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A hole the size of Maine—or larger than the Netherlands, depending on which geographic mass means more to you—has opened up in the Weddell Sea in Antarctica. In an otherwise thick layer of sea ice, still frozen from the Antarctic winter, the hole is an aberration. Ice scientists aren’t sure what’s going on, but they’re all talking about it. “It looks like you just punched a hole in the ice,” atmospheric physicist Kent Moore, of the University of Toronto, told Vice’s Motherboard. Autonomous float deployed in 2015 has resurfaced unexpectedly inside polynya & started transmitting data https://t.co/qnyTYRVoOy @NSF pic.twitter.com/JgfwdDtBoc —...

The creatures living in Antarctic oceans are accustomed to being cold. But even they barely survived the extra-frigid temperatures of the last ice age... At the peak of the last ice age, around 18,000 years ago, seals, birds and other polar animals would have had to eke out an existence around a few clearings — called polynyas — in the sea ice... The small openings would have served as year-round oases for algae to grow and form the basis of a food chain supporting fish, birds, seals and whales. At that time, the permanent sea ice that rings Antarctica would...