[SidheMeabh]

My sister sent me these photos in an email. I thought I would post them here for you to enjoy. I thought they were pretty amazing.

~~~~~~~~~~~
Amazing striped icebergs. Icebergs in the Antarctic area sometimes have stripes, formed by layers of snow that react to different conditions. Blue stripes are often created when a crevice in the ice sheet fills up with meltwater and freezes so quickly that no bubbles form. When an iceberg falls into the sea, a layer of salty seawater can freeze to the underside. If this is rich in algae, it can form a green stripe. Brown, black and yellow lines are caused by sediment, picked up when the ice sheet grinds downhill towards the sea.

[SidheMeabh]

I had to post it in two posts due to the amount of photos.











The wave from a distance:

[Inside Out]

PHOTOS

Those photos are beautiful....absolutely beautiful

[pasiphae9]

That is absolutely incredible. Stunning. Love it.

But if the water freezes the instant it is in contact with air, does that mean if the man opened his mouth his saliva would instantly freeze? Because that would hurt.

[Inside Out]

That is absolutely incredible. Stunning. Love it.

But if the water freezes the instant it is in contact with air, does that mean if the man opened his mouth his saliva would instantly freeze? Because that would hurt.

[RockIzure]

Amazing pictures. Absolutely amazing Thank you for posting them.

[TaintedFantasy]

Wow. Those are utterly amazing. Thanks for posting them!

[borromea]

thats just beautifull. nature never fails to amaze me.

[BeautifulBeasts]

Those are so beautiful!
Specially the frozen waves, how does that work exactly? There must've been a huge temperature drop all of a sudden or something, for a wave to freeze mid-fall.
Nature is possibly the most amazing thing out there.

[Jeto.]

sweet!
thanks for sharing these.

[Nossing]

Breath taking. Thanks for sharing the beautiful pictures.
Makes me want to go there instantly.

[jmig]

That is absolutely incredible. Stunning. Love it.

But if the water freezes the instant it is in contact with air, does that mean if the man opened his mouth his saliva would instantly freeze? Because that would hurt.

omg I thought the same thing...those are pretty incredible images though! I can't imagine how cool (and cold) it would be to stand next to them!

[pisces]

I would probably die from hypothermia if I saw one of those, because I would just stand there staring at it for a long, long time.

Absolutely breathtaking. Thanks ever so much for sharing. I love seeing photos like these. The one with the vertical stripes, and the ones of the waves, are my favorite.

[GhettoKameleon]

Oniwana. By many, many years. Still cool, regardless.

[GiaMarie]

Very beautiful photos!

[Jenni6277]

I have just one word: WOW!

[J30STM]

Although there was speculation about the authenticity of the aforementioned icebergs, a lot of research has been done on them about their existence
I love the images and here is what I had saved about their research and all they did among other stuff.

They are believed to be created when ice crystals form under the water and in a process described as “inverted snow”, rise to stick to the bottom of the ice shelf.
As the ice crystals form a new layer at the bottom of the ice shelf, which later fragments to float away as icebergs, tiny particles of organic matter are trapped.

Parts of dead marine creatures such as krill form much of the trapped material and have the effect of creating coloured stripes, mainly blues and greens, in icebergs.
Dr Makinson said that the brown stripes in this example were likely to have been formed from sediment washing underneath the ice shelf.

Icebergs themselves are amazing natural creations. They are formed when snow falls on the already icy land on the shores of the Antarctic continent. The snow never melts and
eventually there is so much it begins to pack down and form ice. That ice eventually begins sliding into the sea – thus, an iceberg is born. Most icebergs display only 10% of their total
mass above water while the other 90% remains beneath the surface.
It takes hundreds upon thousands of years for an iceberg to form to the sizes we usually see pictured today.

Striped icebergs had actually been seen and documented, mostly appearing in the waters south of the equator in the Antarctic. Striped icebergs have been spotted in a variety of colors, including brown, black, yellow, and blue. The process by which the stripes are formed is almost as fascinating as the idea of them forming to start with.

The first striped icebergs were photographed by a sailor known as Oyvind Tangen. He was a researcher on a ship touring the waters over 600 miles north of the Antarctic. He and the
rest of his crew went on to discover a myriad of these amazing sites floating throughout the ocean waters.

The British Antarctic Survey describes the creation of stripes on an iceberg. In colder areas like the Antarctic, ice crystals begin to form under the surface of the water.
Those crystals then attempt to rise to the surface of the water but instead hit the bottoms of the shelves known as icebergs. They adhere to the ice shelves and begin to form new layers.
Anything that was between the ice crystal and ice shelf at the time the crystals rise and adhere becomes trapped between the new and old ice layers.
As aquatic wildlife evolves, the deceased animals eventually disintegrate and break into smaller pieces of material. These pieces contribute to some of the blue and green striped icebergs that have been documented.
Blue stripes may be formed when water fills cracks in the iceberg and refreezes quickly without air bubbles. Green stripes are also caused by algae particles
that become stuck between the ice particles and the ice shelf..

Other icebergs have presented with black, brown, and yellow stripes. If a sheet of ice slides towards the ocean waters it will pick up dirt and particles from the ground. Those particles stick to the ice and are sealed between the new layers of ice to form their own colorful stripes.

Australian Antarctic Division
British Antarctic Survey

[Lily_17]

Wowwwwwwwwwwwww, pretty.

[THE_REAL_TRUTH]

Half of them look CG.

[Seraphim828]

What amazing photos, really mindblowing. You can't beat the perfection of nature.