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A monolithic iceberg that broke off of Antarctica last class recently spin around and narrowly avoided clash with the Brunt Ice Shelf . Such a clank could have caused a new , even more massive berg to break off .
Iceberg A-74 , which is more than 20 time the size of it of Manhattan , split from Antarctica ’s Brunt Ice Shelf in February 2020,Live Science previously report . Ocean current keep the gargantuan wolf near its parent ice shelf for the past six months , according to a statementfrom theEuropean Space Agency(ESA ) . Everything was quiet , until the winding came .
A-74 recently brushed by the Brunt Ice Shelf, which it split from last February.
In other August , strong winds spun the iceberg lettuce around the ice shelf . Two polar - orbiting satellites that make up the Copernicus Sentinel-1 military mission beguile radar images between Aug. 9 and Aug. 18 that showed A-74 " brush slightly " against a thin strip show of water ice that juts off the shelf and then moving south .
link : Photos : Diving beneath Antarctica ’s Ross Ice Shelf
" The nozzle - shaped piece of the ice shelf , which is even large than A-74 , remains connect to the Brunt Ice Shelf , but scantily , " Mark Drinkwater , capitulum of ESA ’s Mission Science Division , tell in the program line . " If the berg had collide more violently with this opus , it could have accelerate the fracture of the remaining ice bridge , causing it to break away . "
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A-74 is about 490 square mile ( 1,270 substantial kilometers ) , but if it had hit the ice shelf firmly enough , it could have released another iceberg with an expanse of about 656 square miles ( 1,700 square km ) , according to the statement .
Two major crack in the ice ledge , lie with as " Chasm 1 " ( extending northward ) and the " Halloween Crack " ( extending eastward ) , are split up by a small aloofness . If they were to meet — for example , if there were a strong shock — an berg would come apart off , harmonize to ESA . It ’s natural for ice shelves to have young , and glaciologists have been following the formation of small shift and turgid chasms for year .
A-74 broke off along the North Rift crevice , the third major chasm to open up in the Brunt Ice Shelf in the retiring decade , Live Science previously reported . Drinkwater noted that the team will continue supervise the iceberg and the glass ledge using the Sentinel satellite imagination .
Originally published on Live Science .
