The world's largest iceberg, affectionately called A23a, has led an exciting life. In 1986, it cleaved from the Antarctica continent and started drifting northward. But then it got stuck in mud at the bottom of the Weddell Sea. I guess that's what happens to an iceberg that's 1,000 feet deep.
But in 2020 it once again broke away, pursuing its original northward path. But suddenly, the trillion-ton iceberg stopped moving and is now spinning in a circle.
From the NY Times (free shared article):
Imagine a 1,600-square-mile piece of ice as deep as the Empire State Building spinning slowly but steadily enough to fully rotate it on its head over the course of about 24 days.
The iceberg is spinning near the South Orkney Islands, about 375 miles northeast of the Antarctic Peninsula, "maintaining a chill 15 degree rotation per day," the British Antarctic Survey, the United Kingdom's polar research institute, said on social media.
When will it stop spinning? "Who knows," says the BBC, "but when Prof Meredith placed a scientific buoy in a Taylor Column above another bump to the east of Pirie Bank, the floating instrument was still rotating in place four years later."
Previously:
• Perfectly rectangular iceberg
• Scientists witness a four-mile wide iceberg being created
• World's largest iceberg splits off Antarctica
• Imploding iceberg in Antarctica
• Massive iceberg six times the size of Manhattan drifts away from Antarctic glacier
• Visitors to the Titanic Museum were attacked by iceberg replicas
