The strange ice circle rotates in the middle of the American river

The perfect circular tape rotating in the heart of the river flowing through Michigan, USA, made many locals confused.

The diskette image was recorded by Jason Robinson, a resident of Michigan, from the Schmied Road Bridge across the Pine River in the town of Vestaburg on January 7, IFL Science reported. Many people believe that this is a man-made product, but the tape is a natural phenomenon.

The phenomenon has been known to scientists for more than a decade, but recently, researchers have discovered the reason why these tapes are spinning. At first, they assumed that the tape was born when the water swirled in the river pushing ice. But some tapes were recorded with a diameter of more than 16 meters, and the model on the computer showed that the whirlpool could not push such large discs of ice spinning.

Perfect circular tape in the middle of Michigan river, USA.(Photo: Vimeo).

In a study published in July 2016 in Physical Review E, scientists at Liège University, Belgium, used magnets to simulate conditions in frozen rivers. Using experimental plates, they found ice blocks that began to spin even when there was no whirlpool. This means the spinning phenomenon is caused by melting ice, not by the whirlpool on the river.

On the evening of the same day, Robinson said the tape was frozen at the edge and stopped rotating. Allen Schlag, a hydrologist at Bismarck and Greg Gust National Weather Agency, a Grand Forks meteorologist, said the combination of cold air flows over the area last week and the whirlpool on the river is likely. Power is the cause of creating a tape disc. The pieces of floating ice were swept into the whirlpool and began to spin. This phenomenon happened in the Arctic, Scandinavia and Canada.

Typically, the phenomenon occurs in river sections, where fast-flowing water creates rotational shear , breaking the ice sheet and spinning it. When the tape rotates, it crushes and smooths the ice around to form a perfect round shape.