Whether it’s rivers cutting through earth, lava melting through rock, or water slicing through ice, channels all twist and bend in a seemingly similar back-and-forth manner.
Whether it’s rivers cutting through earth, lava melting through rock, or water slicing through ice, channels all twist and bend in a seemingly similar back-and-forth manner. But a new study led by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin has discovered that channels carved by rivers actually have curves distinct to those cut by lava or ice.
The exact mechanism that drives the shape of these bends is not certain, but the researchers cite several previous models that point to the relationship between the topography of the channel and the fluid’s flow within it.
In rivers, centrifugal force pushes water to go faster around the outer edges of the channel’s bends and more slowly along the inner edges. As a result, the water erodes the outer edge and deposits sediments along the inner edge, amplifying the river’s bends.
Volcanic and ice channels, on the other hand, are eroded thermally, through melting. And because they do not deposit sediments like rivers do, the only change that occurs in these channels is along the outer edge of a bend, making their curves comparatively smaller than those in rivers.
Read more at University of Texas at Austin
Image: Satellite images show a sinuous ice channel in North East Land, Greenland; volcanic sinuous rille Rima Seuss on the Moon; and the meandering Juruá River in Brazil. (Credit: Compilation by Tim Goudge / Jackson School)
