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Article: ANTARCTICA.(despite its lack of life forms, the Antarctica is often photographed, including radar images that reveal ice rivers)
- Article from:
- Whole Earth
- Article date:
- March 22, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Point Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A FOLIO FROM THE UN-BIO BIOREGION
A few years ago, the first radar image of Antarctica went public. Now, new radar images show great "ice rivers" flowing beneath the planet's most extensive ice sheet, moving at a heretofore unimaginable clip (next page). Picture the river as an ice-snake--its body thirty miles wide, half a mile deep from slippery belly to frozen back---calving, slopping, slushing, and pouring (there's some liquid water) into the sea. It's been entering the sea for ten thousand years; a third of a mile issues forth each year, moving fifty to sixty times faster than the surrounding ice. The longest ice-river snakes back inland for 500 miles.
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