• Live
    • Audio Only
  • google plus
  • facebook
  • twitter
News > Science and Tech

Argentine Glacier Collapses in Cyclical Splendor

  • Pieces of ice fall from the front of Argentina's Perito Moreno glacier near the city of El Calafate, March 11, 2018.

    Pieces of ice fall from the front of Argentina's Perito Moreno glacier near the city of El Calafate, March 11, 2018. | Photo: Reuters

Published 14 March 2018
Opinion

The front of the Perito Moreno glacier in Los Glaciares National Park collapsed over the weekend.

A famed glacier in Argentina's Patagonia region has just shed its facade of blue and white ice, a ritual it observes every two to four years.

RELATED: 
Argentina 'Bought Peruvian Soccer Players to Win 78 World Cup'

The front of the Perito Moreno glacier in Los Glaciares National Park collapsed over the weekend, sending enormous chunks of ice into the frigid waters of Lake Argentina.

Tourists make a pilgrimage to this part of Patagonia every two to four years to see Nature put on the mid-March spectacle.

But this year, the sheets of vertical ice that make up Perito Moreno gave way in the middle of the night, depriving visitors of the sight.

The park was also closed when the bi-annual phenomena occurred due to a storm in the area.

The last time chunks of Perito Moreno went hurling into the lake during daylight  hours, thousands of tourists caught the dramatic show on camera.

This natural cyclical event happens because of Archimedes' principle: the force placed on an object in water is equal to the displaced fluid. As the glacier melts and drains into a lake, the lake rises and forms a tunnel through the glacier, causing the collapse.

Perito Moreno is also one of the world's few growing glaciers: most of the others are shrinking. The reason still eludes scientists, but some think it's because the steep angle of Moreno makes it more resilient.

Los Glaciares National Park is a Unesco World Heritage Site that occupies some 600,000 hectares and contains an enormous freshwater reservoir.

Comment
0
Comments
Post with no comments.