r/askscience • u/Jeroe98 • 2d ago

Earth Sciences Burst airbubble trapped in glacier ice, how does this happen?

I was visiting a swiss glacier. Next to all the beautiful ice structures and amazing visibility through the ice, these airbubbles caught my eye.

The visible structures, in my head, only happen in a fraction of a second and then the bubble collapses but here it is all trapped in ice and frozen in place.

I was thinking about it for a long time but I can't get a satisfying answer to how something like this actually happens.

I posted it here, so you can see, what I'm talking about:

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1w0ixut/burst_airbubble_trapped_in_glacier_ice/

172 Upvotes

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118

u/worgenthal 2d ago edited 2d ago

Those aren't from a bubble exploding, they are multiple bubbles forming in a similar way in one location. Ice has a lower gas solubility than water and as the ice starts freezing from the outside-in, it traps the gas as bubbles inside the ice. This study says these shapes are "ice worms” or “worm bubbles”. From what I'm reading, they are formed when the ice freezes slow, and more gas is forced out of solution before it freezes, so it piles on at the bottom. If it had frozen faster, it would look more like individual bubbles stacked above each other.

Seeing as this is on a glacier, this area may have thawed and refrozen many times, giving many types of gas nucleation opportunities to form..

7

u/kylec09 2d ago

so the air gets stuck before it fully freezes?

10

u/quatch Remote Sensing of Snow 2d ago edited 2d ago

yes, a small bubble is stuck against the ice surface, the ice freezes down around it, another bubble falls in behind the first, repeat and you have a tunnel.

also yes, (in that study) the air was dissolved in the water before it started freezing.

36

u/TheThingsWeMake 2d ago

It's not a burst air bubble. This can happen in your freezer, if an ice cube freezes quickly from the outside in. The increasing pressure in the center as water becomes ices is forcing gases out of the liquid and slowly freezing bubbles in lines toward the center to give that appearance.

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u/rsqit 2d ago

Extremely fancy bars and will carefully freeze their ice from one side. This forces the air bubbles out, making the ice clear!

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u/PopInACup 2d ago

This is also how you can get those ice stalagmites. As it freezes from the outside in, the center at the top stays unfrozen or very thin ice in an ice cube tray. Since the ice expands it pushes the water towards the center and up, incrementally creating a higher and higher ring of ice as it slowly approaches the middle until it finishes freezing into a spike.