SYSK Selects: How Icebergs Work

Icebergs: floating chunks of ice. True, but whoa there. Scientists are learning that there's a lot more to icebergs. Appropriately enough, we've only come to understand the tip of the iceberg and recent research shows there's plenty more to uncover.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone, it's me Josh and for this week's s
Y s K Selects. It's how Icebergs work. It's a good,
straight ahead stuff you should know based on a grab
store article, so you know it's quality that anyway, kickback, enjoy.
Maybe you put on a sweater, a little scarf. Here'
still some hot coco. Maybe a little those those marshmallows.

(00:22):
Maybe treat yourself and get the colored marshmallows that are
like in the shapes of stars and moons and stuff
that might actually just be lucky charms I'm thinking of
at any rate, and enjoy this episode. Welcome to Stuff
you Should Know, a production of Five Heart Radios How
Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.

(00:51):
There's Charles W Chuck Bryant and that makes this stuff
you should know. How's it killing everybody? It's a joy stage? Josh,
Oh yeah, how so? Oh? I don't know. It's just
it's been a joys day. Don't you think I'm very glad?
Do you think it's been a joyous day? What do
you think? You haven't had a computer so you don't care.
I know my laptop has been apparently too full of
data to operate whatever that means. Yeah, he's stuffed it

(01:15):
up with two gigs of shady stuff. It's right. Yeah,
it's called research, I guess. So every single bit of
that it was hard facts, buddy. Yeah. And songs. Yeah
those videos is there? Well, there you go. Videos tend
to stop stuff up by especially high res ones. Yeah,

(01:36):
that's probably what it was. I would imagine. So on
your work computer? No less, Well what am I going
to do? Carry on two computers? Why where are we
talking about this? No? I don't know you started it.
Let's hear the intro. Chuck. Yes, I'm quite sure that. Um,
you'll think I'm kind of stupid for mentioning probably the
most famous ship ever to be sunk by an iceberg,

(01:58):
but humor me. Of course. We all know the wreck
of the William Carson, which in seven went down off
the coast of Labrador. Uh. It had a number of
cars on board, but more importantly a hundred and nine souls, right,
which is what they call you when you're ap to see. Yeah,

(02:19):
like a hundred nine souls lost. I never really have
heard that or paid attention. Really, I thought they would
say lives lost. They say souls they say souls a lot.
Are they used to old time? You wise, before Kennedy
in the separation of church and state. I guess right, yeah,
I guess now they call them lives before they were souls.
All souls lost. That's sad. Yeah, it makes it even sadder.

(02:41):
It's like the Saints crying right under certain circumstances. Um.
But the luckily a hundred and nine souls were not lost.
Zero souls were lost on the William Carson. As everybody knows.
The cars went down though, which is a tragedy for
the insurance companies covering those cars. But as I said,
like every school child knows the story of the William Carson.

(03:03):
Did you know that there were other ships that have
hit icebergs? I was not aware of any. It's true.
The Lady of the Lake Okay, yeah, I didn't know
about that. One went down in the Grand Banks. Didn't
make a movie about that. Uh no, no, you're thinking
of ex caliber um. The Lady of the Lake went
down on the Grand Banks on its way to Quebec
with seventy people on board. Seventy souls. Seventy souls, um.

(03:28):
The s s hush should toft hushed. Toft ok yeah,
um off the coast of Greenland in ninety nine on
her maiden voyage. Can you believe this? That makes it
so much worse than it's a maiden voyage? People dead
all because of icebergs. I mean there's been other ships
that have hit icebergs, but um, all because a chunk

(03:49):
of floating ice took out an entire ship. Souls and
souls and souls were lost. Yeah. You know, we have
a young fan named Shelley Stein right now that it
is about to throw her iPod through and there is
that the person who always wants to hear about that,
um that other ships thinking, Yeah, she's been begging for
like two years leading out of the anniversary, that's right. Um. Anyway,

(04:11):
what's crazy is that all of these ships were lost.
As a matter of fact, between eighteen eighty two and
eighteen nine, fourteen passenger liners went down in a place
called Iceberg Galley. But it was only the last twenty
five years that we started tracking icebergs. What's even more amazing, though,
is that we have learned a tremendous amount in those

(04:32):
twenty five years, and we're still learning and we will
dispense with the learning forth with. That's right, this was interesting.
Was this a grapstor? Yeah? Boy, he puts together a
nice article, didn't he. He He does. He knows what he's doing.
He's a professional. I never feel uh, I never feel
bad about about his You feel bad about some of them, Yeah,
like the ones I write, Like the ones you right,

(04:56):
they're very adventurous. They were for the Adventure Channel right
at one point, So chuck um. I think people they're
sitting there sitting at home thinking right now, like they're
talking about icebergs and it's just a chunk of floating ice.
And you're absolutely right, it is just a chunk of
floating ice, not just a chunk. There's so much more
to us um for example, iceberg saltwater? Nope, fresh water yep?

(05:22):
Why well, uh, I learned virtually everything I've ever known
about icebergs within the past. By the way, uh, it
is ice um, but it is not sea ice or
pack ice. Like when you see dead least catch in
their motoring through that that sea ice. Those those aren't
little chunks of iceberg. That's saltwater, right, that's frozen seawater.

(05:45):
Frozen seawater and iceberg was um is a piece of
a glacier that has busted off or calved, calved, calved
like having a calf, like giving birth to a cat.
It's calfing, calving, calving, having Yeah, man, I had it
until you threw me off. Well saying cal I thought

(06:05):
it would be calving, calving, caving away from a glacier.
How many times we just said calving and a glacier. Uh.
Let's talk about glaciers for a second. Glaciers are packed
snow basically, well yeah, but I mean they're a little
more interesting than that. Well, yeah, that's the that's the
base route though right in certain latitudes, Um, it never

(06:27):
gets warm enough for snow to fully melt all the
way in the summertime. So what you have is an
accumulation of that snow that builds up over and over
and over again over the centuries, over the eons, as
old as ten thousand years old. Sometimes yeah, uh, and
that's a glacier. But glaciers are also additionally interesting in that, um,

(06:47):
they become so heavy that they over this freezing thaw
cycle and um, the accumulation of layers that they all
of the air bubbles are pressed out of them. So
glaciers are blue, the color of frozen water with no
air in um. And they also move under the force

(07:08):
of their own weight. They moved downward, downhill towards sea level,
because sea levels as downhill as it gets right until
you hit the sea, that's right. And um. So because
of this, they are this ultra dense form of ice. Yeah.
So it slips down, floats out into the sea. Tidal

(07:28):
motions eventually will cause little cracks and fissures and then
a piece of the glacier will break off and boom,
there's ice. That's an iceberg. It's a freshwater piece of
a glacier. Freshwater glacier chunks, right, and it's freshwater because
it's made of snow, not seawater. Um. And when you
said that it floats out into the sea. That's called

(07:49):
an ice shelf. Um. And up north and northern latitudes, um.
The biggest ice shelves are found on the western coast
of Greenland Lizard arc or northern icebergs that are formed
up there off of those glaciers down south in Antarctica
where there are penguins. But it's not the only place
there's penguins. I want to make sure everybody knows, I know,

(08:10):
and no polar bears. No, only a fool would say that. Yes, Um,
the the pretty much the continent of Antarctica is ringed
with ice shelves and there's a lot of open sea,
so the icebergs can get really big. Yeah, they can
keep extending extending, extending, But then like you said, yeah,
they break off and then you have an iceberg. Do
you wanna talk about ice? Yeah? This is fascinating. Like

(08:33):
I went over this again and again and again until
I finally got it, and I feel like I got it.
Oh it's so easy though I was making a lot
oft of it. Yeah. Uh, ice, as we all know,
is the solid phase of water. You have you know,
liquid solid gas, iis the solid phase thirty two degrees
fahrenheit for fresh water or zero celsius. Salt water is

(08:55):
gonna need to be a little bit colder because, um,
there are basically salt molecules getting in the way of
the ice forming. Well, they they they move faster I
believe than water molecules. It takes a lower temperature to
slow them down. And also it's a greater density if
you're talking saltwater, right, which is important, very important. But

(09:17):
ice also is the is peculiar, meaning unique, and that
it's the only solid phase of any substance. I believe
that is less dense than the liquid phase. So ice
is less dense the water, and then seawater is denser
than fresh water. So well, And it's easy to remember

(09:40):
that ice is less dense because when you put a
little ice cube in your little chardonnay this summer, if
you're a redneck, it'll float. Yeah, because there's little uh,
ice forms in a crystalline shape, So those that leaves
area for gaps, I guess, And so what is the
air in there? Uh? Yeah, I'm sure there's just less dense.

(10:01):
It's just the it's just it's less dense. Basically, if
you take water and freeze it, you can think of
it as spreading out, so it gets bigger, has it
has a larger volume, but it'll weigh the same as
that lesser amount of water. Right, And when you put something,
say ice, in water, it's buoyant, and that the amount

(10:22):
of water displaces has to equal the weight of the
ice that's displacing it. But since there's more ice than
an equal weight of water, there's some leftover that floats
and that is what we call the tip of the iceberg.
And when do you get confused, Yes, the tip of
the iceberg, that is the part that sticks out, and

(10:43):
it's about, depending on the iceberg, about one six to
one ninth. And I'm sure everyone's seen those awesome pictures
on the interwebs of you know, the top of the
water and under the water of the iceberg. It's pretty cool, right,
you've seen those. I have. It's very nice. And the
reason there's vary variation between how much iceberg is showing

(11:04):
it is because of the variation in the concentration of
salt in seawater, any particular part of seawater. And and um. Also, uh,
some icebergs are denser than others, as Morrissey said, just
like people. Yeah, exactly. Uh. That you mentioned earlier that
glacial ice is blue. Um. That is true. Um during

(11:24):
different melting and freezing cycles, though, they will turn white
because the air gets trapped in there. Um. And then
sometimes these really old icebergs that have formed at the
bottom of these thick Antarctic ice shelves like that have
been around for thousands of years might actually have a
greenish hue because it's just you know, soaked up organic

(11:46):
matter under there over the years, right and then so
which is kind of a dirty yellow brown. But icebergs
have the tendency to roll over without warning, which is
one reason why you wouldn't want to camp on an iceberg.
You know, they're dangerous to be around. They are. And
actually there was one that floated down to New Zealand
and some helicopter charters were like selling flights to go

(12:10):
check them out. One of them landed on the iceberg
and they realized pretty quickly they shouldn't do that anymore. Um.
But did they like getting short? Did it? No? They
made it out okay. But when they got back and
told people, I'm sure some scientists like, wait, what did
you just do? Right? Don't ever do that again? Tc um.
But the iceberg will roll over. And so you've got

(12:30):
the green part up that's with the light reflecting up
through the blue part. Then you get this brilliant emerald
green and that's some old ice right there, Bubby, Bobby, Yes, Bobby,
I've never said that before. The life cycle of an

(13:05):
iceberg is pretty interesting too. We mentioned they can be
as old as ten thousand years before they ever reached
the ocean, and um, this is like centuries of compression.
So that's why it's so so dense, that's why it's blue.
And then once it calves off though and and from
the glacier, you've got about three to six years on

(13:27):
average if it's like say, it's up in the Iceberg
galley and never strays below Parallel, which is apparently where
the water starts to get a lot warmer. Four Parallel
goes for Americans through like the tip of Minnesota and
the upper Peninsula of Michigan. People below that are like,
it's still pretty cold, yeah, I imagine. Um. So ones

(13:49):
that stay up there and never come back down can
float around for like fifty years and just kind of
melt away slowly and quietly. Right. Ones that make it
further south, like one made it to Bermuda once, which
I'm sure was quite a surprise. Um, those go away
fairly quickly. Uh yeah, And I enjoyed this. Um. One
account of this expedition, Um, what's the guy's name? Dr

(14:09):
Gregory Stone witnessed and wrote about in his book Ice Island, um,
which I believe the largest ones are called ice Island sometimes.
Yeah right, Um. His quote is in this iceberg basically
became destabilized, and it sounds like it exploded, yes, like
right in front of his face. Yeah. Well he said

(14:30):
that there was an ice debris field across two miles. Yeah,
and he said it was like shards of crystal shattering. Right.
But if you think about it, that's what happens when
you put in ice cuban water. Yeah. You hear that noise, right,
It's called thermal shock. Yeah, it's pretty cool. And it's
also because ice is less dense than water. As it's liquefying,
it shrinks because think about it's contracting and it's pulling

(14:53):
apart the outer warmer layer from the inner colder layer,
and this cracks form in the ice cube essentially explodes.
It sounds like that's the same thing that happened. Yes,
So when you pour that that twelve year old Scotch
on top of your single cube of ice, if you're
into that, I don't know if you should be doing that.
But okay, I'm not a neat guy. I like my
I like it a little cold, and and I'm not

(15:14):
so hardcore with the single malt, so two remove that
bite just a bit is good for me. You don't,
so you don't like take it neat through your nose
and as that the way to do it. Yeah, the
way you drink it with ice through your mouth. Yeah,
I know, Scotch pure scoff at me, but scoff away
or whatever. Just do what you like exactly. Um No,

(15:37):
it's very supportive. I meant you as like people in general. Okay,
so that wasn't supportive. Um let's talk about some factoids,
and this this is to me. The fact of the
show is that there are actually six official classifications for
their size, and the first two it sounds like they
were having a lot to drink when they were had

(15:58):
the naming party and sobered up, sobered up a bit,
because the smallest one's about the size of a car,
maybe a little smaller called growlers. And then the next one,
maybe about the size of your house, is called a
burgie bit. I put the emphasoe on a bit like
a burgie bit, a burgie bit. Either way, it's pretty cute.
It is very cute. And then they got I guess

(16:19):
sobered up or got bored or ran out of whiskey,
and then they said, all right, then the next ones
are small, medium, large, and very large, which just really
boring compared to Burgie bit it is, but the very
large ones are kind of interesting in that they just
keep going and going. The largest one ever record is
the B fifteen iceberg. Yeah, broke off of the Ross

(16:40):
ice shelf down in Antarctica. Apparently it was about the
size of Jamaica. Yeah. I think it's it's broken apart
into smaller piece of scents, but I think the original
um area was about sixty square miles. That's that's a
big chunk of ice. Yeah. And in order to be
I mean that's the per limit, Like it can just

(17:01):
be as big as they're gonna get. There's no like
cap or anything like that. To call it super extra large. Um.
But very large you have to be about twenty four
stories tall and a little longer than two football field
six seventy if to be classified is very large. Yeah,
that's that's big man. If you think about that, Yeah,

(17:22):
it's huge. Um. I'm sorry, it's very large or it's
huge huge. Um. The other two classifications that icebergs can
fall in are equally boring as the last four size names.
They really could have done better than this if you
ask me. But they're the two shape classifications are tabular
and non tabular. And tabular is basically just like a well,

(17:43):
it looks like a table, like a or a tab tablet,
writing tablet that's back, and it's like tall with steep
sides and the flat tops like a floating plateau. UM
and those tend to come off of the ice sheets
down in the act Antarctic, I believe. Yeah, those are UM.
I think they have to have a width five times
greater than their height to be tabular, and then non

(18:05):
tabular have I think five different classifications. You got blocky,
flat top steep signs. They sound like Dick Tracy characters.
They do wedged um flat with a steep surface on
one side and a gradual slope on another. So it's
like the high right haircut. Yeah, the gumby the gumby

(18:26):
the dome which is round and smooth pinnacle, which means
it has at least one big tall spiral sticking up,
and then the ones that um deteriorate to where they
form a big canyon and it looks like two different icebergs,
but it's really connected. Underneath those are dry docks, so
that means they have two tips sticking out, but they're

(18:47):
connected underwater. It's like mind blowing. It's pretty it was.
It's pretty neat at the very least. So, Um, we've
got northern icebergs, southern icebergs, um, and there's plenty of
icebergs like elsewhere, but for the most part, in northern icebergs,
like we said, form off the western coast of Greenland

(19:10):
because Greenland apparently I read this that Greenland and Antarctica
are the only place where, um, there's ice sheets, glacial
glacial true glacial sheets, glacial sheets. Boy, that's a tough one,
that was. It surprised me too. I wasn't expecting that. Um.
And in Greenland there's about twenty glaciers that cav the

(19:31):
majority of the icebergs. Yeah, that was I thought pretty cool.
I thought it was cool too. Um, roughly forty thousand
medium too large uh calv from Greenland glaciers each year,
is that right? And they are about ten percent as
strong as concrete, which I thought sounded not super strong,

(19:51):
but apparently that's like way harder than like your freezer ice.
Oh yeah, like this ice is different than the ice
you put in your Scotch, right, which is why when
icebergs run into one another, it tends to break it
up into smaller icebergs. They're very much subject to um
wave motion, uh storms, other icebergs land when they run

(20:14):
into things, like they break up, and it's one of
the things that has a big deletrious effect on their lifespan.
But it's part of the it's part of the iceberg
life cycle. We're still going with deletrius. Okay, good, um.
They are pretty slow, but um, to give you an idea,
like a fast moving iceberg goes about two point two

(20:34):
miles per hour and that's holland, Oh, I'm glad you
bring this up because that raises a very important point.
Because we see the tip of the iceberg, and because
we're so um anthropocentric um, we assume that when drives icebergs,
you would be dead wrong. And assuming that since most
of the iceberg is underwater, it's currents that drive icebergs

(20:56):
makes sense. Yeah, um. And so that's how icebergs can
be trapped, like in the Antarctic, because they're trapped in
that current or up north in the Labrador current, they
kind of stay trapped up there. Um. But it also
makes them subject to wave motion currents from other far,
far off storms, and I guess getting hung up on

(21:17):
things underwater. Yes as well. It's another good point is um,
they apparently strike the bottom of land a lot. Yeah,
and they can like wreck the sea floor, can't they.
But if you think about it, like there's plenty of
parts of North America where glacial movement carved geological features
out of the land, the icebergs do the same thing.

(21:39):
When they're dragged along by the current. And say, once
a thousand feet tall underwater and it hits a patch
of sea that's less than a thousand feet it's gonna
strike New York City and fast. Go to Central Park
and look at the rocks there. Oh yeah, yeah, they
got all those little grooves cut out. That's ice. That's

(22:00):
ice ice baby. Um No, that was not nice. Uh.
The ecology this was sort of surprising to me because
I just figured they're just floating along. Maybe they melt
a little bit, what's the big whoop? But I didn't
really consider the fact that it's melting this glacial fresh water,
a lot of it at times, depending on the size

(22:21):
of the iceberg, all around in the sea water. And
that's got to have some sort of ecological effect. Yeah,
and I couldn't find anything anywhere that said, like, there's
a lot of life that's adapted to living in fresh
water even though it's home is sea water, and they
live around icebergs. I couldn't find anything like that. But
apparently it has little effect on these animals because icebergs
are basically like floating time released nutrient capsules. Yeah, it's

(22:45):
like teeming with life around it, so they must love it,
these little krill and plankton. It's like a lot of
small stuff generally. Well, what there's there's a there's a
definite um. What's that chain called food chain? Yeah, that
iceberg support um. They bring a lot of iron rich
nutrients from the land as a gift to the sea,

(23:06):
and as they melt, they slowly release this stuff. This
supports um algae. Right, there's a lot of algae that
that grows on their krill. These little tiny shrimp like
things eat the algae um, and then all these other
animals eat the krill, and then the birds prey on
the other fish that are eating the krill. So this
whole food chain develops around this iceberg. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

(23:28):
But even even something that I think they've only recently
begun to figure out is that icebergs are there is
a sign of climate change. Like everybody's worried about all
the icebergs melting in the sea levels rising, and for
good reason. But they're also figuring out that they also
aid in carbon sequestration in the ocean. That makes sense.
So this algae and all this stuff is they're eating

(23:51):
this iron. There's a transfer of carbon from the land
to these Uh that this life that eventually will die
fall down into the bottom of the sea and keep
the carbon trapped with it. So algae that wouldn't be there, um,
is soaking up carbon and then being eaten and passed
along in this undersea food chain. And they found that, um,

(24:12):
the carbon absorption around in iceberg is twice what it
is elsewhere because this algae wouldn't be there if it
weren't for the iceberg. So there it's soaking up the
CEO too. That's crazy. They also take it away what

(24:46):
icebergs giveth uh and not just boats and chips like
the Titanic. There I said it okay, Um, they can actually,
like I said, they can clog up shipping lanes. They
can in the case of B fifteen, I think it
actually um had a pretty uh deleterious effect on Emperor Penguins. Yeah,

(25:09):
in March of the March of the Penguins and they
so you know what happens in that sad movie. I
guess what. They have to walk around it. Yeah, and
there's a they really have a tight schedule. When they
hit an iceberg that's you know, taller than the penguins
don't fly, remember, and it is really wide. They have
to go around it. But they should learn to fly. Yeah,

(25:30):
I would just solve a lot of problems. Um. So yeah,
it can have negative effects on the little penguins a
cute little penguins, and um it can rake the c
floor and just destroy it basically over the course of
many years. No good, no another cool thing. And this

(25:51):
I don't know. I couldn't find if they're actually moving
on this, but the United States Military um called up
the Rand Corporation said, hey, yeah, boy, these things are
huge chunks of awesome drinking water, totally safe to drink
because it's from the water. Boy. Yeah, really I never

(26:11):
saw that all the way through um it uh. They
they called the Rain Corporation said Hey, can we study
these things? And how viable is it too? I know
it sounds crazy, but how viable is it to get
one of these icebergs over here and provide fresh drinking
water for people who need it? And it sounds like
it's not the most ridiculous idea in the world. Um.

(26:34):
Their study said that a system allowing a ten percent
yield could provide water for five hundred million people at
a cost of eight dollars per one tho cubic meters,
which is not too bad. I mean, it's way more
expensive than it should be, I think, than than we
pay for water now. But our water is artificially cheap. Yeah,

(26:54):
so as water becomes more expensive, if there's any icebergs left,
we may want to go do that. And they say,
I guess they just nudge it through the water closer
and closer. Um. And this is where it gets a
little hinky. It says in the article using massive insulating
sheets to slow the melting. I don't know what that
looks like, but oh it looks like, um my lar,
like you used to reflect the sun on your car.

(27:16):
That's what they would use. It's all it'll take, you know,
like those um, sun blankets or whatever, just something to
reflect the sun sunlight radiation. Well, it's also moving into
warmer water that's not gonna melt it from below, or
it'll melt it from below for sure, you know. But
I mean you protect what you can. I guess, I
guess if you're harvesting icebergs, you're right, they're not the

(27:38):
They're not the only ones looking at this. Um. I
ran across an M I T proposal of building a
pipeline from Alaska, where there's plenty of glaciers that in
the western US makes sense, but the author concluded it's
like four and eighty seven billion dollars to build the
pipeline keep it going, and that just wouldn't be worth it.
Uh in canals to another Other groups study that and

(28:01):
suggested a canal well and in the United States have
exactly hurting for water. It would be nice that they
did some of these studies and like pushed it to
where they don't have fresh water right now at all.
You know. Yeah, it's been a little money for them,
like life straws O great, Um well, I guess we
already went over. Well, Iceberg Galley is actually a little
more interesting. They started studying it. They formed the International

(28:23):
Ice Patrol. Uh way later than they should have, I guess,
but they probably didn't have the equipment they needed back
in the day to do what they do now. Um,
the Coastguard US Coastguard administers it and they worn ships.
They kind of run it through their little program and say,
we think this is where it's headed. This is how
big it is. Uh, if you're in this area, you

(28:44):
might want to watch out for this, for this guy
floating your way. Well, they basically say, like there's ice
up here, don't go above this these coordinates. It's called
the Limit of All Known ice. Wow. And they the
Coast Guard also does some other stuff for the I
should say the Ice Patrol. Um. They do other things like, um,

(29:05):
bomb icebergs. Did you find out more about that? No?
I looked it up on YouTube because I was like,
surely somebody's video everybody dropping obamba an iceberg. I couldn't
find anything. Plenty of calving stuff. Um. And they also
spray paint them with very bright paint, which it seems
wrong to me, just so you can see him. Yeah. Yeah,
that's like tagging, uh, like a new car or something. Yeah. Um,

(29:29):
a beautiful new car made by nature. That wasn't good
analogy or putting like um radio transmitters on them. It
just makes sense. But then when they start to break up,
it's like, well, there's a little chunk that has the
radio transmitter three ft big. Yeah, uh so I got
nothing else. I don't either, I've got something else, all right?

(29:51):
What you got? So it became um, I became interested
in the idea of this article mentions a nautical mile. Sure,
we like, why why is there a nautical mile in
a mile? And I found out why. So a nautical
mile is um one point one five o eight miles,

(30:11):
and the reason why is because a nautical mile, when
going around the equator, takes into account the curvature of
the Earth. A regular mile UM or called a statute
mile is what it's called, goes from one point on
the map to another through a straight line, which means

(30:31):
that it's not taking into account the curvature of the earth,
which means that the nautical mile more accurate, is more
accurate and thus a little longer than the regular mile
interesting from minute to minute along a degree, So a
mile is really not a mile. So if you're saying
on land. No, it's not because it's a it's it's
it's like if you take the earth cut in half

(30:52):
of the equator and turn it over. You've got the
two halves and you're looking in the molten center, UM,
and you divide it into three in sixty degrees, divide
those degrees in two minutes, and the measure a minute
to a minute. If you do a straight line, it's
not as accurate. If you do the curve line, it
will be accurate. And a kilometer is just way out there.
In seventeen, the French Academy of Sciences said, okay, we're

(31:18):
going to designate a kilometers the amount the length the
distance from the North Pole to the equator through Paris,
divided by ten thousand. Pretty clever. So there you have it, UM,
nautical miles. I love it, Thanks man, I really uh
went all out on this one, you asked me. I

(31:39):
think so too. Kudos, sir um. If you want to
learn more about icebergs, you can type in that word
I ce E b r g s in the search
bars how stuff works dot com. I'll bring up this
fine fine article by A Grabanowski. Um, And I said,
search bar, how stuff works which means it's time for
listener mail. Josh, I'm gonna call this one, um. Good

(32:04):
email from a Chicago, Chicago guy. That's a terrible Just yesterday, guys,
I was finished reading a book Robin Dunbar wrote called Grooming,
Gossip and the Evolution of Language. Her argument is that
language evolved out of a need to keep up social
relationships with group members put in its most basic form.

(32:26):
Over time, our brains evolved to be larger, which made
our average group size increase. At the same time, Once
our group size became large enough, today our average group
size is about one. We didn't have enough time in
the day to groom one on one with that many
group members to keep up our social bonds with them,

(32:46):
So we evolved language so we could use language as
a way to verbally groom with more members at a
time to keep the group strong. That's interesting. It was
my understanding that our brains have actually decreased in size,
so we last like twenty years really because of group
group size, because it's increased and we have to rely
less on our like instincts and run from thunder and

(33:08):
stuff like that. I smell a cage match. Um. Another
interesting experiment I read about is this to Scientists were
studying vervet monkeys in their natural habitat. They started recording
the sounds of the vervets um and make notes about
what they were doing when they made the noise. After
examining a large sample of noises, they found a correlation

(33:29):
between the sound they made and what was happening when
they made it. I believe the noises were difficult to
distinguish by the naked human ear, but the pattern was
obvious when they compared large numbers of them together. The
vervets made a different noise for when an air predator
was spotted, when a ground predator was spotted, when approaching
a dominant male, etcetera. It's not quite language where it

(33:50):
like syntax, but it's still more advanced than I thought
they were. Um, and that's pretty much it. Hope it
wasn't too dense, but if it was, that has revenge
for the Sun podcast as a listener right there. That's right,
And that is from Matt Schunk from Chicago. Thanks Matt
SHUNKA go bearts, Yeah, seriously, go beart. Um. I guess

(34:15):
I always like to hear about new books that I
should be reading. O, sure like we have any time
for that anymore? Did you hear that that was a limit?
It was, um send us your book recommendation, suckers. You
can turn it. You can turn it into U S
Y s K podcast on Twitter. Uh, you could send

(34:35):
it to Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know.
Don't send it I guess you posted on that um.
Or you can send us an email, good old fashioned
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send it off to stuff podcast How Stuff Works dot com.
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(34:56):
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