[HN Gopher] Scientists drill 2 miles down pull 1.2M-year-old ice...
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Scientists drill 2 miles down pull 1.2M-year-old ice core from
Antarctic
Author : belter
Score : 30 points
Date : 2025-01-10 13:56 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| lupusreal wrote:
| The age of the ice is very impressive, but the shear depth of the
| ice still blows my mind.
| defrost wrote:
| The weight of that ice is another vast number to ponder.
|
| Several million years past when the southern pole was ice free
| that land mass was riding a _lot_ higher without kilometres of
| ice above pushing it down.
| brabel wrote:
| Some parts of Sweden are still moving UP by 8 to 9 mm every
| single year[1] due to the rebound after the ice sheets
| retreated, just about 10k-15k years ago.
|
| [1] https://highcoastkvarken.org/our-joint-world-
| heritage/the-la...
|
| > The speed is fast enough to see the changes in the
| landscape in a few decades.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| > 1.2 million-year-old ice core from Antarctic
|
| Dumb question ... does that mean that 1.2M years ago, Antarctica
| wasn't frozen but a warm climate at South Pole?
|
| EDIT:
|
| When I say "warm" climate, I mean "an above freezing climate"
| (which might still be cold but warmer than 0C/32F)
| ceejayoz wrote:
| No. That means it was frozen at that time.
|
| The big freeze was 10-14 million years back. Before that it was
| tundra and small ice caps.
|
| Go back 30-50M and you'll get to tropical rainforests.
| brabel wrote:
| So the ice just wasn't accumulating until 1.2 million years
| ago despite that? Why not if the climate was already similar
| to today's?
|
| EDIT: notice that they "hit bedrock" at 1.2 million year old
| ice... perhaps you missed that part.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| What exactly are you struggling with? Ice caps move. The
| original ice from ten million years ago largely made its
| way into the ocean as icebergs.
|
| The oldest ice we can find is stuff stuck in depressions
| somewhere that hasn't moved in some time. We may find
| another older pocket in another space, just like this one
| was older than the last record.
|
| For similar reasons, the oldest paper we can find is not
| the first paper ever. It sets a minimum age for paper, not
| a maximum.
| F7F7F7 wrote:
| Can you explain to me how this sort of thinking works? I
| couldn't ever imagine making this sort of assumption based
| off an article and my admittedly very low understanding of
| Antarctica.
| dboreham wrote:
| 1.2M isn't very long. It was in the same place and the climate
| was similar to today's. There were human-like apes living at
| the time in Africa. The Antarctic ice sheet is believed to be
| more than 30M years old.
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