The brinicle-forming process goes like this: When sea ice freezes in the Arctic and Antarctic, the salt and other ions in the water is excluded from the water crystals, said study author Bruno Escribano, a researcher at the Basque Center for Applied Mathematics in the Basque Country in northern Spain. This salt-heavy brine accumulates in fractures and compartments within the sea ice.
Inevitably, however, sea ice cracks, and the brine leaks out. The brine itself is colder than the freezing point of seawater, since salt-rich waterfreezes at lower temperatures (hence the reason people put salt on icy sidewalks in the winter, enabling the ice to remain a liquid when it's below freezing), Escribano told OurAmazingPlanet.
Since the concentration of water in the brine is lower than that in the ocean — and water moves from high to low concentrations, via osmosis — water is attracted to the brine. But the brine is so cold that the water freezes, forming a descending tube of ice, Escribano said.
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