He Jackobshavn Isbrae glacier It reached a speed of 45 meters per day, as recorded in August 2004. Thus, it is the glacier that has moved at the fastest speed, as far as we know.
The speed was attributed to an influx of warm seawater into Disko Bay, on the west coast of Goenland.
Titanic and the iceberg the size of Belgium
Since then, the glacier has slowed considerably, especially after a very cold period in 2013.
The curious thing is that it is very likely that the Titanic sank when it collided with an iceberg that broke off from this glacier that holds the speed record. It's not strange something like that: The Jakobshavn Glacier drains 6.5% of the Greenland ice sheet and produces about 10% of all Greenland icebergs. Approximately 35 billion tons of icebergs break off from the fjord each year.
Still, it was not the largest iceberg ever documented that stood in the path of the largest ship. That title is held by another: on November 12, 1956, the crew of the USS Glacier sighted a tabular iceberg with an estimated area of more than 31,000 square kilometers, that is, more than the surface of Belgium.
The iceberg measured 335 kilometers long and 97 kilometers wide. They spotted it west of Scott Island, in the Antarctic Ocean.
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The news
It is likely that the Titanic sank after colliding with an iceberg that broke off from the fastest glacier: 45 meters per day
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.