YouPink granite boulders perched high atop looming volcanic mountains in West Antarctica may have revealed their secrets after decades of baffling scientists. Taking precise measurements of gravity using aircraft-mounted instruments, a team of researchers led by British Antarctic Survey researchers suggested that the boulders were just crumbs of a huge granite slab buried under the massive Pine Island Glacier.
The slow-flowing glacier, scientists say, has been grinding down a deep granite layer more than 60 miles wide and nearly 4.5 miles thick for millennia. During this journey, the glacier scraped boulders and deposited them high in the Hudson Mountains, most likely when the ice sheet was much thicker than it is now. The researchers dated the boulders by measuring the radioactive decay of the elements trapped inside and found that the rocks formed about 175 million years ago, 75 million years earlier than most of the surrounding rocks. The researchers published their conclusions V Connection Earth and environment This week.
“It is remarkable that the pink granite boulders discovered at the surface led us to a giant hidden beneath the ice,” said Tom Jordan, BAS geophysicist and lead author of the paper. statement. “By combining geological dating with gravity studies, we not only solved the mystery of the origin of these rocks, but also discovered new information about how the ice sheet flowed in the past and how it might change in the future.”
This future is very important. A region of West Antarctica where some of the fastest loss of ice on the frozen continent over the past few decades as climate change has accelerated. AND knowing what lies underneath Such dynamic ice fields could help predict the fate of such objects and how their disappearance could trigger environmental changes around the world.
“We were able to piece together how [the pink boulders] got to where they are today, giving us clues about how the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may change in the future,” said Joan Johnson, BAS geologist and co-author of the paper.[This is] information that is vital to determining the impacts of sea level rise on coastal communities around the world.”
Who would have thought that strange pink boulders in such an unusual place kept such big secrets?
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Main image: Joe Johnson, BAS
