In 1950, Icelandic researcher Jón Eyþórsson came across a gathering of fuzzy green puff balls, the size of small gerbils, scattered across Hrútárjökull Glacier in the southeast of the country. Curiously, the mossy balls weren’t attached to the ground, and many were green on all sides, indicating they must slowly turn so that the entire exterior sees the sun at some point, theorized Eyþórsson. That fall, he wrote a letter to the editor of the Journal of Glaciology. “I call these mossy balls Jökla-mýs, literally ‘glacier mice,’” he wrote, “and…
