Scientists rattling normal frozen water around in a jar of ultracold steel balls have discovered a previously unknown form of ice, closer to liquid water than any other ice yet.
This is amorphous ice, a form not found in nature on Earth. That's because its atoms are arranged not in a neat repeating crystalline pattern, but jumbled up all higgledy-piggledy, an atomic omnishambles.
Researchers led by chemist Alexander Rosu-Finsen, formerly of University College London in the UK, have named the new form medium-density amorphous ice . Water, not beating around the bush, is just weird. Because it's so ubiquitous and necessary for our survival, we don't tend to think about it much, but it doesn't follow the same rules as other liquids.
But not all ice is created alike. Here on Earth, ice naturally takes a crystalline form, with its atoms arranged in a repeating hexagonal pattern. That's why snowflakes tend to be hexagonal. In the near-vacuum of space, however, ice is usually amorphous, because the atoms don't retain enough thermal energy to wiggle around into a crystalline structure.
."Rather than ending up with smaller pieces of ice, we realized that we had come up with an entirely new kind of thing, with some remarkable properties."
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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