32 comments

  • atbpaca an hour ago

    Beautiful and scary at the same time. Almost like the iceberg was a planet on its own with mountains, valleys, crevices. Then everything goes haywire. The fall of a majestic titan. The destruction of a world.

    • baubino 44 minutes ago

      There’s also something very organic about it. I had to keep reminding myself that it’s “just ice” and not a living being.

    • GuB-42 an hour ago

      In short, a titanic event...

  • joshuat an hour ago

    Massive appreciation for whoever adjusted the position of the camera at 7:23 (3:18 in video)

  • eamag 2 hours ago

    Crazy how the most liked comment under the video as of now discusses AI video generation

    • maxlin an hour ago

      Especially as physics-oriented and long videos are exactly the kinds that are easiest to figure if they're AI.

      Artificial Intelligence isn't the issue. Natural Stupidity is.

  • hk__2 an hour ago

    I felt like watching a big animal moving

    • troyvit 37 minutes ago

      Yeah there were parts that were so organic it looked alive. I was imagining the folks at Toho taking detailed notes.

  • xnx 31 minutes ago

    Anyone who enjoys that video (I did!) should watch the largest glacier calving ever recorded: https://youtu.be/hC3VTgIPoGU

  • raphinou 2 hours ago

    I would have thought it would generate enormous wave, but that's clearly not the case. I think some of the biggest waves was generated by a mountain sliding or collapsing in the sea. I expected something similar here. Anyone know why not?

    • GuB-42 an hour ago

      It is not a very energetic event for its size. The iceberg is floating, it can't accumulate a lot of potential energy before flipping, so when it happens, there is not enough to make big waves. The center of gravity of the iceberg barely moves.

      A mountain sliding into the sea is different, these higher up rocks have a lot of potential energy, that convert into kinetic energy as they fall, which is transferred to the water as they splash down, making big waves.

    • cucumber3732842 2 hours ago

      The amount of water actually being displaced isn't changing much, it's just kind of rearranging around where is water and where is ice.

    • javier2 an hour ago

      i suppose its not actually displacing a lot of water volume, unlike a landslide.

    • dist-epoch 2 hours ago

      Maybe because ice floats, and it's almost the same density as water?

    • staplers 2 hours ago

      All its mass is already on the water so it's not displacing anything. It probably made some splashes but it seems like a fairly round object rotating rather than smashing into anything

  • nomilk an hour ago

    Surprised the bottom of the iceberg crumbled so easily (like sand) at 4m 16s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UufMqwyO7pY&t=4m16s

    I'd have assumed it would be colder and more compacted (being toward the bottom and further under water), and therefore harder.

    • amszmidt an hour ago

      How cold is cold? :-)

      Water below ”sea” level tends to stay around -1C (salt water) to 4C. Below that, water becomes ice…

      Ambient temperature can drop to -40C … internally these ice blocks hoover around -10C.

    • FromHoiPolloi an hour ago

      My take would be that underwater temps cannot get below freezing. So the surrounding temperatures above water can be lower than under water.

      • Pooge an hour ago

        > My take would be that underwater temps cannot get below freezing

        Yep, density of water changes with temperature—it's the only thing that has that phenomenon—and therefore the colder water is always at the surface. That's actually what made life possible since life could survive despite a frozen surface.

        Happy to be proven wrong, but that's what I learnt making cocktails and investigating clear ice :)

      • nh23423fefe an hour ago

        plus thermal conductivity of water vs atmosphere

      • mrloopex an hour ago

        Freezing point of water changes with salinity and impurities. By definition a liquid cannot be below its freezing point until it has completed its phase change.

        • FromHoiPolloi an hour ago

          Yes. My point was that it's easier(?) to get below freezing point above water than below. So while the cold air keeps the upper part of the iceberg (relatively) intact - it will slowly melt below the sea until the center of gravity changes enough to flip over.

  • thisisauserid 2 hours ago

    It stops first? Maybe the bottom hit the seafloor?

    • readthenotes1 2 hours ago

      One of the comments said just that. "Grounded near disko bay" iirc.

      Another comment said that icebergs melt blow water faster than in the air and that flipping is a fairly common thing to do because the center of gravity changes.

      • maxbond 2 hours ago

        You can see bathtub rings on the underside as it's lifted up. The rings are caused by it's melting faster under the water than in the air, so there's a discontinuity at the waterline.

  • pixl97 2 hours ago

    4:40, so this is where people came up with the idea for Godzilla.

  • jcranmer 2 hours ago

    Honestly, my first thought watching this video is "I want a root beer float." Something in the way the icefalls as the iceberg is flipping over just makes me think of that...

  • csnizik 2 hours ago

    Structural review clearly got skipped. Somebody is losing their job over this.

  • catlikesshrimp 2 hours ago

    I would have described flipping it over before collapsing. The title seems a clickbait, but is no quite that. Keep in mind that most of the iceberg is off camera, as shown during the first minutes. It lost 80% or 90% of its total mass but most of it isn't seen until the end, when the iceberg goes back to the right.

  • rlam2x51 an hour ago

    I was expecting more waves. I am wondering if this video was AI generated. I hate that it is so hard to trust your eyes nowadays…

    Edit: Did a quick background check, video seems legit.

  • maxlin an hour ago

    now that's epic!