Word: ices
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...such otherworldly erupting is dramatic, it amounts to little more than geological pyrotechnics. On Europa, however, tidal heating may have produced something truly remarkable. The formations Galileo spotted last week are definitely icebergs, though less jagged-looking than those found on Earth. Astronomers don't know why Europan ice and terrestrial ice would not fracture the same way, but they admit they have no experience with the kinds of cracks that are produced when an entire world is frozen over. More to the point, the bergs are small, rising just 300 to 600 ft. above the surrounding ice. Since only...
...matter how thick the ice is, the waters beneath it must still be liquid, thanks to tidal heating. This is good news for biology. Scientists don't pretend to know how warm a Europan ocean might be, but even waters that are just a degree above freezing would feel downright balmy to organisms that evolved...
...trademark red folders given to pre-frosh by the Admissions Office contain lists of other activities. Highlights include the Pre-frosh Ice Cream Bash; an a cappella jam; Faculty panels; a speech by former presidential candidate Michael Dukakis; and a welcome by President Neil L. Rudenstine and Radcliffe President Linda S. Wilson...
Some change in Antarctic climate is already noticeable. It seems to be snowing more often at the South Pole, an area remote from any obvious sources of additional moisture. In the continent's Dry Valleys region, the lake ice seems to be thinning. It actually rained briefly at the American base in McMurdo Sound this year. The Wordie Ice Shelf on the Antarctic peninsula has all but collapsed, signaling a retreat of the northern limit of permanent ice on the continent. And in the 1970s a portion of the sea-ice apron as big as California disappeared for three years...
Since 1968, Gerald Kooyman of the University of California at San Diego has studied emperor penguins, beguiling flightless birds that are dependent on Antarctic sea ice. The penguins need 255 days of sea ice in order to complete the cycle from egg laying to the stage when fledglings are hardy enough to begin their wanderings through the southern ocean. Typically, the young birds jump into the water only two weeks or so before the ice breaks up. This year, says Kooyman, the ice near Franklin Island broke up in mid-December, two weeks before the fledglings were ready to embark...