Using a device that might be described as a super-duper cocktail shaker, scientists have fashioned a previously unknown form of ice
The researchers said they employed a process called ball milling to vigorously shake ordinary ice together with steel balls in a container cooled to minus-328 degrees Fahrenheit. This yielded what they called "medium-density amorphous ice," or MDA, which looked like a fine white powder.
"Ice is frozen water and contains H2O molecules. H2O is a highly versatile molecular building block that can form many different structures depending on temperature and pressure," said University College London professor of physical and materials chemistry Christoph Salzmann, senior author of the research published this week in the journal Science.
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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