Scientists Discover a Weird New Form of Ice That May Change How We Think About Water

Scientists rattling normal frozen water around in a jar of ultracold steel balls have discovered a previously unknown form of ice, closer to 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).
Scientists Discover a Weird New Form of Ice That May Change How We Think About Water