]

...you look like Shackleton!

Start the expedition.

Vaguely more on topic than a lot of what I'm reading here.

Re:Bigger than a bathtub?

[jellomizer]

15 million football fields.

Re:Oh God, it's Cthulu

[Chameleon Man]

Isn't this the plot to The Thing?

Everyone has a theory

[boudie2]

There certainly seems to be no shortage of bizarre stories in the news recently. Of course they can't all be right, is the stargate in Antarctica or at CERN in Switzerland? Both? Neither? Are we to be invaded by both Nazis and aliens at the same time we're hit by Nibiru? Or my favorite is that there must be something going on in Antarctica otherwise why did Buzz Aldrin at age 86 go there last year? Has to be aliens. The human imagination is a wonderful thing, sometimes.

Re:Expedition

[justthinkit]

Nah, two guys should be sufficient.

Re: Oh God, it's Cthulu

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume it's just one but he misspelt Cthulhu so I'm afraid an inevitable shrieking death probably involving dismemberment is on its way. If you thought grammar Nazis were bad you ain't seen nothing.

Was there last year too

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

It is the second year in a row it happened in the last 40 years. So it has been opening and closing off and on for at least 40 years.

Re:Oh God, it's Cthulu

[Bing Tsher E]

Shocking as it may seem, Creimer appears to have become the new Natalie Portman.

For those who use metric

[Hognoxious]

For those who use metric, it's a bit less than three standard Belgiums.

Re:For those who use metric

[blindseer]

A "standard" Belgium? As opposed to what? An "imperial" Belgium?

Re:For those who use metric

[Hognoxious]

As opposed to a substandard Belgium, of course.

Re:For those who use metric

[hazardPPP]

A "standard" Belgium? As opposed to what? An "imperial" Belgium?

Yes. Imperial Belgium is much bigger, as it included the Congo. The Congo is very big.

Re:IT'S NO JOKE !!

[Ol Olsoc]

Again already? But it just ended on Sept 23.

It's a buy one get one free deal.

And we still haven't recovered from the May 2011 end of the world. Ahhh, those were good times.

Re:Expedition

[Bing Tsher E]

I just yesterday watched a DVD of the 1948 movie 'Scott of the Antarctic' and your link to 'two guys' now makes me very very sad for some reason.
Will the Park Service soon make the South Pole wheelchair accessible?

Re:Polynyas?

[DontBeAMoran]

"Russian hentai" doesn't sound right, like saying "American maple syrup".

Alright

[DontBeAMoran]

We're at 135 posts so far and nobody made the obvious connection.

A giant mysterious hole has opened up in Antarctica? The answer is obvious: it's the other end of a wormhole that links to Uranus.

Re:Alright

[RockDoctor]

That says more about you than it does about JoeAverageSlashdot.

Re:Bigger than a bathtub?

[Anubis IV]

Considering he used bathtubs as an example and asked for human terms, I believe he was looking for something like the list I'm about to provide, each of which is close to 80,000 km^2, rather than having a number that is beyond our ability to grasp easily expressed in terms of equally ungraspable units.

Anywhere, here's a quick list I pulled together of some notable items between about 77K and 83K km^2:
- Austria
- Czech Republic
- Lake Superior
- Maine, USA
- Scotland
- South Carolina, USA
- United Arab Emirates

Rather than being a smart ass, why don't you actually listen to what the guy is asking next time and respond with something useful?

Cthulhu awakens

[Austerity Empowers]

The shoggoths continue their dark work, and prepare us all to enter the maw. Cthulhu awakens, and he is not best pleased.

Re:Expedition

[stealth_finger]

We need to mount an expedition! Get the dogs and the tinned meat.

You do that, I'll get a helicopter and meet you there.

Volcano?

[Billly Gates]

This range of very active volcanoes have been discovered. Perhaps no one put the 2 together? Or maybe steam from one that is about to erupt could be sending heat beneath the ice pack.

One Island on Antarctica's shores has a Caldera supervolano similar to Yellowstone that produces hot springs for warm bathing by humans. Even if there is no eruption some steam and hot water ahead of one can give off an incredible amount of heat under an already stressed ice pack.

Re:Volcano?

[RockDoctor]

This range of very active volcanoes have been discovered.

Your Washington Post article doesn't include a map of where these volcanoes are. Since I did RTFA on that, and submitted it to slashdot (someone beat me the front page), I have seen the maps of those volcano locations (follow the link in my previous posting). They are specifically compared in both length of province and width of province with the East African Rift volcanic province (Fig 1 of linked-to OpenAccess PDF).

Perhaps no one put the 2 together?

Perhaps, if you'd read the article (the link has been available for a couple of months), you'd know why there is no 2 to put together. Oh, you'd need the location of the Wedell Sea Polynya? Follow the link I posted up-thread.

Or maybe steam from one that is about to erupt could be sending heat beneath the ice pack. One Island on Antarctica's shores has a Caldera supervolano similar to Yellowstone that produces hot springs for warm bathing by humans. Even if there is no eruption some steam and hot water ahead of one can give off an incredible amount of heat under an already stressed ice pack.

Not impossible, but not actually relevant. See the article and map I cited a few moments ago. As an alternative, you might have tried drawing a seabed profile across the area and identifying the undersea topography for yourself (I use GeoMapApp for that, but I'm very open to better tools.)

Re:Quick

[Farmer Tim]

They did, and confirmed it is indeed a hole.

Re: "We're still trying to figure out what's going

[sexconker]

Uh, you're the one jumping to the conclusion that it is caused by "climate change", with the insinuation that it's due to humans.

Firesign Theater:

[Hartree]

"The one with the ever widening hole in it!"

Re: Queue up the jokes

[spun]

For those not familiar with the Lovecraft oeuvre, Antarctica was inhabited by Elder Things and their servants, the Shoggoths, who came to Earth hundreds of millions of years ago. They fought with Cthulhu.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Oh God, it's Cthulu

[spun]

I think he's more of the hot grits down your pants.

Re:Polynyas?

[I'm New Around Here]

That's not horrific enough. I would say "Russian hentai" would be on par with "British dental repair".

Actually, I just googled both to confirm, and have found out neither one exist. All the images were from other regions.

Reboot the universe

[DrYak]

Upgrade the universe to 64-bits already!

But then I'll need to reboot the universe, and I still have a few unsaved tabs.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:IT'S NO JOKE !!

[Immerman]

Nah, that was just the Rapture. All the true followers of Jesus ascended to Heaven - didn't you notice?

Re:Polynyas?

[temcat]

Intriguing enough to me.

Re:Polynyas?

[temcat]

Non-existence is kind of the essense of a hole.

Moulder called

[future assassin]

this time he says it not real and nothing to see.

For those who use atomic units

[tomxor]

And for those of us who prefer atomic units it's...

An area of about 32.7 Nonillion (32.7e30) rBohr square, or about 326 Octillion (326e27) cesium atoms in a 2d latice.

Warning for flat earthers!

[johannesg]

Don't get too close, or you might fall through and land on the turtle.

Re: Queue up the jokes

[irving47]

No, if you research Steve Quayle, it's obviously the *giants* about to come out after us.

useful indicator here

[micahraleigh]

The way the phrase "ice pack" gets tossed around like elitest jargon is a reliable indicator of buffoonery.

Insensitive cloddery ftw ...

Hold on a sec.... I'll ask my grandson....

[mark-t]

.... he breaks everything. If there's a hole in it where there shouldn't be, he's probably responsible. In his defense, he probably didn't really mean to do it, but was afraid to tell anyone because he thought he'd get in trouble.

Re: Queue up the jokes

[spun]

Nah, this was way before Xenu and his crew rose to power. I think Elder Things arrived here in the Cambrian, ~500 million years ago. Xenu flew his DC-8s here 75 million years ago. I've been binge watching Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath.

I'm so glad...

[PuddleBoy]

that nobody made a comment about Trump flying to Antarctica to make a speech!

Re:Expedition

[justthinkit]

It speaks more to the incredible determination and will of Reinhold Messner. He's written a lot of books, many in English, and I highly recommend them. Simply the best mountaineer ever.

Re:IT'S NO JOKE !!

[Opportunist]

Nope, all the bible thumping assholes I enjoy making fun of are still here.

Re:Anything to further the "cause"

[dave420]

Write a paper, win all the money. Go on! We'll wait.

Re:IT'S NO JOKE !!

[Immerman]

*woosh*

Re:Queue up the jokes

[frogmaw]

Release the Kraken!

Danny Kaye Would Have Been Proud

[tmjva]

There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea

There's a hole in the bottom of the sea
There's a hole in the bottom of the sea
There's a hole, there's a hole
There's a hole in the bottom of the sea

There's a log in the hole in the bottom of the sea
There's a log in the hole in the bottom of the sea
There's a log, there's a log
There's a log in the hole in the bottom of the sea

There's a branch on the log...

There's a bump on the branch...

There's a frog on the bump...

There's a tail on the frog...

There's a speck on the tail...

There's a fleck on the speck...

So let's flick the fleck, brush the speck
Twist the tail, pet the frog
Flatten the bump, break the branch
burn the log, fill the hole in the bottom of the sea!

Because we need it like a hole in the sea

See?

Re: Queue up the jokes

[david_thornley]

Elder Things didn't seem to make much sound, but Shoggoths went "Tekeli-li!" (from a book of Poe's). Thing is, the Elder Things lost control to the Shoggoths, who pretty much run things there now.

Re:IT'S NO JOKE !!

[david_thornley]

And still no free cars.

Re: Queue up the jokes

[spun]

Yup. At the Mountains of Madness was one of my favorite Lovecraft stories.