A photo from open sources The position of our planet in space can change at any moment
Where is thick and where is empty
NASA scientists unveiled images of Antarctica from space. Compared them with the former. And they say: ice in the region of the southern continent increased. The analysis shows that since the beginning of the 70s of the past century ice cover was growing here at a speed of 18,900 square kilometers per year. And now it has reached a record area of 20 million 140 thousand square kilometers.
Photos from open sources
A photo from open sources
Antarctica is overgrown with ice tens of thousands of square kilometers per year.
– The icing of Antarctica is a consequence of global warming, which cannot be denied, explains researcher Claire Parkinson (Claire Parkinson, a senior scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center). – There is no paradox here – the Earth is one organism and processes in it are interconnected. Somewhere global warming changes the climate in one direction, and somewhere in the other. That’s ice: growing at the South Pole, but disappearing at the North Pole. For the same 40 years its number in the Arctic Ocean decreased from at a speed of 53,900 square kilometers per year. Total: decrease for the whole planets only at the poles of 35,000 square kilometers.
Photo from open sources
Arctic ice cover continues to fade
And yet, what kind of mechanisms are involved in the rapid ice accumulation at the South Pole, scientists have not yet figured out. In what and are recognized.
Equilibrium at stake
Obviously: if the amount of ice at the North Pole decreases, and on the South increases, then the planet – at least its mantle – it becomes heavier at one pole and lighter at the other. Some scientists holding, to put it mildly, original views, this redistribution of weight is very scary. After all, as they believe, violation of the pole balance – a kind of “polar bias” – can cause the earth to flip over. That is, its axis rotation will shift by a certain number of degrees. And this is supposedly already happened in the history of our planet – led to a global flood.
According to another – no less crazy version – somersault does not the whole ball, but only its lithospheric shell. Once, claim proponents of this version, a similar shift that happened as a result of “polar warp”, moved the green and blooming Antarctica from temperate latitudes to the place where it is now located. And continent froze.
According to rumors, Albert Einstein himself supported the somersault hypothesis. And he even explained the phenomenon by the interaction of centrifugal forces, arising during the rotation of the Earth, and asymmetric masses of ice.
Like a nut in space
However, it is possible that polar asymmetry is not the issue. And not in global warming, therefore. And the reason for somersault in the essence of our planet is that it rotates while in weightlessness.
They say that the Soviet is still an astronaut, twice a hero USSR, Vladimir Dzhanibekov, being at the orbital station “Salute-7” in 1985 watched flying in zero gravity and simultaneously rotating nut. I noticed that after some time it flips 180 degrees, then again – and so flips one way, then the other, continuing to fly.
Vladimir Alexandrovich for the sake of the experiment launched plasticine ball, one “pole” of which was heavier than the other – there the astronaut attached a small weight. And the ball began to tumble.
The effect of the rotation of a body rotating around an axis that does not coincides with the main axes of inertia, received the name “effect Dzhanibekova “.
There are quite serious scientists who consider: and the Earth subject to the “Janibekov effect”. And she flips from time to time. As it moves in orbit in zero gravity, it rotates around an axis, which does not coincide with the main axes of inertia. Not match maybe both from processes in the bowels and on the surface.
A photo from open sources
The nut that demonstrated the Janibekov effect Janibekova
Serious scientists believe that the Earth cannot tumble. A if it can, then no more than once every 50 million years. Opinion frivolous: it tumbles once every 12-13 thousand years.
It would be better if they were right serious.
BTW
Gardens really bloomed in Antarctica
The result of many years of research by scientists from the United States, China, Japan and Great Britain became a map of Antarctica – specifically of what is now located under the many kilometers thick ice. It turned out that this not a single continent at all, but a kind of archipelago with mountains and deep canyons.
Now it’s cold here, like on Mars – the temperature sometimes drops to minus 90 degrees Celsius. Over the area – ice in places of 3 kilometers thick. But it was not always like that. Another 34 million years back the continent was free of ice. Meadows bloomed along the slopes of the mountains and the gardens. Like now in the European Alps.
But something happened. Maybe the one with the same somersault?
Photo from open sources
Relief of Antarctica: surface hidden under ice
The researchers found a place from which a small glacier, located at the highest peak (about 2400 meters), began to grow. Gradually, he covered the whole of Antarctica. Hid under a layer of ice many lakes.
Martin Siegert of the University of Edinburgh (University of Edinburgh, UK), which participated in expeditions, sure: in the valleys of the Antarctic Alps still preserved frozen plants. Even small trees.
Antarctica Time Global Warming Plants
