#ice

#ice

This Glacier In Washington Is Gone After Thousands of YearsThe Hinman Glacier was a large glacier located between Mount Rainier and Glacier Peak. After thousands of years, the big chunk of ice has melted away due to the increasing temperatures on our planet.During its lifetime, the glacier flowed to the north and northwest from near the summit of Mount Hinman, located in Washington. According to Nichols College glaciologist Mauri Pelto, the Hinman Glacier is the biggest North Cascade glacier to completely disappear. “I’ve seen a bunch of small glaciers disappear, and to see one of the larger glaciers disappear is more striking,” he explained further.   The glacier was estimated to exist since ancient times. While there is no exact date when it was made, experts hypothesize that it was around 14,000 years old. Unfortunately, it only lasted until now. It was unable to survive the rising temperatures of the fossil fuel era. The glacier was one of the four that provided cool water to the Skykomish River, a 29-mile-long river in Washington. To quote John Ryan Kuow, “rest in precipitation, Hinman Glacier.” You’ve accompanied multiple generations of living beings for thousands of years!Image credit: wikimedia commons#HinmanGlacier #ice #Washington #melt #highertemperatures 

Portrait Painted on an Ice FloeStreet Art Utopia introduces us to the works of David Popa, an artist from New York City who has settled in Finland. He began as a muralist, but has moved far beyond the limits of concrete buildings. His most recent piece is very ephemeral, as it’s painted on ice. His work actually began breaking down during production when it split down the middle.After mounting the ice floe in southern Finland, Popa sprayed charcoal and saltwater. The ice readily absorbed the charcoal, which meant that Popa had to reapply it several times in locations in order to get darker hues.#streetart #ice #portraits #DavidPopa

Winners of the Close-up Photographer of the Year 2021The top 100 winners of Close-up Photographer of the Year 03 (2021) or CUPOTY 03 are now featured on its website showing the winners gallery.The Close-up Photographer of the Year website was the brainchild of husband-and-wife duo Tracy and Dan Calder of Winchester, UK. They wanted to put close-up, macro and micro photography on the center stage and be celebrated in its own right.Tracy, a former editor of Outdoor Photography and a features editor at Amateur Photography, has over 20 years experience in the photo magazine industry. She’s also a photography instructor at West Dean College in Sussex, and an author of Close-up & Macro Photography, which has been translated into French and Chinese. Dan is a contributor to Black + White Photography magazine.This year’s Close-up Photographer of the Year (CUPOTY 03) has more than 9000 photos from 55 countries across nine different categories. These categories are insects, animals, plants and fungi, underwater, butterflies and dragonflies, intimate landscape, manmade, micro, and young.From each category, the top three winners were chosen alongside with the other finalists. Here are the top three winners per category.#photography #CUPOTY #MacroPhotography #CloseupPhotography #photographycompetitionInsects

Scientists Extracted 15,000-year-old Viruses, Most Previously Unknown to Man, From Tibetan Glacier IceScientists have extracted two ice core samples from a glacier at the Tibetan Plateau in China that contain viruses nearly 15,000 years old.Zhi-Ping Zhong, lead author of the virus study and researcher at The Ohio State University, said that as the glaciers formed gradually, they trapped dust, gases, as well as viruses in the ice. Studying the different layers of the ice cores help scientists learn about climate change, microbes, and viruses over the centuries.Previous studies conducted in Western China were limited in its ice core analysis. Now that they have new ice core samples, scientists discovered genetic codes for 33 viruses. Four of the viruses were previously known to science, but at least 28 of them were novel.Interestingly, about half of the viruses survived because they had gene sequences that made them thrive in extreme environments. "These viruses have signatures of genes that help them infect cells in cold environments - just surreal genetic signatures for how a virus is able to survive in extreme conditions," said professor Matthew Sullivan of Ohio State. "These are not easy signatures to pull out, and the method that Zhi-Ping developed to decontaminate the cores and to study microbes and viruses in ice could help us search for these genetic sequences in other extreme icy environments – Mars, for example, the moon, or closer to home in Earth’s Atacama Desert," he added.Image credit:Lonnie Thompson#virus #TibitanPlateua #WesternChina #ice #icecore #virology

Scientists Created Bendy, Flexible IceYou don't usually think of ice as "bendy" or flexible - in fact, it's usually quite the opposite: ice is brittle and rigid, and is prone to fracturing and breaking (think of an ice cube shattering when you drop it on the floor).So I'm sure you're as surprised as I was when scientists from the Zhejiang University in China developed ice so bendy and flexible that you can bend it into a nearly circular shape.From Science Alert:Ice doesn't always behave the way we expect, and its elasticity – or rather, lack thereof – is a perfect example. Theoretically, it should have a maximum elastic strain of around 15 percent. In the real world, the maximum elastic strain ever measured was less than 0.3 percent. The reason for this discrepancy is that ice crystals have structural imperfections that drive up their brittleness.So a team of researchers led by nanoscientist Peizhen Xu of Zhejiang University in China sought to create ice with as few structural imperfections as possible....At minus 150 degrees Celsius, they found that a microfiber 4.4 micrometers across was able to bend into a nearly circular shape, with a radius of 20 micrometers. This suggests a maximum elastic strain of 10.9 percent – much closer to the theoretical limit than previous attempts.Even better, when the researchers released the ice, it sprang back into its previous shape.#water #ice #physics #elasticity