NASA scientists are working to clear up a mystery within the Arctic ice.
Operation Ice Bridge is a project that sends flights over both polar regions to take photos and map land and sea ice. Pictures that had been taken through a flight on April 14 over the Beaufort Sea, 50 miles northwest of the Mackenzie River Delta, confirmed a collection of unusual shapes in the sea ice.
Rather than the countless open expanse of ice and snow that they’re used to seeing, the team observed what seems to be huge holes within the icy crust, together with wavy ice patterns that don’t have any real scientific explanation. They don’t understand what this phenomena is or how they formed because they’ve never viewed results like this before.
“We saw these sorta-circular features only for a few minutes today,” Stated Sonntag who works for NASA. “I don’t recall seeing this sort of thing elsewhere.”
And NO conspiracy theorist, these are not like the crop circles found on farmlands. These were found in the Arctic ice where there are no crops.
Some of the conclusions were “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.”
More tests must be conducted before reaching a definitive conclusion.