Using a device that can be described as a super-duper cocktail shaker, scientists have created a previously unknown form of ice – which may exist on our solar system’s icy moons – in research that It sheds light on the behavior of water under extreme conditions.
The researchers said they used a process called ball milling to combine ordinary ice with steel balls to cool it to minus-328 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-200 degrees Celsius). This yielded what they called “medium density amorphous ice,” or MDA, which looked like a fine white powder.
Resembling a fine white powder, the ice – named medium-density amorphous ice – is inside the jar below, together with the cold steel balls and liquid nitrogen. 4/6 pic.twitter.com/BNxtG60EQF
— UCL News (@uclnews) February 3, 2023
Normal ice is crystalline in nature, with water molecules—two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, or H2O—arranged in a regular pattern. The water molecules in random ice are in a disordered form that resembles a liquid.
“Ice is frozen water and contains H2O molecules. H2O is a very versatile molecular building block that can form many different structures depending on temperature and pressure,” said Christophe, professor of physical and materials chemistry at University College London. said Salzman, senior author of the published research. This week in the journal Science.
“Under pressure, the molecules pack more efficiently, which is why ice has so many different shapes,” Salzman added.
Entirely new type of ice made using extremely cold steel balls: A new type of ice called medium-density amorphous ice has the same density as liquid water, so studying it could help us understand water’s strange behaviour at low temperatures https://t.co/KpvwTcQKcU pic.twitter.com/t89OjU1MG7
— Troubled Minds: A Conspiracy Radio Show/Podcast (@TroubledMindsR) February 2, 2023
Virtually all ice on Earth exists in its familiar crystalline form—think of the ice cubes in your lemonade. But disordered ice is by far the most common form of water in space. Scientists have identified 20 different forms of crystalline ice and three forms of amorphous ice – a low density (discovered in the 1930s), a high density (discovered in the 1980s) and new ones in between. .
Formless snow on Earth may be confined to the cold upper part of the atmosphere.
“Almost all ice in the universe is amorphous and in a form called low-density amorphous ice,” Salzman said. “It forms when water condenses on dust grains in space. Comets are also spontaneous ices. Liquid water requires very special conditions like on Earth. But some of the ice moons of the Solar System have There is also evidence of underground oceans inside.”
Ball milling is used in industries to grind or blend materials. The researchers used this technique to create about 3 ounces (8 grams) of new ice, putting some of it in cold storage.
The question is where this form of ice can exist in nature. The researchers hypothesize that the kind of forces they have brought to bear on ordinary ice in the laboratory may exist on icy moons like Jupiter’s Europa or Saturn’s Enceladus.
“This is the first time we’ve made MDA ice. So our laboratory should only have samples of it on Earth,” Salzman said.
“We suspect that this may be present in some of the solar system’s ice moons. Ball-milling creates shear forces within the ice crystals as they collide with the steel balls. ) are at play and we “We expect them to produce similar shear forces in the lunar ice balls as during ball milling,” Salzman added.
The research could facilitate a better understanding of water, the chemical hub for life.
“The fact that this new form of ice has a density similar to that of liquid water – and thus can be a good model for understanding water without liquid motion – is perhaps the most important aspect of this discovery,” said the University of said Angelos Michaelides, professor of chemistry at Cambridge and co-author of the study.
“Since MDA is a disordered state like liquid water, the question arises as to whether it is actually liquid water but at a lower temperature,” Salzman said. “Building on this, MDA offers an opportunity to perhaps finally understand liquid water and its many anomalies.”
