Vibrating slab of Antarctic ice sounds like a horror movie
BY MARK KAUFMAN From MashableWhile normally inaudible to the human ear, the researchers have made these ultra-low frequencies detectable to our limited hearing range. They posted the eerie sounds online, along with a Geophysical Research Letters report on their greater research.
“If this vibration were audible, it would be analogous to the buzz produced by thousands of cicada bugs when they overrun the tree canopy and grasses in late summer,” Douglas MacAyeal, a glaciologist at the University of Chicago who had no role in the research, wrote in a commentary.
The real goal was to monitor changes on the Ross ice shelf as the greater ice-clad continent — under pressure from both relatively warm air above and seawater eating away ice from below — alter Antarctica’s massive glaciers and portend historically unprecedented sea level rise.
The vibrations themselves are believed to have been created by strong winds blowing across the dunes atop the Ross Ice Shelf, which vibrates the ice.
“It’s kind of like you’re blowing a flute, constantly, on the ice shelf,” Julien Chaput, a geophysicist at Colorado State University and lead author of the study, said in a statement.
An eerie flute, indeed.
