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Frost Heaving
Frost heaving, a poorly understood process by which ice columns grow upward against the force of gravity, can be studied in the lab. The sequence of photos, taken at two-hour intervals, shows the rise of such a column under controlled conditions. The base of the last structure is about 3 cm in diameter.
A large-scale example of frost heaving. These two heaving mountains (Split Pingo foreground, Ibyuk Pingo background, both roughly 50 m high) are located in the delta of the Mackenzie River in the Canadian Arctic.
This research was described in the September 1997 issue of Physical Review E.
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