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Candy Colored Icebergs
Floating serenely in the frigid waters of the Antarctic, candy colored icebergs, shot through with color, have appeared.

Formed hundreds and even thousands of years ago, the stripes on the icebergs could be from layers of the iceberg melting and refreezing. They could also contain dust and soil that the iceberg, previously a sheet of ice sliding down the Antarctic, picked up on its journey.

"It reminds me of striped candy I bought as a child, 62 year old Oyvind Tangen told the Daily Mail. On board a research vessel 660 miles north of the Antarctic, Tangen snapped photographs of the banded icebergs, over 100 feet tall.

Icebergs in the Antarctic are formed from snow falling onto the ice sheets that cover the continent. Over time, that snow is compressed into ice, expanding the ice sheet and sliding towards the sea. Upon arrival there, the ice either breaks off into icebergs or forms an ice shelf.

Bubbles in the ice give the icebergs their distinctive color. Part of an iceberg melting and then quickly refreezing could cause a different, bluer color to form, as could a lack of bubbles.

When a crevice in the sheet fills up with meltwater and freezes, a deep blue color strata forms. Upon falling into the sea, seawater can freeze to the underside of an iceberg and form a green stripe. Brown, black and yellow stripes can be sediment.

To see previous Spotlights in our new, easier to read Spotlight archive, click here, or discuss this story on our new message boards.


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