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The sea north ofAntarcticahas turned into an " alphabet soup " of broken crisphead lettuce , according to a fresh blog C. W. Post onNASA’sEarth Observatory website .
In a planet photo snapped on Feb. 11 , 2021 , the jagged schema of 11 fractured berg twirl around a remote , penguin - make full island called South Georgia , located about 940 air mile ( 1,500 kilometers ) northeast of the Antarctic Peninsula .
Eleven fragments of the once-mighty iceberg A-68a swirl around South Georgia island, north of Antarctica
Each frozen chunk is a man of the once - mighty iceberg A-68a , which held the title ofworld ’s largest icebergfor more than three age beforeshattering into a dozen piecesa few weeks ago . Now , each broken bit of the puzzler has its own name , beginning with A-68b , and ending with A-68M. ( Several of the icebergs are not seeable in this pic . )
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Iceberg A-68a originally give away off of Antarctica ’s Larsen C Ice Shelf on July 12 , 2017 . At the metre , it measured more than 2,300 straight sea mile ( 6,000 solid kilometers ) — large enough to hold the five boroughs of New York City five times over . Despite its telling surface sphere , the berg was implausibly thin , and it beganlosing magnanimous chunks of icebeginning in April 2020 .
In late 2020 , the berg appear to be on a collision course of study with South Georgia island ( a British oversea district ) . Researchers fear that the berg would make landfall near the island , cutting off the feeding routes for grand of seals , penguinsand other animal resident physician of South Georgia and potentially lead to widespread famine .
Fortunately , the berg changed naturally and began rove around the island , even before it shatter into the twelve - or - so lump bobbing around the field today . The threat to the island ’s animals is over for now .
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Still , British researcher are eager to hit the books the break berg ’s potential impingement on the seawater around South Georgia . Two golem submersible are scheduled to meditate the water temperature , salinity and pellucidity around the corpse of A-68a ( and all its young ) for several calendar month , beginning subsequently this year , Live Science antecedently reported .
Originally published on Live Science .
