A bizarre underwater “icicle of death” has been filmed by a BBC crew.
With timelapse cameras, specialists recorded salt water being excluded from the sea ice and sinking.
The temperature of this sinking brine, which was well below 0C, caused the water to freeze in an icy sheath around it.
Where the so-called “brinicle” met the sea bed, a web of ice formed that froze everything it touched, including sea urchins and starfish.
The unusual phenomenon was filmed for the first time by cameramen Hugh Miller and Doug Anderson for the BBC One series Frozen Planet.
Creeping ice
The icy phenomenon is caused by cold, sinking brine, which is more dense than the rest of the sea water. It forms a brinicle as it contacts warmer water below the surface.
Mr Miller set up the rig of timelapse equipment to capture the growing brinicle under the ice at Little Razorback Island, near Antarctica’sRoss Archipelago.
“When we were exploring around that island we came across an area where there had been three or four [brinicles] previously and there was one actually happening,” Mr Miller told BBC Nature.
The diving specialists noted the temperature and returned to the area as soon as the same conditions were repeated.
It is more than correct on the part of BBC to have dropped anachronistic and nonsensical BC and AD.
It looks stupid to read an event in History which has taken place before formation of the Calendar, by marking as BC .
How does one refer to some one refer to something that has taken place before an event by referring to the latter event?
It is like saying A comes before B.
It takes moral courage on the part of BBC to do what is has done now.
This is more logical.
More logical would be to be to take the earliest proven event and make it as beginning of the Calendar and keep updating.
May be cumbersome, but logical.
Do not bother about religious zealots.
Let them live in the bygone era.
The BBC has been accused of ‘absurd political correctness’ after dropping the terms BC and AD in case they offend non-Christians.
The Corporation has replaced the familiar Anno Domini (the year of Our Lord) and Before Christ with the obscure terms Common Era and Before Common Era.
The BBC has been accused of ‘absurd political correctness’ after dropping the terms BC and AD in case they offend non-Christians.
The Corporation has replaced the familiar Anno Domini (the year of Our Lord) and Before Christ with the obscure terms Common Era and Before Common Era.
Some of the BBC’s most popular programmes including University Challenge, presented by Jeremy Paxman, and Radio 4’s In Our Time, hosted by Melvyn Bragg, are among the growing number of shows using the new descriptions.
BBC goes PC with BCE: The birth of Jesus will no longer be used as a reference point at the Corporation. The Before Christ time marker will be replaced with Before Common Era
God fearing: University Challenge, presented by Jeremy Paxman (pictured here with the Corpus Christi team), is among the growing number of shows using the new descriptions
The BBC’s religious and ethics department says the changes are necessary to avoid offending non-Christians. …
It states: ‘As the BBC is committed to impartiality it is appropriate that we use terms that do not offend or alienate non-Christians.
In line with modern practice, BCE/CE (Before Common Era/Common Era) are used as a religiously neutral alternative to BC/AD.’
A thin strip of land in northern Sri Lanka was the brutal theatre of war during the closing phase of Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil conflict. Thousands of civilians were hemmed in as the government battled Tamil Tiger rebels fighting for a separate homeland.
The report by a UN-appointed panel of experts focuses on alleged war crimes committed by both the Sri Lankan armed forces and Tamil Tigers during the months leading up to the defeat of the rebels in May 2009.
Numerous allegations were circulating at the time and have emerged since. During that final stage of combat very few of the accusations could be independently verified. Journalists and most aid groups were barred from the region.
Civilian deaths
In March 2009, the UN said it feared actions by both sides might amount to war crimes. The UN High Commissioner of Human Rights Navi Pillaydescribed the level of civilian deaths as “truly shocking”, and warned it could reach “catastrophic” levels.
The government was accused of repeatedly shelling safe zones set up to protect civilians. The rebels were accused of holding civilians as human shields and firing on those who tried to flee. Both denied the allegations.
The UN estimated that up to 7,000 people had died by the end of April. The latest report now says it believes tens of thousands of civilians were killed in that final stage, adding that most civilian casualties in the final phases of the war were caused by government shelling.
Conduct of war
Civilians on a Red Cross ship are disembarked in 2009 as the conflict drew to its bloody end
Sri Lanka’s government was accused of using heavy weaponry and UN images obtained by the BBC appeared to show shelling damage in a government-designated “safe zone” for civilians.
The report claims the government shelled food distribution lines and near ICRC ships coming to pick up wounded civilians from beaches.
The government denied security forces had shelled the safe zone, saying there were a number of rebel suicide blasts in that area. The UN report is also said to condemn the rebels for killing civilians through suicide attacks.
Britain and France said the rebels had been “forcefully preventing civilians from leaving” during a 48-hour ceasefire. The rebels said the truce had not been long enough to allow civilians to safely leave the conflict zone. They rejected the charge that rebels prevented civilians from leaving the war zone.
The report also alleges the forced recruitment of children by rebels.
At the time, the Sri Lankan government denied the army had caused civilian casualties but said it had pierced rebel defences.
After the conflict ended, a group of doctors who worked in Sri Lanka’s rebel-held war zone were arrested on suspicion of collaborating with rebels. They later retracted their accusations against the government.
Extra-judicial killings
After the war more allegations emerged. One video obtained by Britain’s Channel 4 news purported to show the extra-judicial killing of what were thought to be Tamil rebels. Sri Lanka’s army spokesmanangrily rejected the video as a fabrication.
In late 2010, graphic video which apparently showed more footage from the same incident was aired by Channel 4 news. The pictures, which also showed bloodstained and blindfolded bodies, was rejected by Sri Lankaas an attempt by rebel sympathisers to tarnish Sri Lanka’s image.
And one senior army commander told Channel 4 news that orders for the killings came from the top – Sri Lanka denied those allegations.
The UN said independent experts concluded the footage was authentic, but the government rejects this. The images cannot be verified.
In the midst of the fighting, the BBC talked to civilians fleeing the war about their ordeal. They said they had lived under constant gunfire, intense shelling and an acute shortage of water, food and medicine.
They also confirmed accusations that the rebels were forcibly recruiting children. The head of the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres in Sri Lankatold the BBC of shrapnel wounds to the limbs of civilians.
The BBC was part of a trip organised by the government to part of therecently captured front line, where refugees in a state of shock were listlessly standing. The army said it would work on developing the area.
The BBC has also heard numerous allegations from Tamils that their relatives are missing, among them a number of senior rebel fighters.
The government says that the military inflicted no civilian deaths during the final stages of its victory.
International human rights groups, however, say a comprehensive and independent war crimes inquiry is needed.
Sri Lanka conducted its own inquiry into war crimes but human rights groups refused to participate, saying the inquiry does not meet international standards.
Estimates say that as many as 100,000 people were killed during 26 years of war.
Therefore the reaction that BBC is anti-christian is unwarranted.
If it were so BBC need not have published the results of the Survey.
According to a survey of BBC viewers, conducted by the Corporation itself, the BBC is regarded as anti-Christian. The survey found that Christians are portrayed with ‘derogatory stereotypes’ and presented as ‘weak’ and ‘bigoted’.
Arrogantly, the BBC has dismissed the findings of its own report. A spokesman says it ‘has strict editorial guidelines on impartiality’ and that it ‘does not have anti-Christian bias‘. What breathtaking contempt for the findings of their own viewers. Why spend licence fee payers’ money conducting the survey if the findings are to be dismissed so quickly and high handedly?
On one level describing the BBC as anti-Christian might seem perverse. It still has various traditional slots for religious broadcasting. Songs of Praise has 2.5 million viewers each week – despite its afternoon scheduling.
In a recent BBC report, a Pakistani neighbor living near the supposed Osama Bin Laden compound identifies then man in video released by the Pentagon, which reportedly show Osama Bin Laden watching himself on TV, as Akhbar Khan and not Osama Bin Laden.
The man interviewed tells the BBC about the man in the video “He is my neighbor, His name is Akhbar Khan, He owns the house……I know him very well”
BBC goes 
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