Scientists have announced that they have discovered a strange new type of ice. This new ice discovery is quite interesting, as the known type of ice is very ordered, meaning it solidifies by forming structured crystals that have a hard form. The new type of ice was created by a method called “ball grinding”, which relies on shaking ordinary ice and steel balls in a bowl cooled to -200 degrees Celsius.
Lead author Dr. “We shook the ice like crazy for a long time and destroyed its crystal structure,” Alexander Rosu Finsen said in a statement. “We realized that instead of getting smaller pieces of ice, we found an entirely new kind of thing with some extraordinary properties.”
Ball milling produced a previously unknown form of amorphous ice with scattered molecules with the same density as liquid water. The new type of ice found was named medium-density amorphous ice (MDA).
“We know of 20 crystalline forms of ice, but only two main types of amorphous ice have been discovered before, known as high-density and low-density amorphous ices,” said senior author Professor Christoph Salzmann from UCL Chemistry. Salzmann continued: “There is a huge difference in density between them, and the accepted view was that there was no ice within that density difference. Our study shows that the density of MDA is precisely within this density gap, and this finding is indicative of liquid water and its many anomalies. “These could have far-reaching implications for our understanding. Existing water models need to be retested. They should be able to explain the presence of moderately dense amorphous ice. This could be a starting point for the final explanation of liquid water.”
So, there is even reason to believe that ice could exist out of this world. The researchers suggest that MDA could potentially be floating inside ice moons in the outer solar system. This is because the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn may be exerting tidal forces on icy moons that act in a manner similar to grinding a ball.
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