Scientists Unexpectedly Discover Weird New Form of Ice During Experiment (livescience.com) 30
When shaken and chilled to minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit, ordinary frozen water "turns into something different," reports the New York Times, "a newly discovered form of ice made of a jumble of molecules with unique properties."
The ice of our everyday lives consists of water molecules lined up in a hexagonal pattern, and those hexagonal lattices neatly stack on top of each other.... With permutations of temperature and pressure outside what generally occurs on Earth, water molecules can be pushed into other crystal structures.
"This is completely unexpected and very surprising," said Christoph Salzmann, a chemistry professor at University College London in England and an author of a paper published on Thursday in the journal Science that described the ice.... The new discovery shows, once again, that water, a molecule without which life is not known to be able to exist, is still hiding scientific surprises yet to be revealed. This experiment employed relatively simple, inexpensive equipment to reveal a form of ice that could exist elsewhere in the solar system and throughout the universe.
And according to LiveScience, the new form of ice has some unusual properties: Among them, Salzmann said, is that when the researchers compressed the medium-density ice and heated it to minus 185 F (minus 120 C), the ice recrystallized, releasing a large amount of heat. "With other forms of [amorphous] ice, if you compress them and you release the pressure, it's like nothing happened," Salzmann said. "But the MDA [medium-density amorphous ice] somehow has this ability to store the mechanical energy and release it through heating."
Medium-density amorphous ice might occur naturally on the ice moons of gas giant planets, Salzmann said, where the gravitational forces of the enormous worlds compress and shear the moons' ice. If so, the mechanical energy stored in this form of ice could influence the tectonics on these Hoth-like moons....
Scientists still debate the nature of water at extremely low temperatures. Any debate now needs to take into account medium-density amorphous ice, Salzmann said.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot for submitting the article.
"This is completely unexpected and very surprising," said Christoph Salzmann, a chemistry professor at University College London in England and an author of a paper published on Thursday in the journal Science that described the ice.... The new discovery shows, once again, that water, a molecule without which life is not known to be able to exist, is still hiding scientific surprises yet to be revealed. This experiment employed relatively simple, inexpensive equipment to reveal a form of ice that could exist elsewhere in the solar system and throughout the universe.
And according to LiveScience, the new form of ice has some unusual properties: Among them, Salzmann said, is that when the researchers compressed the medium-density ice and heated it to minus 185 F (minus 120 C), the ice recrystallized, releasing a large amount of heat. "With other forms of [amorphous] ice, if you compress them and you release the pressure, it's like nothing happened," Salzmann said. "But the MDA [medium-density amorphous ice] somehow has this ability to store the mechanical energy and release it through heating."
Medium-density amorphous ice might occur naturally on the ice moons of gas giant planets, Salzmann said, where the gravitational forces of the enormous worlds compress and shear the moons' ice. If so, the mechanical energy stored in this form of ice could influence the tectonics on these Hoth-like moons....
Scientists still debate the nature of water at extremely low temperatures. Any debate now needs to take into account medium-density amorphous ice, Salzmann said.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot for submitting the article.
Ice-Nine? (Score:2, Funny)
Nice, nice, very nice.
Re: Ice-Nine? (Score:2)
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Not very nice to not also state that it's -196 degrees C so everyone outside the US don't have to go through the headache of converting it to something understandable and realize that liquid nitrogen is sufficient.
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Yes, Kelvin would be better still. Do even US scientists use Fahrenheit to talk about liquid nitrogen temperatures?
One weird trick (Score:2)
Ice houses HATE HIM!
3D phase diagrams needed from now on? (Score:3)
Will this prove to be the only substance of which this is true? And what will be the unit of measure on the third axis? Degree of disruption?
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Is this more evidence that nature is multi-dimensional, with inconsistencies obvious from within any one-four dimensional groupings?
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The 25th structure of ice (Score:5, Informative)
With permutations of temperature and pressure outside what generally occurs on Earth, water molecules can be pushed into other crystal structures. [...]
"This is completely unexpected and very surprising,"
The summary is slightly misleading. The part where there are other ice structures is well known. Usual water ice is a tetragonal structure called Ice VI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and more than 20 crystal structures of ice exist depending on temperature and pressure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] They can be tetragonal, hexagonal, quadratic. Two forms of amorphous (not crystalline, like glass) ice were known https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] the high and low density. What these guys found is another amorphous phase which they called medium density.
Re:The 27th structure of ice (Score:4, Interesting)
I read too fast and forgot to to count the Very High Density Amorphous (VHDA) ice and Hyperquenched Glassy Water (HQW) so this Medium Density Ice is the 27th known structure of ice.
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OK, that explains my initial reaction. I was going to question how the result could possibly be "completely unexpected and very surprising" to people doing research in this area.
Re: The 25th structure of ice (Score:1)
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Did you miss this part?
A way to store energy? (Score:3)
A surmountable problem are the low temperatures involved.
Try with Martini... (Score:2)
Holy units, Batman (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Holy units, Batman (Score:4, Funny)
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If they stated it in Kelvin it'd be a negative number and wouldn't make sense.
I do hope you are joking.
I saw a new form of ice at the store (Score:5, Funny)
They referred to it as "Party Ice", but wouldn't provide more detail. Probably they're waiting until their paper gets published.
Interesting (Score:2)
" Any debate now needs to take into account medium-density amorphous ice, Salzmann said."
I'll make sure to tell my barman.
Re: (Score:2)
I know the ball of perfectly clear ice they fill your glass with seems large, but it's not large enough to produce this kind of pressure.Your barman is safe, and the ratio of ice to booze is generally not open to debate.
Really? (Score:2)
This is completely unexpected and very surprising
Yeah, because we've never seen carbon forming a different structure under pressure. [wikipedia.org]
Never over estimate your audience (Score:2)
"minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit". How dumb are these people? This dumb.
"on these Hoth-like moons" (Score:2)