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NASAscientists flying over the Arctic earlier this month spotted strange shapes out the window , but they are n’t indisputable what caused them .
Three holes dot the ocean ice , see from the windowpane of a NASA aircraft in the photo above , taken April 14 . They ’re clustered together , each surrounded by one or two radiating stratum of ridged , textured ice , almost as if a slew of archery targets had melted and gone awry . All around them are bumpy formations that mean the ice is thin and relatively newfangled , NASA say ina command .
A strange formation appears in Arctic ice at 69.71° North and 138.22° West, about 50 miles northwest of Canada’s Mackenzie River Delta.
" We saw these sorta - round features only for a few minutes today , " deputation scientist John Sonntag wrote from the line of business , according to NASA ’s instruction . " I do n’t recall find this sort of thing elsewhere . " [ Images of Melt : See Earth ’s Vanishing Ice ]
And Sonntag is used to see ice organisation . He and his crew were flying over the Arctic as part ofNASA ’s IceBridge deputation , which aims to take over the work of studying ice from above during an eight - year period when NASA does n’t have any ICESat satellites doing the job .
The failure to recognize the establishment does n’t mean NASA does n’t have any clue . The undulate indicatesthe glass is kitschy , young and slight , agree to the NASA statement . The " finger rafting " on the correct side of the image , where two canvas of ice meet and press together like interlock fingers , point the same .
It ’s possible , NASA wrote , that somelarge mammaltook advantage of that thin deoxyephedrine to pound cakehole through it to breathe . Ring sealsandharp sealsare both known to poke muddle through the ice that look somewhat similar to this ( though neither of NASA ’s model photos includes the formations around the ice holes ) .
Another possibility , NASA wrote , is a rude process of convection , in which lovesome piss gathers at finical areas under the methamphetamine hydrochloride , causing it to melt .
As for those encircling formations ? Maybe seals crowd water up onto the surface when they stuck their faces through to breathe , and maybe that body of water freeze out in its wave - like phase , NASA said .
Or possibly there ’s something else going on that scientist just do n’t understand yet .
in the first place published onLive Science .
