Nasa scientists baffled by unexplained strange shapes found in the Arctic

'I have never seen anything like that before'

Andrew Griffin
Tuesday 24 April 2018 09:06 BST
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Nasa scientists have been baffled by strange circle shapes appearing in the Arctic.

A picture, taken by a Nasa plane as it flew over the Arctic, shows ovals that have been found in the ice. Researchers say they have never seen anything of that kind before and that it is difficult to understand how it could be explained.

Scientists were not looking for the features, and the main purpose of the mission had been to look at another part of the sea ice. But they captured the strange area as they were flying over – and the unexplained features led to a great deal of confusion and speculation about how they had come about.

“We saw these sorta-circular features only for a few minutes today,” wrote Nasa scientist John Sonntag. “I don’t recall seeing this sort of thing elsewhere.”

Researchers from around the world have now been asked to try and work out how the strange shapes might have been formed.

Some speculated, for instance, that they could have been formed by mammals like seals, which need to break through the ice to be able to breathe.

“The encircling features may be due to waves of water washing out over the snow and ice when the seals surface,” said Walt Meier, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center. “Or it could be a sort of drainage feature that results from when the hole is made in the ice.”

Another suggestion is that the holes are being created by warm springs that are leaping out of the water from under the ice.

“This is in pretty shallow water generally, so there is every chance this is just ‘warm springs’ or seeps of ground water flowing from the mountains inland that make their presence known in this particular area,” said Chris Shuman, a University of Maryland at Baltimore County glaciologist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “The other possibility is that warmer water from Beaufort currents or out of the Mackenzie River is finding its way to the surface due to interacting with the bathymetry, just the way some polynyas form.”

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