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Black iceberg: a unique natural phenomenon. Dmitry Titov - Black Iceberg

An iceberg is a majestic, incredibly beautiful and eerie sight: a huge block of ice floats serenely across the ocean. Icebergs are usually white. But there is also such an amazing natural phenomenon as a black iceberg.

In the old days, sailors believed that meeting a black iceberg at sea portended great trouble. This is understandable: the black iceberg looks impressive and ominous. However, there is nothing particularly scary about it.

The origin of black icebergs is exactly the same as all others. These are blocks of ice that break off from polar glaciers. The white color of the vast majority of icebergs is due to air bubbles in the compressed ice. But if a glacier, while moving, “removes” layers of soil or rock from the surface, a black or brown color appears in its thickness. And icebergs in Antarctica can be black from the volcanic dust from the Shetland Islands that covers the mother glaciers.

The "dark sides" of an iceberg are usually carried in the lower part (due to its higher density), but when the block melts, it can turn over - and voila, you have a black iceberg.

Black iceberg

Dmitry Titov

ISBN 978-5-4485-4063-9

Created in the intellectual publishing system Ridero

Loneliness... Everyone has experienced this feeling. Some people had to endure it for a short time, while others experience it constantly, some go out of their way to stop experiencing loneliness, and others need it. But still, it is unusual for a person to be in a state of loneliness. Any lonely person tries to get himself a pet so that by its presence it will relieve him of the awareness of his loneliness. A person experiences this need. What about humanity? Sooner or later it will begin to feel this feeling...

Few people have seen the Milky Way in such splendor. You will not see such an expressive bright strip of white cloud from Earth. There was only a black sky around, bright stars scattered in countless numbers across the sky, two stars that shone noticeably brighter than others, and a dim red dwarf, the light from which could not hide the beauty of the native galaxy. The constellations in the sky were located almost the same as seen from Earth, with the exception of a small number of stars that were part of the local group.

The only movement that a person could notice if he were in this place is the rotational-translational movement of an oblong object, similar to a relay baton thrown somewhere into the distance. The “stick” was the length of a football field, and its white body stood out well against the black sky.

It was an oblong spacecraft, reminiscent of a rocket from the early space age. The tail of the boat, where the engines and other units were located, was heavier, so the axis of rotation was shifted back, and the bow, where the living module was located, described a larger circle. Next to the boat, small vehicles were moving in parallel courses, looking from a distance like some kind of insects. Their antennae resembled antennae and legs, and their open solar panels resembled the wings of beetles. The eyes of the cameras and scanners of the devices were directed forward into the void.

Inside the boat, one of the two crew members clearly did not like the conditions of artificial gravity.

– This carousel makes me sick! Let's fly like all normal people - nose first!

– What don’t you like all the time? So at least you can drink tea normally: from glasses, not from bags or tubes! I hate eating in zero gravity. This is interesting for novice astronauts, but I don’t like chasing food around the ship with my mouth open!

Almost every day of this long-established team passed in such disputes. And despite frequent disagreements, these two young men complemented each other perfectly and shared responsibilities for managing and maintaining the boat.

It was warm and quiet inside the living module. The only sounds rushing through the premises were the voices of the pilots Igor, Mark and the on-board computer Marusya against the backdrop of quietly operating ventilation systems. However, nothing human is alien to space pilots, so sometimes you could hear music. Igor even had a guitar, although he rarely played, usually when Mark was immersed in work, ceasing to perceive signals from the outside world, and Igor could not sit idle for even ten minutes. Usually, if there was no other work, he took a guitar, or talked to the computer Marusya, asking her questions as if she were a living girl, which the computer, of course, could not answer, offering to listen to a quote from an electronic explanatory dictionary, relating to the topic raised.

However, this time the dialogue proceeded vigorously between the interlocutors. Mark and Igor were very different, but they communicated and got along well.

- Quite. This is the voice of a thirty-year-old woman, young, pretty, as it seems to me, and with the necessary life experience,” answered Igor, who had already begun to think about the guitar. “It’s just that if she had a younger voice, then the desire would constantly arise to argue with her, otherwise her opinion is quite authoritative for me.

“And I thought you listened to my opinion first of all.” Better yet, say that you just don’t know how to change the settings.

– If I wanted to, I would know! By the way, have you checked the parameters of the boat? Otherwise, we need to slow down in a day.

“Yes, I check it all the time,” Mark said disingenuously. “So far everything is fine.” All systems are operating normally. By the way, get ready: soon you will have to say goodbye to gravity,” he stated with undisguised pleasure.

– As soon as the maneuvers are over, I’ll start the carousel again! – Igor insisted. He looked at his comrade, hunched over the holographic screen, left the cabin into the corridor, which at the moment was a shaft, and climbed a makeshift ladder, carelessly welded to the wall, to the second floor. This cabin has been converted into a gym. The gravity here was a little less, since it was closer to the center of rotation.

The idea to spin the boat and create gravity inside a vessel that was not designed for this belonged to Igor. Mark, as a person with a technical education, was in every possible way against deviating from the instructions, but he himself did not shy away from conducting experiments, and in the end, although he gritted his teeth, he gave in. In the end, he himself saw many advantages in this, but was in no hurry to tell the already narcissistic Igor about it. Igor, in turn, although he was an eccentric, independent person, trusted Mark’s opinion, and was just as in no hurry to admit it.

“Marusya, my program is on the treadmill...” Igor muttered to the computer, which the crew understood perfectly if a frequently repeated command was uttered. As soon as he stepped on the treadmill, energetic music began to play, carefully selected by Igor for such activities. While running, he remembered the Earth, his home, his family. The cheerful and most joyful scenes from life floated before my eyes. Igor regretted that he had exchanged all this for voluntary confinement in a cramped ship without communication with the Earth, but he was not ready to retreat from his goal.

He ran and imagined familiar places around him, his parents’ two-story house, neighbors’ houses and cars, an alley where he often jogged in his youth, familiar grocery stores that he had visited since childhood at his mother’s request. He “saw” blue skies and birds, which were actually fewer, but for a suitable nostalgic mood there should be just that many. Igor was already beginning to think that he had probably started all this in vain, and that maybe he needed to return home, but then there was a cry from the speakers: “When are we going to eat?”

Black iceberg

The lookouts on watch peered into the starry horizon; the ship rushed forward at a speed of 21½ knots, that is, about 40 km/h. Before sailing, the watchmen underwent a medical examination, but their eyesight was not checked. And they were not given binoculars. Later, during the investigation, there was talk that “binoculars can improve vision,” and, in fact, one of the watchmen, as it turned out, submitted a report asking for this simple device, but the request was ignored. After all, this is not a spoon for mustard or a hand rinse - it will cost you. Keep your eyes open! He did. And, suddenly realizing that some of the stars in the sky seemed to have disappeared, replaced by a piece of darkness, he shouted and called the telephone into the control room, and the command “right rudder” sounded (at the same time, the ship, unlike a modern car, turned left), and the engines were stopped, but it was too late. The Titanic scraped its starboard side against the underwater part of the iceberg as it moved. He didn't have 15 seconds.

The passengers felt almost nothing; those sleeping did not wake up. The bridge player's cocktail spilled, while others simply felt the slightest trembling. Someone heard a rustling sound, as if the bottom was rustling “a thousand pebbles.” They noticed rather something else: the ensuing silence. Wealthy passengers looked out with interest onto the wide first class deck. “Why are we standing?” - “It’s okay: iceberg.” It's funny. From the collision, pieces of ice showered the deck on the starboard side. The younger ones started throwing snowballs, just like at home. Others returned to drinks and books.

Captain Smith, Titanic builder Andrews and the fireman went to look at the hole. Of course, the waterproof electric doors were already closed. (This was a fatal mistake, the same as turning right.) Water rushed into the holed skin. "This is bad?" – asked the captain. - "Very bad". - “How bad?” Andrews, who built the ship and knew everything about it, said: Six compartments were damaged. The ship will sink. There are two hours left. We must unload passengers into boats without panic - women and children, of course. There was only enough seating in the lifeboats for a third of the passengers, and Andrews knew it.

The evacuation at first proceeded slowly and gallantly, almost without panic. No one understood what was happening or why, no one was told what was happening, many resisted boarding the boats: the sea was cold and uncertain, but the ship was warm and cozy, but if it had to be so... Eva Hart’s mother, who “knew it” "was ready. She immediately dragged her husband and daughter to the boats; the women were allowed through, but the husband, of course, was not. “Listen to mom!” - the builder admonished his daughter - and no one saw him again. The order “women and children only” was interpreted differently by the crew officers on the port and starboard sides: in one case, when there were no more women in sight, men were also put on board; in the other, the order was taken literally and men were not allowed into the boats at all. Boys over eight years of age were considered men (oh, British honor!). One such boy climbed into the boat where Eva was sitting, and the officer threw him back on board, crying; There was no boy among those rescued. It was scary to get into the boat: in jerks, waddling first to the bow, then to the stern, they descended from the side, as if from the height of a ten-story building - one overcrowded beyond the norm, the other half empty; and another was already following her, threatening to crush her under her weight, and then suddenly the smartest and most ungallant of the men realized what was happening and began to jump from a height into the boats, and then suddenly it turned out that the frightened and poorly informed third class rushed onto the decks , - but there are wild people there, Italians, emigrants, in our opinion, they don’t understand in general; panic grew, the bars separating the third class from the second were locked, the ship began to list to the bow and to the left, the third class howled and knocked on the bars, someone rushed around, someone, breaking through to the deck, began to jump from the side into freezing water, mothers dragged their children, sailors tore mothers from their children's hands if the children were boys, the chairman of the White Star company, Ismay, with his wife and secretary, jumped into the boat and ordered to row - the boat left half empty, out of 65 places only 12 were filled. Some the wives did not want to leave their husbands - some were torn away by force, others were given up on. The ship sank halfway into the water, listing more and more. “Now it’s every man for himself!” – the captain announced to anyone who could hear it. The lights burned to the end, the sailors fired signal flares, radio operator Phillips tapped Morse code and became the first person to send signal 805 - a new product recently introduced and first tested on the Titanic. Some madman burst into the radio room and began to tear off Phillips' life jacket; Phillips and his assistant Bride killed him. On board, the officer shot and killed two distraught passengers and immediately shot himself. All the boats were now hastily rowing away from the ship, afraid of being pulled into the funnel. The Titanic's orchestra—all men, of course—played waltzes. The stern of the ship rose up to an immense height at an angle of 45 degrees. People clinging to the handrails began to break away and fall into the water. Then the lights finally went out, a terrible crash was heard, and the stern part of the ship broke off and fell into the ocean. The bow, finally filled with water, dived to a depth of four kilometers, exploding in boilers, breaking pipes, taking with it the poor, Italians, stokers, dragging to the bottom sixty locked cooks who had just carefully browned filet mignon and poured jelly syrup on peaches for those who were now rowing into the darkness, away from terrible screams, from vain cries for help. Two minutes later, the stern part, having taken on water, dived after the bow. It was smaller, there was no air bubble in it, its speed was like that of a good car on the highway: both parts of the Titanic reached the bottom at the same time. A terrible impact with the bottom drove the bow into the ocean floor to a depth of 50 feet; it broke in half again. At breakneck speed, the stern slammed into it, and at the same time, a mass of water carried by the ship, which hit the debris that had stopped in its take-off run and finally flattened the decks into a layer cake, twisted the tower electric cranes with a rope, crushed the corpse of the ship and dissipated in the ocean.

There was a terrible, long half-hour scream upstairs. Those who fell into the icy water grabbed in the pitch darkness for debris and debris, for chairs, for cork rafts, for each other. The people in the boats kept their distance. The wife of the chairman of the company, Ismay, wailed: “Oh, my robe, my wonderful robe!” - the robe died with the Titanic. One of the sailors on the oars offered to drive up and try to save at least one of the drowning people, but the couple objected: after all, drowning people have a habit of grabbing the sides and can turn the boat over. Later, during a public inquiry, the Ismays confirmed that the screams were heard for another half hour (until the people froze to death in the icy water), but they were too upset and had a lot to think about, so it somehow didn’t occur to them go to the screams, but believe me, there was no malicious intent here. Other boats had their own dramas: someone froze right in the boat, standing knee-deep in icy water, and their corpses had to be thrown into the sea; the sailors of one of the boats did not know how to row (this was their first voyage in their lives), and then the society ladies sat on the oars and handled the situation with honor: they gave fur coats to the undressed, warmed the babies, and shouted at the frightened men. By morning, the ship "Carpathia" approached, taking the survivors on board. Of the fifteen hundred people left on board, forty people were saved. Those who were not locked in the ship, who were not pulled into the funnel, became numb in the water. The lucky ones were saved; healthy; strong; A crew member who realized what was happening and rushed to the previously inaccessible first class bar to drink a glass of whiskey for free was also saved. Of the first class passengers, 6 percent of women and children died (mostly those who refused to board the boats), of the third class - 58. Of the twenty newlywed couples, one was saved; nineteen young wives returned to shore as widows. Radio operator Phillips was killed, so was Captain Smith, and the entire orchestra was killed. The girl Eva escaped, lived a long life and died in 1996.

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Last December, photographer Alex Cornell, during his expedition to Antarctica, was lucky enough to photograph an amazing iceberg of an unusual blue color. It turned out that the iceberg turned over and the part of the iceberg that is usually under water became visible. Very beautiful color, I have never seen anything like it before.

Video of how icebergs can turn:

Just beautiful

After these photos, Osya and I talked a lot about icebergs, and here are various interesting facts that you can tell the children:

1. How are icebergs formed?

They break off from large shelf (i.e., floating or bottom-supported) glaciers.

You can launch a small boat and several frozen ice floes in colored water with foam. And conduct a study - what exactly is floating in front of the ship - just a giant ice floe or a real iceberg?

- In plastic molds (for example, from ice cream) you can freeze flat pieces of ice, if you do not pour a lot of water into them.
- Uneven ice will result if you freeze water in dented plastic cups. It’s just better not to wrinkle them too much, otherwise they will crack.
- Separately, you can freeze water in special ice molds, and then these ice pieces will easily stick to each other and you can make different “icebergs.”

We checked whether the iceberg really does not sink, and how much it sinks into the water.

2. Types of icebergs. Icebergs are table-shaped, dome-shaped and pyramidal. An iceberg with a flat surface can easily be mistaken for an island. And it’s comfortable to live on if you’re a penguin.

There are also “dry dock” icebergs - the middle of such an iceberg lies below the surface of the water.

We tried to make icebergs of different shapes, it turned out very funny. The best iceberg is made from ice in a salad bowl.
At the same time, we discussed the bottom of the iceberg. Scientists know of cases where icebergs drifted against the current. And Osya spent a long time guessing how this could be? The whole point is that only a third or fourth of the entire iceberg rises above the surface, while the rest is submerged in water, and there is so much of it that it is “controlled” by active underwater currents.

3. The largest iceberg:
In 2000, the largest known iceberg in history (B-15), measuring 295 km in length and 37 km, broke off the Ross Ice Shelf. This is very difficult to imagine, it seems to me.

4. It's interesting what these ice giants can do travel great distances. For example, icebergs from the Arctic float almost to Bermuda, located 4,000 km from their place of formation. But Antarctic icebergs can be seen in the area of the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. And this is more than 5,000 km from the coast of Antarctica!

5. Floating so far icebergs can be very dangerous for shipping. Everyone knows the tragic fate of the English passenger liner Titanic, which collided with a huge iceberg on April 14, 1912, and as a result sank. Soon after, the International Ice Patrol was created to monitor the movement of icebergs and warn ships of possible danger. And since the beginning of the work of the ice patrol in the North Atlantic, not a single person has died from collisions with icebergs.

It is very interesting that it turns out that there is an iceberg tugboat. The Atlantic Eagle is battling large icebergs in the ocean.

Its only task is to move the iceberg a few degrees from the undesirable course. When a tugboat approaches an iceberg, its crew uses radar to obtain an image of the underwater part of the iceberg. Then the tug goes around it, bending around the ice floe and unwinding hundreds of meters of powerful cable. Having made a loop, both ends are secured to the boat with huge staples. Then, increasing the power of the vessel, they move the iceberg from its place. All this can be very dangerous, because if the iceberg suddenly decides to capsize, it will cause a huge wave or break apart, and this can lead to the sinking of the ship.

6. Iceberg color

Young icebergs are white and consist of ice and air bubbles. These air bubbles form in the glacier from which the iceberg breaks off. When snow is compressed and turns into ice grains, some of the air is also “pressed” into the ice and can occupy up to 15% of the iceberg’s volume. When a glacier moves, cracks form in it. They are filled with water, which, unlike snow, freezes without bubbles. Then blue streaks appear in the iceberg: this is ice free of air.
This is how striped icebergs appear.

They write that in this iceberg, while drifting, sea water and algae got into the cracks and froze:

There are also “black” icebergs: they form when a glacier begins to move and “removes” layers of rock or soil from the surface, which later form black in its thickness. And the black color in icebergs may be a remnant of the volcanic dust that covers their mother glaciers.

Icebergs are a majestic and beautiful, but at the same time eerie sight: huge blocks of ice float serenely across the ocean, almost no one dares to disturb their royal procession. The vast majority of icebergs are white, but amazing black blocks of ice are found in nature.

Since ancient times, sailors have believed that an encounter with a black iceberg foreshadowed trouble. The reason for this was the ominous and gloomy appearance of such blocks of ice. But still there is no mysticism in a black iceberg; their origin is no different from white icebergs.

All icebergs are huge blocks of ice that break off from the polar ice cap through the action of wind, waves and earthquakes, and the white color of the ice is caused by air bubbles in the compressed ice.

But there are cases when, when moving, a glacier can “remove” layers of rock or soil from the surface, so a black color forms in its thickness. In Antarctica, the mother glaciers are covered in black by volcanic dust that forms on the Shetland Islands.

The “dark sides” of an iceberg are concentrated in its lower underwater part, since it has a higher density. During the melting process, this huge block of ice can turn over, turning from a white to a black iceberg.

In the vastness of the oceans there are icebergs of other colors: green, red and brown. The color scheme of these giant ice blocks depends largely on the density of air bubbles and the presence of all kinds of impurities, as well as microorganisms.