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Seabed scratches show icebergs reached the tropics 09 June 2008 NewScientist.com news service ICEBERGS often etch out messages on the shallow ocean floor. Now a newly discovered set of scratches suggests bergs from the icy north drifted further south than we thought after the last ice age. The meltdown of North American ice sheets about 15,000 years ago released a flotilla of icebergs into the Atlantic. Gouges left by bergs on the ocean bed have previously been found off New Jersey, close to the southernmost edge of the ice sheet, but it had been thought that looping currents would have...

Rainbow iceberg in the Antarctic By Laura Clout Last Updated: 2:39AM GMT 19/03/2008Resembling a strange creature from the deep, this rare marbled iceberg was spotted in the waters of the Antarctic by a Norwegian sailor. Rainbow iceberg in the AntarcticOyvind Tangen, 62, was on board the research ship G O Sars when he photographed the unusual ice formation, floating a few miles off the coast of the frozen continent. While most icebergs are white due to tiny bubbles trapped inside, which scatter the light in every direction, some pick up a multitude of colours due to various natural phenomena. Green...

NEW YORK — The tragic sinking of the Titanic nearly a century ago can be blamed on low grade rivets that the ship's builders used on some parts of the ill-fated liner, two experts on metals conclude in a new book. The company, Harland and Wolff of Belfast, Northern Ireland, needed to build the ship quickly and at reasonable cost, which may have compromised quality, said co-author Timothy Foecke. That the shipyard was building two other vessels at the same time added to the difficulty of getting the millions of rivets needed, he added. "Under the pressure to get these...

Titanic, left, and Olympic sat next to one another in a double gantry in the last photo of the two together, weeks before Olympic set sail Researchers have discovered that the builder of the Titanic struggled for years to obtain enough good rivets and riveters and ultimately settled on faulty materials that doomed the ship, which sank 96 years ago Tuesday. The builder’s own archives, two scientists say, harbor evidence of a deadly mix of low quality rivets and lofty ambition as the builder labored to construct the three biggest ships in the world at once — the Titanic...

Plowing the Ancient Seas: Iceberg scours found off South Carolina Sid Perkins Recent sonar surveys off the southeastern coast of the United States have detected dozens of broad furrows on the seafloor—trenches that were carved by icebergs during the last ice age, researchers suggest. FLOW REVERSAL. Currents driving the icebergs that scoured channels in the seafloor off South Carolina at the height of the last ice age ran almost exactly opposite to today's prevailing currents. Channel shown in inset is about 100 meters wide. Hill, et al. The channels, roughly parallel to the coast, are between 10 and 100 meters...

As the Democratic presidential race finally gets down to brass tacks, two issues are becoming paramount. But only one of them is clearly on the table. That is the issue of illegal immigration. A very smart Democrat, a veteran of the Clinton administration, told me that he expects it to be a key part of any Republican campaign and that he is worried about his party's ability to respond. I think he has good reason to worry. The failure of the Democratic Congress, like its Republican predecessor, to enact comprehensive immigration reform, including improved border security, has left individual states...

WELLINGTON (AFP) - Two icebergs drifting off the New Zealand coast have attracted massive interest from sightseers as well as sparking fresh warnings to shipping after their 13,500 kilometre journey from Antarctica. The icebergs were about 100 kilometres (60 miles) off the Otago coast in the south-east of the country Wednesday, the closest sighting off New Zealand for 75 years, The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) said. Helicopters have been taking scientists and sightseers out to view the massive slabs of ice. One is about 500 metres (1,600 feet) long, 50 metres wide and 60 metres high,...

The theory of global warming proposes that man's activities are causing the Earth to heat up, but there is compelling scientific evidence that does not support this conclusion.   Very few people have heard of the Larsen B ice shelf. For thousands of years in the Antarctic, the place was a desolate frozen wasteland, crisscrossed by crevasses and swept by powerful ice and snowstorms. Beginning in 2002, satellite imagery began to show instability in the Larsen B ice shelf. According to research published by the journal Nature, much of the more than 4,600 square mile ice shelf collapsed. Since then, icebergs...

ST. JOHN'S, NFLD. - Canadian scientists have found some intriguing similarities between grooves caused by icebergs and marks on the surface of the Red Planet. Chris Woodworth-Lynas normally sets his sights on the ocean floor, studying how icebergs scour the seabed. Oil and gas companies need the information to lay down pipelines. After work, Woodworth-Lynas applied his skills to Mars. "There has been theories that there was perhaps an ocean or series of oceans in the north polar regions," said Woodworth-Lynas. When Woodworth-Lynas downloaded NASA's orbital photos of Mars from 1997, he was able to resolve features. On their own...

Source: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Date: 2003-11-04 Sky-high Icebergs Carried Boulders From The Rockies To In South-central Washington Seattle -- Geologists have uncovered a scene in the Pasco Basin west of the Columbia River in Washington state that shows how boulders piggybacked icebergs from what is now Montana and came to rest at elevations as high as 1,200 feet. Although glacial deposits of rocks and boulders are common, especially in the upper Midwest, "There probably isn't anyplace else in the world where there are so many rocks that rafted in on icebergs," said Bruce Bjornstad, a geologist at the Department...

Filed at 2:33 p.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) -- The icebergs breaking away from Antarctica in recent months -- some as big as small states -- are part of a process scientists say marks a return to ice conditions of years past. Several ice shelves around the continent have been growing in recent years, a process that has puzzled researchers concerned about possible global warming. In the last three months -- autumn there -- several icebergs, one the size of Delaware and another nearly as big as Chesapeake Bay, have broken free. ``The icebergs that have calved in last couple of...

Breakaway Bergs Disrupt Arctic Ecosystem WASHINGTON, DC, May 9, 2002 (ENS) - Another large iceberg has newly calved from the Ross Ice Shelf, the National Ice Center has confirmed. Iceberg C-18 is the latest in a series of bergs to break away from the warming Antarctic ice mass. National Ice Center analyst Judy Shaffier spotted the new iceberg Sunday while performing a weekly satellite image analysis of the Ross Sea using an image from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. The Ross Ice Shelf is a large sheet of glacial ice and snow extending from the Antarctic mainland into the...