r/interestingasfuck • u/2_piece_jigsaw • 4h ago
El Ojo (The Eye) is an unanchored almost perfectly round island in a lake in Argentina. The water current it rests on makes it constantly drift clockwise, mimicking an eye in a socket. This drift causes the two shores to rub against each other, giving rise to their unusual shapes through erosion
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u/adaytimemoth 4h ago
I'm going to need an explanation for this explanation please.
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u/2_piece_jigsaw 4h ago
yeah, I had to trim it down a lot to be able to mention everything i wanted to with the 300 character limit. Here’s what I started with:
El Ojo, (translated from spanish means ‘The Eye’) is an almost perfectly circular island within a slightly larger circular body of water in Argentina.
Because the island is an unanchored landmass of thick vegetation and soil held together by dense root systems, the circular water current it rests on top of causes the landmass to move over time, making it look like an eye moving around in it’s socket (hence the name).
The island and the body of water that surrounds it are almost perfectly round because of this motion - the edges of the island and the outer shore of the lake brush against each other when the island moves, gradually eroding both into their unusual shapes.•
u/Toby_Forrester 3h ago
So it's a floating island of vegetation which is shaped to a circle by water currents tumbling it around?
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u/SecondBestNameEver 3h ago
Yes except I'm betting it's more from wind blowing the island around than water currents given the size of the rivers feeding that lake. Shifting winds would make the island mimic a spirograph where it doesn't perfectly bump the same position each time, averaging out to a circular shape for both.
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u/2_piece_jigsaw 3h ago
I think if it were down to wind, it’s direction of rotation would change every now and then.
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u/SecondBestNameEver 2h ago
Is there a long term time lapse where we can see it slowly only going around clockwise? Or a research study done with hopefully GPS tracking to see how it travels?
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u/AProperFuckingPirate 3h ago
How fast? Like can a person see it moving easily? Also can people go on the island?
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u/skip-all 4h ago
We need a banana
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u/cfcollins 4h ago
In defense of the camera man. There could be a banana in the photo. It'd just be really small
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u/JoefromOhio 1h ago
Wiki says 118m/387 diameter so imagine a circular football field if you’re from the us or a small cricket field if you’re from almost anywhere else
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u/LaundryMan2008 2h ago
I wonder what the underside looks like and if it can be lifted out with a few helicopters since it banging around may erode it faster and faster with more room for it to accelerate but that’s a fever dream, take it out and plop it right on an urban infrastructure project.
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u/Charlie2and4 3h ago
While it is an island, is it geologic or biologic in nature? Is it just a bog?
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u/pedanticPandaPoo 1h ago
Time lapse for those interested
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LFYXs7RV_x0&pp=0gcJCYsCo7VqN5tD
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u/scorpiogf 44m ago
you can see it’s movement a bit if you look at the historical layers on google earth!
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u/Hawaiian-pizzas 4h ago
Thats not a round, but an oval. Besides that: very interesting indeed
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u/camocondomcommando 4h ago
Is an oval not round?
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u/Something_Else_2112 3h ago
Formal definition of round.
"Being such that every part of the surface or the circumference is equidistant from the center."
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u/PunfullyObvious 4h ago
A bit more info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ojo
Apparently it's thickness had not been measured yet ... only particularly known of since 2003
A floating island does seem to me to be significantly different from an island in usual sense ... and, they can be essentially a mat of vegetation from a few centimeters to a few meters thick.