PARIS — A day after the European Space Agency warned its demise
was near, an ice bridge connecting a massive ice shelf to an
island collapsed on Saturday, sending hundreds of icebergs out
to sea. The Paris-based agency on Friday published satellite
images showing the bridge barely intact. "The beginning of what
appears to be the demise of the ice bridge began this week when
new rifts" appeared and a large block of ice broke away, it said
in a statement. The bridge helped stabilize the Wilkins Ice
Shelf and experts now fear the shelf itself will start to
disintegrate over time. The Wilkins Ice Shelf — which like the
rest of Antarctic's ice sheet "was formed by thousands of years
of accumulated and compacted snow" — had been stable for most of
the last century before it began retreating in the 1990s, the
statement said. The shelf, which is now about the size of
Connecticut, is located on the western side of the Antarctic
Peninsula, which thrusts up from the continent toward the
southern tip of South America. Vi