Researchers say they employ a process called ball milling to vigorously shake ordinary ice together with steel balls in a container cooled to minus-200 degrees Celsius.
WASHINGTON, DC, USA – Using a device that might be described as a super-duper cocktail shaker, scientists have fashioned a previously unknown form of ice – one that might exist on our solar system’s icy moons – in research that sheds light on water’s behavior under extreme conditions.
Ordinary ice is crystalline in nature, with water molecules – two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, or H2O – arranged in a regular pattern. Amorphous ice’s water molecules are in a disorganized form resembling a liquid. Virtually all ice on Earth exists in its familiar crystalline form – think of the ice cubes in your lemonade. But amorphous 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 – one low density , one high density and the new one in between.“Almost all ice in the universe is amorphous and in a form called low-density amorphous ice,” Salzmann said.
The question is where this form of ice might exist in nature. The researchers hypothesize that the type of forces they brought to bear on ordinary ice in the laboratory might exist on ice moons like Jupiter’s Europa or Saturn’s Enceladus.
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