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Scientists Discover a
Weird New Form of Ice
That May Change How We
Think About Water
Michelle Starr
5-6 minutes

Normal ice was crushed with steel balls in an

ultracold jar. (Christoph Salzmann)
Scientists rattling normal frozen water around
in a jar of ultracold steel balls have discovered
a previously unknown form of ice, closer to

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liquid water than any other ice yet.
This is amorphous ice, a form not found in
nature on Earth. That's because its atoms are
arranged not in a neat repeating crystalline
pattern, but jumbled up all higgledy-piggledy,
an atomic omnishambles.
But the amorphous ice emerging from the
team's experiments, a process called ball
milling, is unlike any amorphous ice ever
seen.
Amorphous ice is usually low density, around
0.94 grams per cubic centimeter, or high
density, starting at 1.13 grams per cubic
centimeter. The new ice has a density of 1.06
grams per cubic centimeter – clocking in
incredibly close to the density of water, at 1
gram per cubic centimeter.
Researchers led by chemist Alexander Rosu-
Finsen, formerly of University College London
in the UK, have named the new form medium-
density amorphous ice (MDA).

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"Water is the foundation of all life. Our
existence depends on it, we launch space
missions searching for it, yet from a scientific
point of view it is poorly understood," says
chemist Christoph Salzmann of University
College London.
"We know of 20 crystalline forms of ice, but
only two main types of amorphous ice have
previously been discovered, known as high-
density and low-density amorphous ices.
There is a huge density gap between them
and the accepted wisdom has been that no
ice exists within that density gap," Salzmann
explains.
"Our study shows that the density of MDA is
precisely within this density gap and this
finding may have far-reaching consequences
for our understanding of liquid water and its
many anomalies."
Water, not beating around the bush, is just
weird. Because it's so ubiquitous and
necessary for our survival, we don't tend to

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think about it much, but it doesn't follow the
same rules as other liquids.
It's a universal solvent; that is, many other
substances dissolve in it really easily. Its
surface tension is unusually high compared to
other liquids, as is its boiling point.
And its density under cooling conditions is
perhaps the weirdest thing of all: as most
fluids freeze, their density increases. Water
does the opposite: it becomes less dense,
meaning water ice is generally less dense
than water. This is why ice cubes float in your
drink.
But not all ice is created alike. Here on Earth,
ice naturally takes a crystalline form, with its
atoms arranged in a repeating hexagonal
pattern. That's why snowflakes tend to be
hexagonal. In the near-vacuum of space,
however, ice is usually amorphous, because
the atoms don't retain enough thermal energy
to wiggle around into a crystalline structure.
The density gap in amorphous ice was fairly
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fundamental to our understanding of water. In
fact, previous research and simulations found
the division could mean that water exists as
two separate liquids at very cold
temperatures, even coexisting like oil and,
well, water rather than mixing if the conditions
were right. Hey, water has done weirder
things.

Part of the experimental apparatus used to

crush the ice. (Christoph Salzmann)
But then Rosu-Finsen and his colleagues got
their hands on some steel balls. Ball milling is

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an industrial technique used to grind or blend
materials. The researchers used liquid
nitrogen to cool a milling jar to -200 degrees
Celsius (-328 degrees Fahrenheit), added
normal water ice, and shook things up.
"We shook the ice like crazy for a long time
and destroyed the crystal structure," Rosu-
Finsen explains. "Rather than ending up with
smaller pieces of ice, we realized that we had
come up with an entirely new kind of thing,
with some remarkable properties."
What these properties mean is not quite clear
yet. MDA could be a "glassy" state of liquid
water, the researchers suggest. Although
amorphous ice doesn't form in nature, other
amorphous solids exist; glass is one of them,
and it's simply a solid form of liquid silicon
dioxide. But MDA could also simply be heavily
sheared crystalline ice, too.
It does suggest that our existing models of
water need to be re-examined in order to find
out where MDA fits into the picture. But

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already it's showing promise for explaining
some of the ways water ice behaves in the
Universe.
The researchers experimented to see what
happens when MDA recrystallizes,
compressing it and warming it up. They found
that this process releases a surprising amount
of energy, suggesting that MDA could play a
role in tectonic activity on ice-encrusted
worlds like Jovian moon Ganymede.
And the discovery shows potential for future
experiments and probes of the peculiar
properties of water, too.
"We have shown it is possible to create what
looks like a stop-motion kind of water," says
chemist Andrea Sella of University College
London.
"This is an unexpected and quite amazing
finding."
The research has been published in Science.

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