{"id":21714,"date":"2025-02-06T18:00:12","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T19:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=21714"},"modified":"2025-02-06T19:30:55","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T19:30:55","slug":"in-greenland-the-ice-doesnt-just-flow-it-quivers-and-quakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=21714","title":{"rendered":"In Greenland, the Ice Doesn\u2019t Just Flow, It Quivers and Quakes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By using a fiber-optic cable to detect tiny vibrations a mile below the surface, scientists discovered a surprising way that ice sheets move.<\/p>\n

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When Andreas Fichtner unspooled a fiber-optic cable into a deep hole in Greenland\u2019s ice, he wasn\u2019t expecting to discover a whole new way that glaciers move. Even when the cable started sending back data, his first reaction was skeptical.<\/p>\n

\u201cRubbish,\u201d Dr. Fichtner, a professor of seismology and wave physics at the Swiss university ETH Zurich, remembers thinking. \u201cJust some electronic noise.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was August 2022. The field season in Greenland was almost over. The cold, the altitude, the long hours \u2014 all of it was wearing on Dr. Fichtner and his fellow researchers. But they\u2019d been saving one of their cables for one last experiment, one that would let them measure tiny movements deep within the vast river of ice as it flowed toward the sea.<\/p>\n

What they found raises questions about scientists\u2019 assumptions about how the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are moving and adding to sea levels worldwide.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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That last cable picked up cascades of tiny \u201cice quakes,\u201d some of them reverberating hundreds of feet, Dr. Fichtner and his colleagues reported on Thursday in the journal Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These quakes seemed to start near impurities in the ice that were deposited by volcanic eruptions, Dr. Fichtner said. Where these particles sit, the ice is weaker, more prone to cracking. Along these cracks, the ice sticks and slips and quivers as it moves, creating tiny seismic disturbances.<\/p>\n

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By using a fiber-optic cable to detect tiny vibrations a mile below the surface, scientists discovered a surprising way that ice sheets move.When Andreas Fichtner unspooled a fiber-optic cable into a deep hole in Greenland\u2019s ice, he wasn\u2019t expecting to discover a whole new way that glaciers move. Even when the cable started sending back data, his first reaction was skeptical.\u201cRubbish,\u201d Dr. Fichtner, a professor of seismology and wave physics at the Swiss university ETH Zurich, remembers thinking. \u201cJust some electronic noise.\u201dThis was August 2022. The field season in Greenland was almost over. The cold, the altitude, the long hours \u2014 all of it was wearing on Dr. Fichtner and his fellow researchers. But they\u2019d been saving one of their cables for one last experiment, one that would let them measure tiny movements deep within the vast river of ice as it flowed toward the sea.What they found raises questions about scientists\u2019 assumptions about how the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are moving and adding to sea levels worldwide.That last cable picked up cascades of tiny \u201cice quakes,\u201d some of them reverberating hundreds of feet, Dr. Fichtner and his colleagues reported on Thursday in the journal Science.These quakes seemed to start near impurities in the ice that were deposited by volcanic eruptions, Dr. Fichtner said. Where these particles sit, the ice is weaker, more prone to cracking. Along these cracks, the ice sticks and slips and quivers as it moves, creating tiny seismic disturbances.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21716,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21714"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21717,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21714\/revisions\/21717"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}