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A Facebook claim contains three TikTok videos that allegedly show that snow is synthetic. We rated it false.
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Slate magazine also addressed the conspiracy theories in a 2014
article. Phil Plait, writer for Slate's Bad Astronomy blog, recorded a replication of the snowball experiment and posted it to Bad Astronmy's
YouTube page. Sure enough, the snow did not melt right away.
"To summarize, two things happen: One is that as the snow melts, the remaining snow absorbs the water. That’s why it doesn’t appear to drip; the snowball becomes a slushball," Plait wrote.
The process is called "sublimation," according to Mike Stone, a meteorologist for WTVR News in Richmond, Virginia. When heavy snowfall fell in Virginia's capital back in 2014, the station performed its own test and posted it to
YouTube.
"When you heat something like this, it goes from a solid to a gas. It's called sublimation," Stone told then-colleague Alix Bryan when her snowball failed to melt. "This is actually disappearing by going into vapor."
Dr. Tandy Grubbs, professor and chair of the department of chemistry and biochemistry at Stetson University, told USA TODAY that given time, the snowball would have melted.
"Firstly, I would note that the demonstrator did not hold the lighter under the snowball long enough to melt enough of the snow to potentially see water formation (and dripping)," he wrote in an email.
Grubbs also explained why the snowball turned black where the flame touched it.
"The formation of black on the snow when the lighter is held under it is due to the incomplete combustion and formation of soot when the lighter fuel is burning," he wrote. "Soot would ordinarily not be visible when a lighter is burning in open air, but the snowball in this case is acting like a filter, catching and accumulating the black soot particles, which show up quite visibly on the white snow after a few seconds of exposure."
Sublimation demos are some of the outrageous claims about synthetic snow posted to the internet in recent years. Some blamed "chemtrails" sprayed by passing airplanes for the snow that gridlocked Atlanta seven years ago, while others pointed to nanobots, according to a 2014 Yahoo! News
article. The latter does not yet exist, per a Dec. 30 GlobeNewswire
press release about a major nanorobotics report.
"Even if the government was perpetrating such a diabolical scheme (they aren't), and was able to cover it up and keep people quiet (no need because it isn't happening), it just wouldn't work. It would be the most inefficient and ineffective way of dosing the population with anything," Scott Sutherland of Yahoo! News wrote.
Our rating: False
We rate this claim FALSE, based on our research. A claim containing TikTok videos that purport to illustrate snow that won't melt is based on unproven and previously debunked conspiracy theories. A snowball will melt under a flame, turning from a solid to a gas due to a process called sublimation. Other claims tying snowfall to chemtrails or nanobot technology are unfounded, according to experts.
Stay warm and vigilant wherever you are.
) and how large amounts of ice could form and fall from the sky. I'll try to clarify a little more below...
