NASA Wants Its Rubber Duckies Back

By Alex in Science & Tech on Dec 26, 2008 at 2:03 pm

If you happen to run across a rubber duckie floating in the ocean, it may be worth $100! NASA has lost 90 of its yellow rubber ducks and it wants them back, badly:

The US space agency has yet to find any trace of 90 bathtub toys that were dropped through holes in Greenland’s ice three months ago in an effort to track the way the Arctic icecap is melting. Scientists threw the ducks into tubular holes known as "moulins" in the Jakobshavn glacier on Greenland’s west coast, hoping they would find their way into channels beneath the hard-packed surface, to track the flow of melt water into the ocean.

Link – via Treehugger

Tags: Greenland, nasa, rubber duck, rubber duckie

Neat stuff from the NeatoShop:

PK
Dec 26th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Discovery Channel had shown an episode a while ago on how the researchers dropped their tools down these ice holes – they are not just holes, they are gigantic hollow caves that go down hundreds of feet, complete with a raging waterfall. In order to test the speed of the waterfall to calculate the speed of melting, they had to climb to a dangerous position to put their instrument in the right place.
unohav_1
Dec 26th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Why didn’t they put GPS things in the ducks too if this was so important? If they can put them in our cell phones theyd fit in a duck, and cost less than the $100 reward. Not that I’d complain if I found one…
rika
Dec 26th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
more trash in the ocean..
*just watched wall.e*

yep, gps would have done the trick
Larfin Jackarse
Dec 26th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Whhoooaaaa…they threw their shit down a hole in the ice? Jesus wept, no wonder their budgets are horrendous. If I had thrown my toys away I would get a timeout in hospital.
Gonzo
Dec 26th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Global warming is spiraling out of control. We face flooding out of billions of people, mass famines, the extinction of thousands of species, but never fear, the best scientists in America are on job …throwing squeaky rubber bath toys into holes, hoping someone will tell them where they come out. (My god, we are all doomed.)
liphttam1
Dec 26th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Realy? Why no gps? Would it brake? And why ducks? are they easy to spot? Why’d Nasa do this!! I AM SO CONFUSED.
Johnny Cat
Dec 26th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
This would have made more sense if they’d dumped all the unsold Atari 2600 ET game cartridges down there. Instead of some landfill in New Mexico.
Kitten
Dec 26th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
nasa couldn’t keep track of them? O_o… duh…
renderanything
Dec 27th, 2008 at 12:22 am
What’s to stop people from trying to turn in their own $2 rubber duckies after running them through the washing machine a few times then claiming the stamp and marker wore off?
DOJ
Dec 27th, 2008 at 6:03 am
I’m no expert, but I expect that GPS may not work after the ducks are tossed underground.
keeter
Dec 27th, 2008 at 8:55 am
Has anyone bothered to consider that the ducks are still inside the glacier? Studies are showing that, while the outer edges of the glacier are melting, the interior of the glacier is actually gaining mass. So the glacier is… what? receding… like at the end of an ice age.. like part of the natural cycle of Earth’s cooling and warming. Just sayin’.
sigh
Dec 27th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Maybe the ducks never made it out of the ice because global warming is a sham.
k-ris
Dec 27th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
I’ll pay $150 per NASA duck.
Rocky Rook
Dec 27th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
My kids are playing with a couple that we found while we were up there on a visit. I had no idea they belonged to NASA. I just thought they were polar bear toys.

Keep track of the comments with

Comment RSS

Lijit Search

The latest from NeatoBambino: