When you think of an iceberg, you're probably picturing something like the jagged behemoth that crashed into Titanic (come on, did even one of you not see that movie?).
But sometimes, nature gives you a geometric shape so exact you'd think aliens were behind it.
Image courtesy: NASA
That's exactly what this iceberg captured by NASA is, looking like it was carved using a giant chainsaw to exact proportions. Scientists have come across this phenomenon before, it's called a tabular iceberg. And it's actually not as uncommon as you'd think.
While chunks of ice that break off the ice shelf are usually pretty irregular, sometimes a piece breaks off differently. These tabular icebergs are so named for their flat tops, steep sides and often massive sizes. Some have been measured to stretch hundreds of kilometres, and extend hundreds of feet below the surface of the ocean.
This one is particular, which recently detached itself from Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf, is actually an incredibly precise example of a tabular iceberg. NASA's Operation IceBridge program spotted it on October 16 while monitoring the polar regions for changes related to global warming.
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Scientists call this "calving" when a strip of ice breaks off the shelf. In a quote to LiveScience, University of Maryland Earth scientist Kelly Brunt likened it to a piece of a long fingernail snapping off at the end. Similarly, they often show perfect geometric edges.
Though this new iceberg hasn't officially been measured yet, Brunt estimates it to be about 1.6 kilometres across. That might seem very large, but it's actually only a fraction of a different iceberg that broke off the same glacier earlier this year. The A68, as that was called, measured in at a whopping 5,800 kilometers when it calved. Then again, don't be fooled by the new ice table's apparent size. At least 90 percent of its mass is still lurking below the surface.
Still, the cheeky crop of the photo feels like NASA might be trying to hide a not perfectly geometric shape, for the sake of aesthetics. Not that it matters, this is still a great shot.