Posted on 03/09/2018 10:09:59 AM PST by Red Badger
Trapped in the rigid structure of diamonds formed deep in the Earth’s crust, scientists have discovered a form of water ice that was not previously known to occur naturally on our planet.
The finding, published Thursday in Science, represents the first detection of naturally occurring ice-VII ever found on Earth. And as sometimes happens in the scientific process, it was discovered entirely by accident.
Ice-VII is about one and a half times as dense as the regular ice we put in our drinks and skate on in winter, and the crystalline structure of its atoms is different as well.
In normal ice, known as ice-I, the oxygen atoms arrange themselves in a hexagonal shape. In ice-VII these atoms are arranged in a cubic shape.
Oliver Tschauner, a professor of geoscience at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, explained that there are actually several known phases of water ice that form under different pressure and temperature conditions.
That’s unusual. Generally, when you subject a solid phase of matter to increasing amounts of pressure, the space between the chemical bonds will decrease a little, and the bonds will tilt slightly toward each other, said Tschauner, who led the new work. That’s called compressibility.
But water ice has very low compressibility. When it gets subjected to too much pressure, the atoms don’t scooch together. Instead, they rearrange themselves into different patterns.
For example, if you press down hard enough on ice-I, it will transform into ice-II, which has a rhombohedral structure. Increase the pressure once again and the atoms will rearrange themselves into ice-III, then IV, V, VI and VII.
(Excerpt) Read more at orlandosentinel.com ...
Best thing he did for music was to switch to remodeling houses. lol
Maybe it will turn into Ice-nine and be solid at room temp. We could mix it with regular water, like the ocean and see what happens. What could go wrong?
Just as long as it isn’t the dreaded Ice-9, which would cause the end of all life on Earth.......
Ice 9 mentioned in thread.
The summoning has begun.
he’s actually pretty good at remodeling houses lol
Reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut’s Novel “Cat’s Cradle” which has ice-nine in it.
As long as it is not Ice-Nine we should be fine...
Finding a new piece of ice is always exciting.
“not known”
Sounds like it is know, it just had not previously been found to occur naturally.
Once again the press confounds the truth with language.
Sort of like calling semi-automatics machine guns.
Exactly!
Good thing it was discovered at UNLV. No California university could have survived any research on ICE.
True, in fact ICE is forbidden on university grounds................
Think I read a science fiction short story like that a long time ago.
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