“In March 2024, A23a’s progress across the ocean simply halted, and it began to twirl.”
A23a broke off Antarctica decades ago, grounded on the seabed, and sat there for most of a human lifetime before it started to move. It was the size of a small country and it spent its last free years drifting, stalling, and spinning in place. Then it fell apart, quietly, the way most enormous things actually end. Worth reading for the scale alone, and for the reminder that the planet keeps its own clock.