The rubber duckie's been getting the short end of the stick for too long. The standby of baby baths everywhere has been set aside for foaming wall art and over-the-top submarines that dive deep below the bubbles. But it's still good enough for NASA.
Scientists studying the effects of rising temperatures on the Greenland ice caps have released ninety of the cute chubby little fellas (if you don't get the reference brush up on your Sesame Street, pronto) into the water melting from the the Jakobshavn Isbrae, the largest of the country's two hundred ice caps. Dr. Alberto Behar, lead researcher on the University of Colorado project and a robotics expert for NASA, told the Wall Street Journal the ducks were the only device cheap enough to fit the parameters of his limited funding and yet strudy enough to survive subzero temperatures, the pressure of the mile-thick ice and water current so furious they sometimes exceed the rate of water flowing over Niagra Falls.
Printed with an e-mail address and the offer of a reward (printed in three languages, just in case), the ducks are expected to one day end up thirty miles downstream giving Behar and his team a sense of how the temperatures are affecting the melting caps.
Kind of gives you a new perspective on that moldy yellow blob in the tub, doesn't it?
Image: Wall Street Journal
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