Gif: This new animation shows how close Antarctica is to losing an iceberg the size of Delaware

A block of ice about the size of Delaware could break off of Antarctica "within days," researchers suggest. And a new animation shows just how close the humongous iceberg is to calving.

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Adrian Luckman of Swansea University in the UK, who is closely monitoring Larsen C with his colleagues, has released a new animation of the rift's rapid growth.

"Waiting for the final [jump]!" Luckman said in a tweet about the videoon June 16.

The images reveal how the rift "jumps" as it slices through bands of weak ice, slows when it hits denser ice, and speeds up again when it encounters more weak ice. In the animation, the ocean is shown in emerald green (top right), the Larsen C ice shelf is the light blue patch, and the glacier behind it is white.