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Antarctica ’s ice snapped and pop because of a major earthquake in Maule , Chile , midway around the world , a new subject area reports .
Antarctica has been touched by great quake before . In March 2011 , Japan ’s Tohoku tsunamitore off two Manhattan - size of it icebergsfrom the Sulzberger Ice Shelf , more than 8,000 miles ( 13,000 kilometre ) south . boater also reported a monolithic Antarctica iceberg - have young event after Chile ’s 1868 great earthquake .
Antarctica’s Howard Nunataks, where a seismometer recorded shaking from icequakes.
But this is the first grounds that remote temblor can trigger icequakes in Antarctica . Icequakes are seismic tremblings get by sudden movement within a glacier or ice sheet , such as from a fracturing crevasse . ( Anyone who has miss an ice cube into a glass of piss knows ice snaps under accent . ) [ Listen to Antarctica ’s Icequakes ]
A little snap
Chile ’s magnitude-8.8 temblor on Feb. 27 , 2010 , set off a flurry ofAntarctic icequakes , each lasting from one to 10 second gear , researchers report today ( Aug. 10 ) in the diary Nature Geoscience . The epicentre was 2,900 Swedish mile ( 4,700 km ) north of Antarctica .
Map of Antarctica icequakes triggered by Chile’s 2010 earthquake.
" Regular icequakes probably fall out all the sentence in Antarctica and other polar regions , " said lead report generator Zhigang Peng , a seismologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta . " What we found is that they pass more during the seismal undulation of the Maule case . "
Many different kinds of icequakes growl across Antarctica and Greenland . screw icequake triggers include opening night and ending of the fractures predict crevasse ; glacier tearing away from muggy bedrock ; H2O overspill ; and calving , the breaking off of an berg . nervous underwater go from melt , cracking iceberg were once calledThe Bloop .
Only 12 of Antarctica ’s 42 seismometers cull up icequakes after the Maule earthquake , but the signals seemed to gibe a pattern . The pattern suggest that opening or closing of shallow crevasses generate the petite shudder . For example , seismal station near Antarctica ’s mountain ranges and tight - flowing trash river known as ice stream were more potential to see icequakes . These are domain with a quite a little of crevasses . The high - frequency shaking also fits with snap of unannealed ice . [ record album : Stunning Photos of Antarctic Ice ]
" We think the crevasses are being activated by the Earth’s surface waves from this crowing seism come through , and that ’s making the icequake , " sound out study co - author Jacob Walter , a research scientist at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics in Austin .
There are also intriguing lead that only crevasse properly array toward the incoming seismic airfoil waves were pinched closed or jacked open , set off icequakes . However , the evidence is too sparse to test the estimate at this meter , Walter said .
" For faulting zones and architectonic earthquakes , there is a dependence on which way the wave came from , " Walter order Live Science . " We ’re continuing to work on understanding the phenomenon . "
Like a rolling stone
As Walter notes , just one form of seismic wave , a surface wave , have the blame for most ofAntarctica ’s icequakes .
A powerful quake the size of the Maule quake unleashes strong seismal waves that undulate around the Earth , some of them speed as tight as the upper of phone before point off .
The perpetrator in this vitrine is called a Rayleigh wave . It locomote close-fitting to the Earth ’s surface , rolling along like a wave in a lake or the ocean .
The icequake shake at different stations come about as the Rayleigh moving ridge traveled acrossAntarctica , the study describe . ( At some station , there was also a short icequake burst from a seismic " P wave , " which travel through the Earth ’s interior . )
Peng and his confrere plan to examine the data from aged great earthquakes to see if they also spawned icequakes . Walter is also testing whether remote earthquakes may momently change the speed of glaciers , by make them to suddenly unstick and sliding board .
" It ’s an interesting result , " Walter said . " A big temblor on the other side of the earth can transfer thing in the Earth and make it crack . "
