Jökulsárlón lagoon in southern Iceland is a fascinating place for this - large blocks of ice break from the glacier at the top end and slowly float towards the outlet of the lagoon to the sea.
Near the outlet the iceburgs catch on the bed of the lagoon and tumble as they melt. There's a glorious variety of colours as the ice as the freshly exposed dark glacier ice is exposed - like in the attached article - before the ice surface melts and it returns to a white colour.
Such comments are boring to read. Clearly enough users found it interesting and on-topic enough to upvote.
"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think a story is spam or off-topic, flag it by clicking on its 'flag' link." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I blame myself tbh. Saw Smithsonian so I gave it benefit of the doubt, but what could we have expected from "These 3 icebergs flipped over and you'll never believe what happened next" bullshit title
I got redirected to some winning notification that also stole focus from another app and broke the navigation history. All I could do was to close the tab. It's really ridiculous what Google allows and tolerates on mobile Chrome these days.
Can I complain about popular iceberg imagery? Most of the depictions of icebergs (1) that show them underwater are completely fake and like the "dead butterfly" post here recently aren't even remotely plausible. They're always shown as tall and skinny, but that's ridiculous, they'd be unstable. I've read that the classic picture is actually composited from two above-water shots, one flipped upside down and blue tinted to look underwater. Some of the images in that Google search I link are ludicrously unrealistic.
That's exactly what made me realize this. Everything since then seems to have just copied that image. Of course, it partly makes sense. Icebergs are generally too large to photograph underwater clearly since visibility will probably never be that good and the lighting would be terrible, so they'll always have to be composites.
Also, whoops. Why did I link to a search for "Glacier underwater" instead of "iceberg"?
> They're always shown as tall and skinny, but that's ridiculous, they'd be unstable.
I think icebergs are inherently unstable, that's why they're icebergs in the first place. They do also flip (see OP!). Tall skinny things are also not a bad way to go in the ocean, that's how some deep sea oil drilling platforms work[1]. Or something like the RP Flip[2].
Those things aren't at near-constant density, though. And although the article shows that icebergs do flip, the fact that the Smithsonian wrote an excited piece about it suggests that it doesn't happen too frequently. And it sounds like that happens because pieces break off or melt. The examples in the image search aren't just kinda unstable; they're completely implausible.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] threadAlso, there is no reference, so you can't tell how big the structure really is.
Thanks for sharing. It was great seeing the edits he did to the photos.
Near the outlet the iceburgs catch on the bed of the lagoon and tumble as they melt. There's a glorious variety of colours as the ice as the freshly exposed dark glacier ice is exposed - like in the attached article - before the ice surface melts and it returns to a white colour.
Why are we allowing pics now?
"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think a story is spam or off-topic, flag it by clicking on its 'flag' link." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39779761
(1) https://www.google.com/search?q=glacier+underwater
See https://petapixel.com/2015/09/24/the-iceberg-stock-photo-tha...
http://www.snopes.com/photos/natural/iceberg.asp
Also, whoops. Why did I link to a search for "Glacier underwater" instead of "iceberg"?
I think icebergs are inherently unstable, that's why they're icebergs in the first place. They do also flip (see OP!). Tall skinny things are also not a bad way to go in the ocean, that's how some deep sea oil drilling platforms work[1]. Or something like the RP Flip[2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spar_(platform) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP_FLIP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC3VTgIPoGU
Mind boggling. A chunk of ice the size of Manhattan rolling over.
Antarctica is an incredible place, truly nothing else like it.