NASA Use Baby Toy To Save The Planet

Gyroscopes that propel astronauts in face crushing spins, Saturn Five rockets that defy gravity to escape the ground, spacesuits that can keep a man alive in the dangerous empty atmosphere of space; these are the kinds of scientific innovations that we associate with NASA.

Now they bring us another earth shattering scientific marvel, the rubber duck.

NASA scientists are making use of the bath time toy in a serious and highly scientific experiment, as part of its fight to help save the planet from global warming.

They have placed 90 rubber duckies into small holes inside Greenland’s Jakobshavn glacier.

The experiment is intended to try to discover just why glaciers move faster in the summer than they do in the winter.

All the innocent looking toys have a label printed into them that points out that the ducks are in fact part of a “science experiment” and that if found there is a “reward” available to anybody who contacts NASA by email.

The labels are printed in three languages, so that hopefully anyone finding a bath time buddy will be able to help NASA track just how melting water moves through ice, and presumably it will also indicate the ultimate direction of the melted water.

NASA are not just relying on the ever faithful ducks, they have also planted probes with GPS transmitters into the ice to track movements within the ice flow.

These two will also ultimately end up in the sea.

So far, not a single duck or probe has been found by the public, but the scientists estimate that they are still way out at sea so would only be found by passing fishermen.

The Jakobshavn Glacier has a claim to fame, in that it is almost certainly the source of the iceberg that broke off in 1912 and ultimately sank the Titanic.