Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Joe McCormick. Today is Saturday, so we are
Speaker 1: heading into the vault for an older episode of the podcast.
Speaker 1: This is part one of a two part series that
Speaker 1: we did called Strange Ice, originally published January thirtieth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. Let's get right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 3: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 1: And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind, we are going to be talking about ice. Now.
Speaker 1: This is relevant to us personally because down here in
Speaker 1: Atlanta we have just come out of a long stretch
Speaker 1: of very very cold weather.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah, we had quite a cold snow lingered
Speaker 3: around for many days there. We didn't get any of
Speaker 3: the snow. They got a lot of snow north of US,
Speaker 3: and you know, certainly in like Tennessee for example, and
Speaker 3: I think parts of northern Georgia, but down here we
Speaker 3: didn't see that. Instead, we just got cold temperatures and
Speaker 3: we got ice.
Speaker 1: I should's bestfy it was cold weather for Atlanta, because
Speaker 1: obviously we get sneered at by you know, people who
Speaker 1: live in they're really they're really freezing climbs, that's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, like a lot of people, it was,
Speaker 3: you know, it was unseasonably cold. So I was noticing
Speaker 3: things that I hadn't noticed before in my immediate environment.
Speaker 3: And one of these things right outside of the window
Speaker 3: where we eat our breakfast, we have a bird bath,
Speaker 3: and the bird bath was full of water. I probably
Speaker 3: should have emptied it because anytime the water freezes in
Speaker 3: the bird bath, it like cracks the plastic at the bottom,
Speaker 3: and then once everything melts and dries out, I have
Speaker 3: to like superglue it again so that it will hold water.
Speaker 3: But you know, it's still it's amusing, especially for my
Speaker 3: son when all that freezes up. Except this time, there
Speaker 3: was a little something extra going on. And it's something
Speaker 3: that I know a number of you out there have
Speaker 3: experienced as well. And if you haven't experienced it, maybe
Speaker 3: you've seen pictures or footage of it from other people
Speaker 3: having this experience. But you go out to the bird bath,
Speaker 3: it is of course frozen solid, except there's this little
Speaker 3: extra bit. There's a spike emerging. And generally it's like
Speaker 3: diagonally from the bird bath, as if there's like some
Speaker 3: sort of sentient like death spike, or in some cases
Speaker 3: kind of a cone or pyramid or inverted pyramid emerging
Speaker 3: out of the ice.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I've seen this in different forms, often with like
Speaker 1: a bird bath. I feel like I've seen it in
Speaker 1: the form of something that looks like a like a
Speaker 1: vase or yeah, more like a cone. But I'm familiar
Speaker 1: with it also just in the freezer making ice cubes.
Speaker 1: Occasionally I think, if you know, if conditions in the
Speaker 1: freezer are just right, you'll put in the tray of
Speaker 1: ice cubes and you'll pull them out and they'll have
Speaker 1: like what looks like, I don't know, the outline of
Speaker 1: a comet impact on the surface of the ice cube,
Speaker 1: frozen in time exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So again, this is a fairly common occurrence, but
Speaker 3: it doesn't seem to take away from the novelty of
Speaker 3: ice spikes. And there are a lot of explainer articles
Speaker 3: concerning ice spikes out there, but one of the older
Speaker 3: ones I came across was a letter published in the
Speaker 3: journal Nature on March seventh, nineteen thirty one, and it
Speaker 3: was written by Arthur Morley, Davies, who lived eighteen sixty
Speaker 3: nine through nineteen fifty nine. He was a staunch critic
Speaker 3: of creationism and an author of the nineteen thirty seven
Speaker 3: book Evolution and Its Modern Critics.
Speaker 1: I'm picturing the Statler and Waldorf.
Speaker 3: So you know, learned man scientist and author. But in
Speaker 3: this article I was amused because he's doing just what
Speaker 3: I was doing and what many of us are still
Speaker 3: doing today, gazing at this sudden weird ice in a
Speaker 3: bird bath and just trying to figure out what's going on,
Speaker 3: kind of guessing at it, and also calling up friends
Speaker 3: and being like, hey, you'd never believe what I saw
Speaker 3: this morning is quite curious. Let's talk about what's going
Speaker 3: on here. So I'm going to read just a bit
Speaker 3: from it here, he says, quote. I am indebted to
Speaker 3: a number of my colleagues, and particularly to Professor Ao
Speaker 3: Rankin and doctor H. T Ellingham for a very interesting
Speaker 3: discussion of this phenomenon. The most feasible explanation appears to
Speaker 3: be that freezing began as usual at the margin of
Speaker 3: the surface of the water, and ice crystals grew inward
Speaker 3: until the surface was completely frozen except for a triangular
Speaker 3: area in the center. At this stage, there was a
Speaker 3: rapid fall of temperature, and the water below the surface
Speaker 3: began to freeze quickly. The expansion accompanying solidification caused the
Speaker 3: excess of volume to be forced through the triangular aperture,
Speaker 3: the water freezing as it rose. And that sounds pretty good, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: And this is roughly what I was thinking about as well.
Speaker 3: I think the morning that we saw the ice spike,
Speaker 3: we were going somewhere. I think it was like super cold,
Speaker 3: but we were like, Okay, I guess we're going to
Speaker 3: go to Ikia or something. So we looked at the
Speaker 3: ice spike and we got in the car, and then
Speaker 3: I was just kind of thinking about the ice spike,
Speaker 3: and I was like, well, I guess what's probably happening
Speaker 3: is such and such, And it sounds like I was
Speaker 3: mostly correct. The oldest writings on the formation of these
Speaker 3: ice spikes that I could come across they seem to
Speaker 3: go back a decade or so earlier to nineteen twenty one.
Speaker 3: This is when H. E. Dorsey wrote about it. Apparently,
Speaker 3: another author that is credited is O. Bali or Bally
Speaker 3: also wrote about it. Thus it is often referred to
Speaker 3: as the Bally Dorsey theory of spicule formation on sweet pellets.
Speaker 3: So who's this Dorsey, gentleman, Well, this would be American engineer, inventor,
Speaker 3: and physicist Herbert Grove Dorsey who lived eighteen seventy six
Speaker 3: through nineteen sixty one, who invented and patented the first
Speaker 3: practical pathometer for phathometer I suppose for determining water depth
Speaker 3: in nineteen twenty eight, along with many other inventions, though
Speaker 3: that might be the biggest one. He was principal engineer
Speaker 3: for the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Radiosonic Laboratory
Speaker 3: in the nineteen thirties. He studied the formation of ice
Speaker 3: spikes in a laboratory setting, and he theorized that the
Speaker 3: increase in volume for the freezing ice forced water up
Speaker 3: through an opening in the ice covering, creating a tube
Speaker 3: that grows at the tip. And this does remain the
Speaker 3: most widely accepted theory of what's going on here.
Speaker 1: But from what I understand, the conditions have to be
Speaker 1: just right to form an ice spike, right, like, if
Speaker 1: it's either too warm or too cold below freezing, either
Speaker 1: way it will it will inhibit the formation of the spike.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah, I was reading about the work of
Speaker 3: physicist Kenneth Librecht, who conducted a study of ice spikes
Speaker 3: in two thousand and three and found that there's kind
Speaker 3: of like a Goldilock zone for ice spike formation. You
Speaker 3: want it to be roughly twenty degrees fairnheigh. That's negative
Speaker 3: seven degrees celsius, more or less colder than that, and
Speaker 3: spikes don't form hotter than that, and the ice doesn't
Speaker 3: form fast enough to generate a spike. Also, the quality
Speaker 3: of water plays apart, so pure water, according to this
Speaker 3: individual's experiments, seemed to be important. He found that with
Speaker 3: salt content he saw a reduction in the likelihood of
Speaker 3: ice spikes, and in his experiments, tap water didn't work
Speaker 3: at all. Now, granted, tap water is going to vary
Speaker 3: from place to place, but yeah, it seems like pure
Speaker 3: water is going to be your best option here.
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting that the formation of spikes in
Speaker 1: freezing water, that process is dependent on the peculiar fact
Speaker 1: that water, unlike most substances, bands rather than contract as
Speaker 1: it freezes. So and you know, a lot of things
Speaker 1: actually on Earth and in life in the universe are
Speaker 1: dependent on the fact that water expands instead of contracting
Speaker 1: as it freezes. So if water contracted and became more
Speaker 1: dense as it froze, water would sink to like ice
Speaker 1: would sink to the bottom of bodies of water instead
Speaker 1: of floating on top, which would you know, radically change
Speaker 1: the way life works on Earth. I think I've read
Speaker 1: some arguments before that it like if that were physically
Speaker 1: the case, it would sort of make life on Earth
Speaker 1: near impossible because like when water started freezing on top,
Speaker 1: it would essentially instead of insulating the water below with
Speaker 1: the ice layer on top, the ice would sink to
Speaker 1: the bottom and then the whole column of water would freeze,
Speaker 1: and then you know, it would kill all the life
Speaker 1: forms in it, or at least freeze them. So that's
Speaker 1: an extremely consequential outcome of the fact that the water
Speaker 1: expands instead of contracting when it freezes. But also we
Speaker 1: get these ice bikes. So like, yeah, like you explained, rob,
Speaker 1: you've got to contain of water and it starts freezing
Speaker 1: from the outside in. You can imagine it sort of
Speaker 1: forms a shell of ice in a way around this
Speaker 1: mass of liquid water and this the liquid water in
Speaker 1: the middle. It starts to freeze, it needs somewhere to
Speaker 1: go because it's expanding in the freezing process. So if
Speaker 1: there's only like a hole left in the surface, it's
Speaker 1: going to start squeezing out through that hole and freezing
Speaker 1: as it squeezes out and just freezes taller and taller
Speaker 1: and taller. For liquids that shrink in volume as they freeze,
Speaker 1: this would never happen, right, right.
Speaker 3: So it's yeah, it's it's a fun little thing to
Speaker 3: observe at the at a frozen bird bath or inside
Speaker 3: of a freezer if conditions are right and there. So
Speaker 3: in this episode, as you've probably guessed, this is roughly
Speaker 3: what we're going to be talking about, various examples of
Speaker 3: what you might call strange eyes, strange water ice, and
Speaker 3: we have some some fun ones to discuss here.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I'm going to talk about a bizarre haunting
Speaker 1: genre of ice formation, referred to as nieves penet tents
Speaker 1: Spanish for penitent snows, or sometimes they're just called penitentes,
Speaker 1: meaning penitents, So depending on what you read, they're named
Speaker 1: after their resemblance either to maybe human figures kneeling in prayer,
Speaker 1: or more often to monks marching in religious processions, especially
Speaker 1: the kind you might see with like the pointed hoods
Speaker 1: worn in Spanish Catholic celebrations of Holy Week. These formations
Speaker 1: are sometimes described as standing blades, pinnacles, towers, or columns
Speaker 1: of ice. They can reach up to a maximum of
Speaker 1: four or five meters in height in the settings where
Speaker 1: they're most commonly found, though I found some claims of
Speaker 1: penitents or penitent like formations in other cases reaching even higher,
Speaker 1: But the numbers I've seen for the Andes where they're
Speaker 1: most often seen are four or five meters. They can
Speaker 1: be found in high mountain ranges, especially the Andes in
Speaker 1: South America, at elevations of about four thousand meters above
Speaker 1: sea level or more. They're generally oriented so that the
Speaker 1: blades point toward the path of the sun, point toward
Speaker 1: the noontime sun, and they can occupy whole fields or hillsides, which,
Speaker 1: if you go with the analogy of their namesake, forms
Speaker 1: the impression of a vast, uncountable crowd of worshippers or
Speaker 1: of maybe monks gathering at the end of a great
Speaker 1: procession or pilgrimage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's some very evocative photos of these who included
Speaker 3: some in the outline. Some of these are I feel
Speaker 3: like they're just the kind of thing that are just
Speaker 3: ripped from the sorts of wallpapers that come included with
Speaker 3: various Apple products, you know, like it's that kind of
Speaker 3: like stunning, serene imagery.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, So, looking at the photos, I totally understand
Speaker 1: the comparison to kneeling or marching human bodies, but personally,
Speaker 1: I'm struck with how much they can sometimes look like
Speaker 1: a naturally occurring maze with chaotic corridors and pathways that
Speaker 1: are bounded by these thin, jagged ridges of ice. So
Speaker 1: to me, some of these landscapes and they can take
Speaker 1: you know, they have different sizes and orientations and stuff,
Speaker 1: so they don't all look the same. But some of
Speaker 1: the Penitente landscapes look like a frost magic variant of
Speaker 1: a xenomorph colony was using their structural mucous secretions to
Speaker 1: approximate a human hedge maze.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it does have that kind of feeling a
Speaker 3: very alien landscape, especially the case in these images you
Speaker 3: shared here where we see human beings standing amid these blades.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that can create a very creepy feeling you
Speaker 1: see people posing with them. Sometimes they're you know, as
Speaker 1: tall as the person or taller, and it's as if
Speaker 1: either they're standing in a crowd or maybe standing in
Speaker 1: a kind of forest or maze. And the other objects
Speaker 1: here are not people or trees or hedges or whatever,
Speaker 1: but they are giant, rippling, blade like shards of ice. Now,
Speaker 1: one famous historical description of these features can be found
Speaker 1: in Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. This is a
Speaker 1: work we've talked about on the show a number of
Speaker 1: times before, but it's the published memoir of Charles Darwin's
Speaker 1: five year journey around the world on the British Royal
Speaker 1: Navy survey ship, the HMS Bagle, during which journey Darwin
Speaker 1: made geological and biological observations which would later form the
Speaker 1: basis of his theory of evolution by natural selection. But
Speaker 1: this book was from before on the origin of species.
Speaker 1: This book is just full of interesting observations about the
Speaker 1: world and about nature from Darwin's travels, and it helps
Speaker 1: for the reading that Darwin, I think is a very
Speaker 1: good writer of prose. So for context, the time of
Speaker 1: the entry where Darwin's going to talk about penitentes is
Speaker 1: March eighteen, thirty thirty five, Darwin and his traveling party
Speaker 1: are in the middle of the Andes Mountains. So this
Speaker 1: is a part of the journey where he's off the
Speaker 1: ship and he's traveling around in South America. They're in
Speaker 1: the middle of the Andes and they are making an
Speaker 1: overland journey from Santiago, Chile to the city of Mendoza
Speaker 1: in modern day Argentina. And on the course of this track,
Speaker 1: Darwin makes a number of very scientifically interesting observations, including
Speaker 1: coming across a petrified forest in the barren reaches of
Speaker 1: the High Desert, and also discovering some fossil seashells embedded
Speaker 1: in rocks way up in the mountains. Darwin writes quote
Speaker 1: shells which were once crawling on the bottom of the
Speaker 1: sea now standing nearly fourteen thousand feet above its level.
Speaker 1: So the entries of the journal I'm going to look
Speaker 1: at are from around March twenty first to March twenty second,
Speaker 1: and a Darwin's party they've just emerged from a mountain
Speaker 1: pass called Puquines and they are headed toward another mountain
Speaker 1: pass called the Portillo Pass. And so March late March
Speaker 1: I was thinking of winter trans aditioning to spring. But
Speaker 1: that's then I realized, oh, that's northern hemisphere brain talking.
Speaker 1: This is the southern hemisphere, so that's actually summer turning
Speaker 1: into autumn. So this is I think a late time
Speaker 1: of the year to be trying to make this journey.
Speaker 1: Now is an interesting note before we get to the
Speaker 1: ice formations. I did just want to mention something that
Speaker 1: caught my attention from the journal entry from March twenty first.
Speaker 1: Darwin says he and his companions have made their way
Speaker 1: into a high mountainous country between two mountain ranges, and again,
Speaker 1: this is apparently late in the season for travel. Darwin
Speaker 1: fears what would happen if there's bad weather because there
Speaker 1: is not much there's not really anywhere for them to
Speaker 1: take shelter, and he says that they are able to
Speaker 1: build what he calls a miserable fire out of the
Speaker 1: only available fuel, which are the roots of an unspecified
Speaker 1: scrubby plant. And he says that the wind was piercingly cold.
Speaker 3: I'm getting shades of Bilbo is there about the journey
Speaker 3: through the misty mountains here?
Speaker 1: Oh that's funny. Yeah, No, lyrics of songs are included Unfortunately, here.
Speaker 3: Does he complain about the lack of food though.
Speaker 1: Oh you know, Darwin had to have second breakfast, and
Speaker 1: in fact there are complaints about food coming right up.
Speaker 1: So Darwin is about to explain troubles they had cooking
Speaker 1: their food, which connects to an interesting fact we've talked
Speaker 1: about in some of our episodes on high altitudes in
Speaker 1: the past. So Darwin writes, quote, at the place where
Speaker 1: we slept, water necessarily boiled from the diminished pressure of
Speaker 1: the atmosphere had a lower temperature than it does in
Speaker 1: a less lofty country, the case being the converse of
Speaker 1: that of a Papan's digester. Now a quick note here.
Speaker 1: Papan's digester was basically a pressure cooker. It was an
Speaker 1: early pressure cooker invented in the seventeenth century by the
Speaker 1: French physicist Denis Papan. So Darwin is saying that the
Speaker 1: high elevation at his camp is functioning like a reverse
Speaker 1: pressure cooker. Inside a pressure cooker, you increase the boiling
Speaker 1: point of water closing it and having a higher pressure,
Speaker 1: allowing the food to cook faster. At his camp, and
Speaker 1: the low pressure up there it lowers the boiling point
Speaker 1: of water instead of increasing it. So he goes on
Speaker 1: to say, quote, hence the potatoes, after remaining for some
Speaker 1: hours in the boiling water, were nearly as hard as ever.
Speaker 1: The pot was left on the fire all night, and
Speaker 1: next morning it was boiled again, But yet the potatoes
Speaker 1: were not cooked. I found out this by overhearing my
Speaker 1: two companions discussing the cause. They had come to the
Speaker 1: simple conclusion quote, that the cursed pot, which was a
Speaker 1: new one, did not choose to boil potatoes. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: this pot hates potatoes. So a couple of things here.
Speaker 1: First of all, what Darwin says about cooking at high
Speaker 1: elevation is absolutely true. We've discussed this on the show before.
Speaker 1: The higher you go above sea level, the less atmospheric
Speaker 1: pressure there is, so there's less atmosphere sitting on you.
Speaker 1: The lower the atmospheric pressure, the lower the boiling point
Speaker 1: of water at that elevation. I don't know exactly what
Speaker 1: elevation Darwin was at the point he was cooking here,
Speaker 1: but the highest elevation he mentions in the surrounding text
Speaker 1: is fourteen thousand feet, and according to a chart I
Speaker 1: found on the internet, at fourteen thousand feet, the boiling
Speaker 1: point of water is about one hundred and eighty six
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit or eighty six degrees c Of course, in
Speaker 1: a regular pot, water cannot get hotter than its boiling point,
Speaker 1: which means there's a limit to how hot you can
Speaker 1: get the food you're trying to cook in the water.
Speaker 1: And as an experiment, I was like, well, I wonder
Speaker 1: what a potato cook to one hundred and eighty six
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit is like. So I did this yesterday with
Speaker 1: the aid of a probe thermometer in my toaster oven.
Speaker 1: So it was a dry cooking method, not a wet one.
Speaker 1: Not not a perfect comparison, but the results were that,
Speaker 1: you know, the potato cook to one eighty six fahrenheit
Speaker 1: was not good, but not inedible. I would say a
Speaker 1: potato definitely should be cooked to a higher temperature in
Speaker 1: order to be in enjoyable. You know, if I was
Speaker 1: making a baked potato and doing an internal temperature, I
Speaker 1: would take it to like two oh eight fahrenheit. You
Speaker 1: need to take it to almost the boiling point of water.
Speaker 1: And this potato I did to one eighty six was
Speaker 1: not fluffy. It was still kind of firm, but also
Speaker 1: you know, it was cooked enough that I assumed somebody
Speaker 1: climbing through the mountains would settle for it. So I
Speaker 1: wonder if there were any other factors at play that
Speaker 1: made it even less well done than my one hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty six fahrenheit potato. I'm not sure, but potato
Speaker 1: thoughts aside. The other thing I wanted to come back
Speaker 1: to is an interesting case of connections in the Burkian sense.
Speaker 1: Here Denis Papan's steam digest, which, again this is an
Speaker 1: early seventeenth century pressure cooker, was actually an important inspiration
Speaker 1: for Thomas Nukman and others in their work on developing
Speaker 1: the steam engine, showing that the expansion of trapped steam,
Speaker 1: you know, it's expanding under heat, could be used to
Speaker 1: do work, For example, to drive a pit, which you know,
Speaker 1: from the right combination of gears and shafts and things,
Speaker 1: could you could apply that work of the driven piston
Speaker 1: to almost any task, from pumping water to turning the
Speaker 1: wheels of a railcar.
Speaker 3: Fascinating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, may you never look at your instant pot the
Speaker 1: same again. But anyway, we got to come back to
Speaker 1: the ice formation. So we were moving on to the
Speaker 1: Journal entry of March twenty second, where Darwin says, after
Speaker 1: eating our potato less breakfast, we traveled across the Intermediate
Speaker 1: tract to the foot of the Portillo Range. In the
Speaker 1: middle of summer, cattle are brought up here to graze,
Speaker 1: but they had now all been removed. Even the greater
Speaker 1: number of the Guanacos had decamped, knowing well that if
Speaker 1: overtaken here by a snowstorm, they would be caught in
Speaker 1: a trap. And I had to look this up. Guanacos
Speaker 1: or a type of South American camelidly related to the lama.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're really cool. I've never seen them in person,
Speaker 3: but I've seen some nature documentaries that feature them, and yeah,
Speaker 3: they're like they're a wild species, and yeah, they have
Speaker 3: a quite noble air to them. Based on the footage
Speaker 3: I've seen.
Speaker 1: I thought they were cute. Darwin goes on. We had
Speaker 1: a fine view of a massive mountains called Tupungato, the
Speaker 1: whole clothed with unbroken snow, in the midst of which
Speaker 1: there was a blue patch, no doubt a glacier. A
Speaker 1: circumstance of rare occurrence in these mountains now commenced A
Speaker 1: heavy and long climb similar to that of the puquines,
Speaker 1: bold conical hills of red granite rose on each hand.
Speaker 1: In the valleys there were several broad fields of perpetual snow.
Speaker 1: These frozen masses, during the process of thawing, had in
Speaker 1: some parts been converted into pinnacles or columns, which, as
Speaker 1: they were high and close together, made it difficult for
Speaker 1: our cargo mules to pass on. In one of these
Speaker 1: columns of ice, a frozen horse was sticking as on
Speaker 1: a pedestal, but with its hind legs straight up in
Speaker 1: the air. The animal, i suppose, must have fallen with
Speaker 1: its head downward into a hole when the snow was continuous,
Speaker 1: and afterwards the surrounding parts must have been removed by
Speaker 1: the thall. Oh wow, So it's a shocking and evocative
Speaker 1: scene Darwin is describing. So again, these are valleys in
Speaker 1: between the granite hills. The valleys are covered in perpetual snow.
Speaker 1: So you know, this is the end of summer in
Speaker 1: the region and the snow is still not fully melted.
Speaker 1: And Darwin says that this snow, while partially thawing in
Speaker 1: the summer, had somehow been converted into a field of
Speaker 1: pinnacles or columns. Again, He says it was difficult for
Speaker 1: the mules loaded with cargo to pass between these pinnacles,
Speaker 1: and in one pinnacle formation they found a dead horse
Speaker 1: frozen solid, face down with its hind parts pointing straight
Speaker 1: up to the sky. Darwin says in a footnote he
Speaker 1: believes this is the same phenomenon that has been observed
Speaker 1: by other authors, including Scores B. Jackson and Lyell, and
Speaker 1: he says based on his observations, he thinks that it
Speaker 1: must be due to what he calls quote metamorphic action
Speaker 1: and not a process during deposition. So what he thinks
Speaker 1: from looking at this scene is that it's not that
Speaker 1: the snow gets piled up like this to begin with
Speaker 1: and then freezes that way, but it's something about how
Speaker 1: a snowfield changes over time, perhaps during partial thawing. So
Speaker 1: good question is was Darwin right about that? It seems
Speaker 1: the answer is yes. Darwin did not fully understand the cause,
Speaker 1: but I think his basic intuition was right. It seems
Speaker 1: that for a long time it was widely thought that
Speaker 1: snow penitentes were formed by way of wind erosion, but
Speaker 1: this has now been shown to be mostly incorrect. It
Speaker 1: seems that penitentase are unique to certain conditions. They only
Speaker 1: they're especially associated with the Andes, the dry Andies, but
Speaker 1: you can find them in some other climates. They tend
Speaker 1: to only form in high, dry, very sunny environments, like
Speaker 1: those found around glaciers in the Andes. In these conditions,
Speaker 1: when the surface of a snowfield is heated by the sun,
Speaker 1: it does not melt into a liquid, but instead sublimates,
Speaker 1: meaning it it skips the liquid phase transition and turns
Speaker 1: directly from a solid into a gas. So the snowfields
Speaker 1: get heated by the sun and then the ice crystals
Speaker 1: turn directly into water vapor and float away in the air.
Speaker 1: Sublimation is more likely to happen when there's already very
Speaker 1: little water vapor in the air, so the conditions are dry,
Speaker 1: and also in places where the air pressure is lower,
Speaker 1: for example high altitude. So the snow from the top
Speaker 1: layer of a snowfield in the high endies is sublimating
Speaker 1: in the sunshine. The question is what causes it to
Speaker 1: turn into blades or pinnacles instead of simply disappearing sort
Speaker 1: of evenly across the whole sheet of snowfall. Well, there
Speaker 1: may still be some disagreement about the primary physical causes
Speaker 1: behind this process. But according to a good article that
Speaker 1: I was reading about this by Philip Ball, the science
Speaker 1: writer Philip Ball on the American Physical Society website, which
Speaker 1: is summarizing some research from the year twenty fifteen, there
Speaker 1: is a multipart theory that seems to explain it well.
Speaker 1: So one piece of the puzzle of how this happens
Speaker 1: was described in work by uce Boulder physicist Meredith Betterton
Speaker 1: and co authors on a couple of papers in two thousands,
Speaker 1: and basically this factor has to do with the fact
Speaker 1: that snow can be heated and caused to sublimate not
Speaker 1: only by direct sunlight so the first time the sun
Speaker 1: hits the snow, but also by reflected sunlight, and so
Speaker 1: any irregularities in the surface of the snowfield that cause
Speaker 1: a ray of sunlight to bounce sideways instead of straight
Speaker 1: back up the sky can cause secondary heating. This might
Speaker 1: be a little hard to picture without a diagram, rob
Speaker 1: I've got an illustration for you to look at here,
Speaker 1: But if you can imagine rays of light are coming
Speaker 1: down from above, and if you have peaks and valleys
Speaker 1: within a snowfield, ray of light hits somewhere within a valley,
Speaker 1: and the snow is very bright and white, so a
Speaker 1: lot of that energy gets reflected back off of the
Speaker 1: surface of the snow. That reflection will often send it
Speaker 1: bouncing down to another part of the valley. Does that
Speaker 1: make sense? You can picture all these angles where the
Speaker 1: rays of light hits somewhere in the valley and then
Speaker 1: they bounce, and then they hit somewhere else in the
Speaker 1: valley and keep they can essentially keep bouncing around within
Speaker 1: the valley so that they eventually get absorbed and converted
Speaker 1: into heat. So basically, if peaks and valleys are somehow
Speaker 1: able to initially form within a layer of snow, the
Speaker 1: valleys will be self deepening because the light that hits
Speaker 1: within the valley will bounce back and hit somewhere else
Speaker 1: in the valley, and it's sort of trapping that energy
Speaker 1: within it, further heating another point in the valley. Whereas
Speaker 1: the peaks are relatively protected from most reflected light, the
Speaker 1: only heating they're getting is pretty much from the direct
Speaker 1: the first hit of the sunlight. So the valleys heat
Speaker 1: more than the peaks, and they continually sublimate and deepen
Speaker 1: what start as tiny differences in the surface of the ice.
Speaker 1: These things deepen into great rifts and corridors in the
Speaker 1: ice as reflected solar energy whittles away the valleys, until
Speaker 1: we have these these sort of like mazes of blades. However,
Speaker 1: according to this theory discussed in Ball's article, this is
Speaker 1: apparently not the whole picture. There are a couple of
Speaker 1: other mechanisms you need to add. So Philip Ball's article
Speaker 1: is summarizing additional research that was published by Philippe Claudin
Speaker 1: and co authors in Physical Review E in twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: in a paper called Physical Processes causing the Formation of Penitentes.
Speaker 1: So the authors of this paper are saying, you need
Speaker 1: more mechanisms than just that the reflected light being trapped
Speaker 1: in the valleys to explain, for example, the regularity of
Speaker 1: spacing and patterns seen in fields of penitentes, Because while
Speaker 1: the penitentes may look sort of chaotic, they are not random.
Speaker 1: There are clearly patterns that recur and a particular scale
Speaker 1: of spacing is favored within one field of these things.
Speaker 1: So their paper adds a couple of other mechanis mechanisms
Speaker 1: into the mix. This is pretty technical, but Ball explained
Speaker 1: it in a way that I think I understand based
Speaker 1: on his summary. So Ball says, first of all, in
Speaker 1: order to sublimate, the snow or the ice actually has
Speaker 1: to absorb the incoming light and convert that energy into heat.
Speaker 1: And when it absorbs this energy, the interior of the
Speaker 1: mass of ice becomes warmer than the direct surface of
Speaker 1: the mass. So the layer of snow right underneath the
Speaker 1: surface is warmer than the surface itself, And the gradient
Speaker 1: between these two layers is determined by how easily the
Speaker 1: light is absorbed by the snow, which varies between the
Speaker 1: peaks and valleys. Ball writes quote, heat is radiated less
Speaker 1: efficiently from the troughs than from the peaks, which leads
Speaker 1: to a steeper temperature gradient in the snow within the troughs.
Speaker 1: This steeper temperature gradient turns out to produce a higher
Speaker 1: sublimation rate, so that the troughs become c amplifying in
Speaker 1: the early stages of growth. So that's another way that
Speaker 1: the troughs can become, as he says, self amplifying. Once
Speaker 1: they already exist, they tend to sublimate faster and become
Speaker 1: deeper than the peaks. But the second main issue is
Speaker 1: that sublimation of snow depends on what's going on in
Speaker 1: the air right above the snow. It depends on that
Speaker 1: air right above the snow or ice being very dry.
Speaker 1: If there's already a lot of water vapor in the
Speaker 1: air right above the ice, less of the ice is
Speaker 1: going to phase transition into gas and float away. Of course,
Speaker 1: when ice sublimates, it becomes water vapor, So the rate
Speaker 1: at which more ice below can sublimate depends on how
Speaker 1: quickly the water vapor that forms just above the ice
Speaker 1: is removed, is maybe blown away by the wind or
Speaker 1: somehow diffused into the rest of the atmosphere. Essentially, you
Speaker 1: can't put more passengers in the elevator until some current
Speaker 1: passengers get out. So this research by claude Ane and
Speaker 1: co authors argued that it is this water vapor diffusion
Speaker 1: principle that determines the regular spacing between the peaks and
Speaker 1: valleys in the fields of ice. It is apparently like
Speaker 1: when there are patterns of difference in the diffusion of
Speaker 1: water vapor from the air directly above the ice, that
Speaker 1: these peaks and valleys begin to form, and then once
Speaker 1: they do, for the reasons already mentioned, they are self amplifying.
Speaker 1: So maybe here's an area of snow where the air
Speaker 1: is wetter, sublimation doesn't happen as well. That becomes a peak.
Speaker 1: Here's an area of snow where the air is drier,
Speaker 1: sublimation happens more there, This becomes a valley. So the
Speaker 1: spacing of penitentes is in part determined by things like
Speaker 1: wind conditions. If wind blows, it diffuses water vapor faster,
Speaker 1: and apparently this leads to penitentes forming farther apart from
Speaker 1: one another if they form, And using the mathematical model
Speaker 1: established in this paper, the team calculated that in conditions
Speaker 1: with no wind, you would expect to see penitentes spaced
Speaker 1: in the range of roughly tens of centimeters apart, which
Speaker 1: is in fact the most common pattern found in nature.
Speaker 1: So these tiny differences in water vapor diffusion and reflection
Speaker 1: of light and heat absorption in a field of snow can,
Speaker 1: over time, by this self amplification process, turn into these
Speaker 1: crazy hedge mazes of ice knives. And I think that's
Speaker 1: a beautiful thing. Now, I don't know if that solves
Speaker 1: the question of how the horse ended up frozen faced
Speaker 1: down again. Darwin guesses that somehow, like maybe when there
Speaker 1: was a lot more snow piled higher up, the horse
Speaker 1: fell headfirst into a hole and it froze there. And
Speaker 1: then somehow that turned into as snow was sublimated or
Speaker 1: melted away, was removed, somehow it turned into just like
Speaker 1: a pedestal, like a column of ice with a horse
Speaker 1: sticking out of it with its head frozen in. And
Speaker 1: it's hard to picture.
Speaker 3: Remains a mystery, But I love this whole encounter. Here
Speaker 3: we have such a surreal landscape to envision, and then
Speaker 3: we have a familiar character in the form of Charles
Speaker 3: Darwin navigating it and trying his best to make sense of.
Speaker 1: It on a potato free belly. Yes, you can just imagine,
Speaker 1: like all night the weather's bad, He's worried or are
Speaker 1: they going to get snowed in? Are they going to
Speaker 1: die up there? And then in the morning he's like,
Speaker 1: at least I'm going to have some potatoes.
Speaker 3: Nope, And then Gandalf turns to him and says, Charles,
Speaker 3: your role in this mission is extremely important.
Speaker 1: Now, just one more quick note. I have encountered it.
Speaker 1: I didn't have time to fully delve into this and
Speaker 1: figure out what I thought of the disagreement. But I've
Speaker 1: encountered dueling opinions about whether we would expect to find
Speaker 1: large penitentes on particular bodies in space, for example, on
Speaker 1: the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. So there was one paper,
Speaker 1: for example, I came across, called formation of meter scaled
Speaker 1: bladed roughness on Europe on Europa's surface by ablation of ice,
Speaker 1: published in Nature Geoscience by Hoby at All in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: The authors here say, quote, we estimate that penitentes on
Speaker 1: Europa could reach fifteen meters in depth with a spacing
Speaker 1: of seven point five meters near the equator on average,
Speaker 1: if they were to have developed across the interval permitted
Speaker 1: by Europa's mean surface age, So ice blades about fifteen
Speaker 1: meters tall, which is fifty feet. Obviously, this would present
Speaker 1: some complications if you were trying to, say, put a
Speaker 1: lander down in a region that had a surface texture
Speaker 1: like this. But then, on the other hand, I saw
Speaker 1: that there are some papers in reply to this paper
Speaker 1: arguing against the notion, and at least one of them
Speaker 1: was doing so by challenging the formation theory of penitentes.
Speaker 1: That I was just a explaining. So I don't know
Speaker 1: how well subscribed to this dissenting opinion is, but it
Speaker 1: seems like it's possible. There's still some major controversy in
Speaker 1: how the penitentes form and how that would affect what
Speaker 1: we should expect to find on icy planets like Europa.
Speaker 3: I found that many of the ice related papers I've
Speaker 3: looked at, it seems to be there seems to be
Speaker 3: a steep drop off regarding like technical details concerning the
Speaker 3: formation of ice crystals and so forth. So it can
Speaker 3: be a little challenging at times to figuring out exactly
Speaker 3: what the experts are are dealing with or arguing about
Speaker 3: in some of these All right, I have a few
Speaker 3: other forms of ice I want to throw out here.
Speaker 3: I was mainly attracted to this additional topic of candle eyes.
Speaker 3: I know that many of you out there have probably
Speaker 3: seen some interesting videos and images online of candle ice.
Speaker 3: But candle ice is a subset of rotten ice, so
Speaker 3: I'll need to talk about that first.
Speaker 1: What rotten ice?
Speaker 3: Rotten ice? Yeah, I know it sounds grizzly, right, like
Speaker 3: the ice is stinking and dark and bleeding or something,
Speaker 3: But rotten ice is according to the National Snow and
Speaker 3: Ice Data Center, floating ice which has become honeycombed in
Speaker 3: the course of melting, and which is in an advanced
Speaker 3: state of disintegration. You can also think of it as
Speaker 3: ice just in an in advanced stage of melting. So
Speaker 3: it's porous and it's difficult to climb or work on.
Speaker 3: It's generally considered dangerous for humans to work on or
Speaker 3: with it, since it has lost or is losing its stability.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. So this would be yet another case of
Speaker 1: ice that is weakening or losing some of its mass,
Speaker 1: not doing so in an even way, but losing its
Speaker 1: mass in a kind of model old pattern, as opposed
Speaker 1: to just like you know, thinning out evenly across its surface.
Speaker 3: Right right, And therefore it could be dangerous if you
Speaker 3: have like a stretch of this and people are going
Speaker 3: to try and walk on it or work with it
Speaker 3: in some way. There's apparently a great deal of interest
Speaker 3: and concern concerning the impact of this ice type on
Speaker 3: the biogeochemistry of the Arctic as well, since climate change
Speaker 3: and a warming Arctic will make this sort of ice
Speaker 3: more common. It's pointed out by France that all in
Speaker 3: the distinct microbial ecology and biogeochemistry of rotten sea ice
Speaker 3: on the Arctic Shelf twenty twenty. This was a NASA
Speaker 3: ADS publication. Apparently this presents a quote physically and chemically
Speaker 3: distinct microbial habitat and its melting could quote contribute significantly
Speaker 3: to Arctic shelf carbon and nitrogen cycling and therefore to
Speaker 3: Arctic biogeochemistry more generally. So it's enterallying. It kind of
Speaker 3: comes back to the same real home of what you
Speaker 3: pointed out earlier. I mean, we're we live on a
Speaker 3: water planet, and the different phases of water are are
Speaker 3: are connected to the way that life works on our planet.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, the story of ice is also connected
Speaker 3: to the story of life.
Speaker 1: No doubt, especially if you're a water dwelling organism.
Speaker 3: Right even if you just happen to be made of
Speaker 3: mostly water. Right now, I was looking now for more
Speaker 3: details on candleized specifically, I was looking at this wonderful article.
Speaker 3: I believe that the author, and this is John A. Downing,
Speaker 3: Director of the University of Minnesota, is Minnesota Sea Grant
Speaker 3: and the author here points out that candle ized leaves
Speaker 3: long thin crystals as it melts. So again, this is
Speaker 3: a form of rotten ice. Primary ice that has been
Speaker 3: formed under very cold conditions melts. It leaves behind crystals
Speaker 3: that can be either vertical or horizontal, depending on wind pattern,
Speaker 3: and he points out that horizontal crystals appear darker, while
Speaker 3: vertical ones appear white and are typically stronger. There are
Speaker 3: some wonderful videos out there of people in canoes or
Speaker 3: kayaks churning up these crystals out of the like I mean,
Speaker 3: to an untrained eye, it might you might think these
Speaker 3: are like slushy waters, you know, like there's clearly some
Speaker 3: frozen slush in there. They'll dip the paddle and when
Speaker 3: they pull pull it up, there are these elongated crystals
Speaker 3: that kind of rise up and then fall to the
Speaker 3: side almost like I mean, there's almost a sense of
Speaker 3: like icy spines parting.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's creepy. I just looked up images of this,
Speaker 1: and so I'm seeing like a kayaker who's sticking their
Speaker 1: paddle into the water, and it looks like they're just
Speaker 1: like plowing through a pile of hay or maybe needles
Speaker 1: made of ice.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, yeah, So it's you know, it's interesting to
Speaker 3: think of like all these different forms of ice that
Speaker 3: can occur at different points in the formation and deformation
Speaker 3: and melting or decomposition of ice. Now, another variety I
Speaker 3: want to mention here in pasting is a type of
Speaker 3: ice that is often referred to as beach ice balls
Speaker 3: or sometimes mermaid's bowling balls.
Speaker 1: Who came up with that name?
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean you look at them and you're like, well,
Speaker 3: maybe this is a mermaid's bowling ball. Often seeing generally
Speaker 3: you'll see like a lot of them. So this is
Speaker 3: another type of ice that's profiled by downing. These are
Speaker 3: formed on cold beaches and they may be pure ice
Speaker 3: and therefore have like kind of, you know, very much
Speaker 3: icy white look to them, or they might be ice
Speaker 3: covered in sand and sediment. They can reach soccer ball sizes,
Speaker 3: so they're spiracle. They're they're just big white balls of ice,
Speaker 3: you know, not always perfect. Sometimes there's kind of like
Speaker 3: a little almost kind of like tadpole tails on them.
Speaker 3: It looks like little spikes. But yeah, these these are
Speaker 3: seemingly formed by formed as slusha that's another form of
Speaker 3: vice by wave action and rolled up beaches by the tide,
Speaker 3: and it makes for quite a surreal sight. I included
Speaker 3: a couple of images for you, Joe. Here summer, there's
Speaker 3: some in the water, and then there's some just piled
Speaker 3: up on a beach.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, it looks like I would not have said
Speaker 1: mermaid bowling balls. I might have said, I don't know, e,
Speaker 1: lithid eggs or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I guess it's just because of the
Speaker 3: size they can reach and I'm guessing the weight, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, if you were to pick one of these up,
Speaker 3: you might be like, oh, yeah, this is a vowling ball.
Speaker 3: I just need three holes and I'm going to go. Now. Slushballs,
Speaker 3: which I mentioned earlier, this is an yet another form
Speaker 3: roughly as vehicle caused by clumps of slush turned and
Speaker 3: rolled in a current. They accumulate like snowballs rolled rolled
Speaker 3: up to make a snowman. According to Downing. So yeah,
Speaker 3: just imagine again realized this can be kind of hard
Speaker 3: to picture. If you able the like slush in the
Speaker 3: water and you have you know, some sort of movement
Speaker 3: be it, you know, the waves, tidal action, and it
Speaker 3: just causes these to sort of roll and accumulate and
Speaker 3: form ultimately these big balls of ice. All right. In
Speaker 3: the last one, I want to talk about here. This
Speaker 3: is this is another novel and this is another one
Speaker 3: that I think. This one has pointed out to me
Speaker 3: by my wife. She sent me like an Instagram video
Speaker 3: that someone had made of someone observing this particular example.
Speaker 3: And these are the Abraham Lake bubbles of Alberta. So
Speaker 3: I recommend looking up pictures of this. But one might
Speaker 3: describe the scene here as you have a frozen lake,
Speaker 3: so you have clear ice over you, like the dark
Speaker 3: blue depths of the lake, but with strange white discs
Speaker 3: of different sizes trapped in the ice at different levels,
Speaker 3: often seemingly atop each other, as if in sequence, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of like a different altitudes within the ice. I've
Speaker 3: seen these formations compared to like a lava lamp before,
Speaker 3: except there is no movement. Everything is frozen in place.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow, I absolutely see the lava lamp comparison. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like a so underneath the relatively transparent frozen
Speaker 1: surface of the lake. Yeah, it looks like it sort
Speaker 1: of bubbles of wax suspended in time.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, the wax is a good example. So what
Speaker 3: are these, Well, they are bubbles, but they are frozen
Speaker 3: methane bubbles. Frozen in the ice. So the way this
Speaker 3: works is you have organic matter like tree limbs and
Speaker 3: other plant matter that winds up on the boom of
Speaker 3: the bottom of the lake and that decomposes releases methane
Speaker 3: when the temperature drops, you know, it drops fast enough
Speaker 3: that rising methane bubbles become frozen in the freezing water ice.
Speaker 3: I think the other way to clearly picture it is
Speaker 3: imagine the water freezing over at the top, methane rising
Speaker 3: up and becoming trapped in these kind of like flattened
Speaker 3: bubbles beneath the ice, and then the water around those
Speaker 3: squashed bubbles freezes, the ice cap thickens, more bubbles up
Speaker 3: and become trapped underneath the even thicker ice, and this continues,
Speaker 3: creating this multi layered lava lamp kind of appearance.
Speaker 1: And I guess we can only see it because of
Speaker 1: the relatively transparent surface of the of the ice on
Speaker 1: the lake here.
Speaker 3: That's right. That's what I've read here is that this
Speaker 3: sort of thing goes on in lakes all over the place,
Speaker 3: and anytime you have a frozen lake environment, you potentially
Speaker 3: have these bubbles because you have organic matter tree limbs,
Speaker 3: plant matter, whatever. At the bottom releasing methane, and then
Speaker 3: if there's freezing going on, you're gonna have these bubbles
Speaker 3: trapped in there. But it seems to be a combination
Speaker 3: of things with this particular lake. So first of all,
Speaker 3: there might be like enhance concentration of it for one
Speaker 3: reason or another, but also you have water clarity that's
Speaker 3: really good, and a tendency for strong winds to blow
Speaker 3: snow off the surface kind of, you know, enhancing the
Speaker 3: visibility of the bubbles I see, So I would I
Speaker 3: haven't seen these in person, have only seen imag and videos,
Speaker 3: So I would love to hear from anyone who has
Speaker 3: ventured out to see the Abraham Lake bubbles of Alberta,
Speaker 3: or if you've witnessed similar phenomenon in other frozen lakes.
Speaker 3: You know, it looks really.
Speaker 1: Cool, absolutely does beautiful even.
Speaker 3: Yeah, though also so cold, so cold.
Speaker 1: Looking makes me want a well done potato.
Speaker 3: All right. Well, on that note, I believe we're going
Speaker 3: to go ahead and close out this episode, but we'd
Speaker 3: love to hear from everyone out there, and especially on
Speaker 3: this one. A lot of you are going to have
Speaker 3: examples of strange eyed formations that we've talked about here
Speaker 3: and You may have pictures you want to send in,
Speaker 3: and yeah, send away, we'd love to hear from here. Also,
Speaker 3: there may be other forms of ice you want to
Speaker 3: bring to our attention. That's also fair game. Just a
Speaker 3: reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind it's primarily a
Speaker 3: science podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, mister
Speaker 3: Mail on Monday, short form episode on Wednesdays, and on Fridays.
Speaker 3: We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 3: a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.