Given the 5 boroughs, isn’t 6 Manhattans about 1 NYC?
For Brits who are having trouble converting these foreign units, the iceberg is about 0.032 Waleses.
The iceberg is named B-31, and is roughly 255 square miles (660 million square km).
Came here to say the same thing. Someone’s math is just a little off here.
Come on! Superman is forming the Fortress of Solitude, Finally!!
To really grok how big this thing is I’m gonna need it compared to the size of a football field. Nothing else makes sense.
My favorite measurement unit comparison tool, Wolfram Alpha, gives a few good ones: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=255+square+miles
0.6 times the size of Hong Kong!
0.3 times the area of forest flattened by the Tunguska Event!
Libertarians relatively quiet in this thread. I wonder why?
It’s still early, give them some time.
Global warming? pfft
Everybody knows that really cold stuff snaps and breaks off easier1. Obviously the breaking off of this ice shelf is evidence that temperatures must actually be colder than normal.
Edit: to add a proper reference
1crenquis et al; “Effects of freezing temps on Charleston Chews” (1975) Dobey RD News
How many Rhode Islands is that?
Those Lex Luthor types usually find a way to make a tidy profit from crumbling coastlines.
What does that mean when we say “six times the size?”
Volume is really the only measure that makes sense for an iceberg, but I have a feeling that’s actually talking about 2D slices.
I don’t know but it is 0.03 the size of Wales.
Hard to track? Drop an iphone on it?
In comparison with other huge icebergs in the last century or so, this doesn’t seem to be all that unusual (although of course it is large enough to be significant). From Wikipedia’s list of recent large icebergs:
Iceberg B-15 11,000 km2 (4,200 sq mi), 2000
Iceberg A-38, about 6,900 km2 (2,700 sq mi), 1998[6]
Iceberg B-15A, 3,100 km2 (1,200 sq mi), broke off 2003
Iceberg C-19, 5,500 km2 (2,100 sq mi), 2002
Iceberg B-9, 5,390 km2 (2,080 sq mi), 1987
Iceberg B-31, 660 km2 (255 sq mi), 2014[7]
Iceberg D-16, 310 km2 (120 sq mi), 2006
Ice sheet, 260 km2 (100 sq mi), broken off of Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland on Aug 5, 2010, considered to be the largest Arctic iceberg since 1962.[8] About a month later, this iceberg split into two pieces upon crashing into Joe Island in the Nares Strait next to Greenland.[9] In June 2011, large fragments of the Petermann Ice Islands were observed off the Labrador coast.[10]
Iceberg B-17B 140 km2 (54 sq mi), 1999, shipping alert issued December 2009.[11]
I need it in breadboxes. How many bread boxes is it?
Using the dimensions from TFA, the volume of the iceberg is approximately 1.8379295627547209143e+15 bananas*.
*assuming an average banana volume of 175 cm3
FYI: if you are interested in estimating the volume of a Cavendish banana here is a paper: A New Mathematical Modeling of Banana Fruit and Comparison with Actual Values of Dimensional Properties (PDF)
