Antarctic Research Project will determine if a huge glacier will soon break off

Thwaites Glacier © NASA

At the southwestern corner of Antarctic continent, there's a river of ice dubbed the "most dangerous glacier in the world." On Monday, American and British scientists officially launched a venture to investigate Thwaites Glacier. Their goal: to figure out whether it's headed for a catastrophic collapse in the near future.

We already know Thwaites Glacier is melting at a rate of about 40 centimeters per year, according to the BBC. That alone has caused about 4 percent of the world's sea level rise we've seen in the past 25 years.

As if that weren't startling enough, scientists are worried Thwaites is about to make a much bigger splash: if ocean waters have infiltrated far enough beneath this glacier, its Florida-sized-mass could begin sliding off land and into the ocean.

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