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