© The Daily Galaxy
On July 17, 2016, a huge stream of ice and rock tumbled down a narrow valley in the Aru Range of Tibet. When the ice stopped moving, it had spread a pile of debris that was up to 30 meters (98 feet) thick across 10 square kilometers (4 square miles).
The massive debris field makes this one of the largest ice avalanches ever recorded. The only event of a comparable size was a 2002 avalanche from Kolka Glacier in in the Caucasus , explained Andreas Kääb, a glaciologist at the University of Oslo. A multispectral imager on the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 satellite captured an image of the debris field on July 21, 2016. The Operational Land Imager, a similar instrument on Landsat 8, acquired an image on June 24, 2016, that shows the same area before the avalanche.
The cause of the avalanche is unclear. "This is new territory scientifically," said Kääb.
"It is unknown why an entire glacier tongue would shear off like this. We would not have thought this was even possible before Kolka happened." Nine people, 350 sheep, and 110 yaks in the remote village of Dungru were killed during the avalanche.
Kääb's preliminary analysis of satellite imagery indicates that the glacier showed signs of change weeks before the avalanche happened. Normally, such signs would be clues the glacier might be in the process of surging, but surging glaciers typically flow at a fairly slow rate rather than collapsing violently in an avalanche.
After inspecting the satellite imagery, University of Arizona glaciologist Jeffrey Kargel agreed that
a surging glacier could not be the cause. "The form is completely wrong," he said. "It must be a high-energy mass flow. Maybe liquid water lubrication at the base played some role," he said.
Tian Lide, a glaciologist at the
Chinese Academy of Sciences,
visited the site in August and described the avalanche as "baffling" because the area where the ice collapse began is rather flat. "We failed to reach the upper part of the glacier for safety reasons," he said in an email, "but we will go the upper part [later] to see if we can find some more hints about what caused the glacier disaster."
Comment: What they're saying is that this mass of ice and snow shouldn't have moved the way it did without some additional energy input, ie something should have pushed or otherwise forced the avalanche along.
We can't suggest anything that might have done this, but we can suggest similarities with bizarre 'landslides' in recent years where land apparently 'slides' along flat surfaces - or, at least, insufficiently steep gradients. Here's something from Russia last year:
9 people, 350 sheep&110 yaks killed
Sadder to me than latest P.C. [and/or anti-P.C.] killing of x human at where the f*** ever.
I value human life, but would trade mine to know that it would keep one blue whale alive. (Clearly, there are too many of us no surprise there, though my thereby threatened soul would surely first proclaim to that power - if such exists/were even possible - that the world would be better if God Struck Down that 6 - 12 % of genuine psychopaths; to wit: the PTB, 'our' sinning 'leaders,' and their authoritarian followers with sundry malevolents) akin to the fate of sinning Antiochus in 'Pericles' by Shakespeare & others.
Think how many critters would be un-endangered if traded, head for head with 'our' 'psychopaths'; to wit: that if that God-chosen 6 - 12%* were magically culled. I bet there'd be a lot fewer surprises than we imagine, (I'm not saying nor claiming that mankind nor government would or should so decide - so spare me the Hitllary crap.)
R.C.
* A/k/a, that approximate 450 - 900 million people- not necessarily 'souls', though. (assuming Earth Population at 7.5 Billion)
RC