Scientists create never-before-seen “alien ice” that neither floats nor sinks

Scientists appear to have created a ice totally unique, an ice that would only be possible in places outside our planet such as in the oceans of the moons of Saturn and Jupiter.

It is a new ice that neither floats nor sinks and that is more like a liquid than frozen water and is part of an investigation and experiment published in the magazine Science.

This new form of ice is amorphous, so unlike normal ice where the molecules are arranged in a regular pattern, these molecules are disorganized and more like a liquid.

They believe that this ice could form in places like the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, which would be influenced by the tidal forces exerted by these gas giants.

They comment that if this ice existed there, between the cracks in the ice sheets, it could have implications for potential extraterrestrial life.

One of the properties of this new ice is that it stores a lot of energy when it is created and releases a lot when it is destroyed. This causes a knock-on effect on how the tectonics of these moons might work.

“Water is the basis of all life. Our existence depends on it, we launch space missions in search of it, but from a scientific point of view it is little known.”, says the teacher Christoph Salzmanfrom University College London.

There are more than 20 crystalline forms of ice, but only two types of ice have been discovered. ice amorphous, known as high-density and low-density amorphous ice.

“There is a large density gap between them and the accepted wisdom has been that no ice exists within this density gap.“, Add.

The researchers say that this ice discovered in the experiment has a density just between the other two known forms of amorphous ice, and almost the same density as water liquid. They have named this new type of ice as “medium density amorphous ice” (MDA).

This is how they did the experiment

For the experiment they used a process by which ordinary ice is violently shaken together with steel balls in a flask chilled to -200 degrees Celsius.

And instead of ending up with tiny chunks of ice, the process produced a new, amorphous form of ice.

“Our study shows that the density of MDA is precisely within this density gap. This finding may have far-reaching consequences for our understanding of liquid water and its many anomalies.says Salzmann.

“It is said that the amorphous ice It is generally the most abundant form of water in the universe. The race is now on to understand how much MDA is and how geophysically active MDA is.”, concludes angelos michaelideslead author from the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry at Cambridge.