A spectacular collision is the cause of the rupture of the Mertz glacier in Antarctica to 240 miles from the French base Dumont d'Urville. Indeed, it is probably a huge iceberg (95 kms long and 20 km wide) called B9B that would hit in mid-February the language of the Mertz Glacier.
But let's step back, this glacier is named after William Xavier Mertz, Swiss explorer who died in Antarctica while on a raid of exploration in the Aurora expedition from 1911 to 1914, under the leadership of Douglas Mawson and Lieutenant Belgrave Edward Sutton Ninni. This raid is one of the worst in the history of Antarctic exploration, after the disappearance of Ninni into a crevasse taking with him six dogs, most of the rations, tents and other essential supplies, is that Mertz died 7 January 1913. It was the first person whose cause of death was listed as "Hypervitaminosis A". Indeed, due to the disappearance of their food after the accident Ninni, Mawson and Mertz had to eat their dogs which cause poisoning vitamin A because of the livers of dogs. Since then, the maps of Antarctica, two glaciers have names now known, that of Ninni and that of Mertz.
The latter is a special cracked ice stream, about 72 kms long and 32 miles wide, ending in a tongue of ice measuring up to now about 160 kms long. It is this ice tongue (not measuring now more than 80 km long), which ruptured following the collision with the iceberg B9B, creating a new iceberg 78 miles long and from 33 to 39 kms off.
The Mertz Glacier is followed for nearly 15 years by scientists CRACICE program (Collaborative Research into Antarctic Iceberg calving and Evolution) who study the evolution of coastal glaciers of Antarctica and the mechanisms of formation of icebergs. The team followed in particular the development of transverse cracks that had almost reached when the iceberg came B9B impact the eastern flank of the ice tongue leading to the final separation. These studies use satellite images and a network of GPS beacons deployed on the glacier from the means used by the French Polar Institute (including helicopters and the ship L'Astrolabe).
The three maps below show perfectly change between 7 and 20 February 2010.