By Nick
Lavars
February 18, 2021
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Researchers have confirmed the
crystal structure of a new form of ice, adding to a growing list of known ice
types Photo: suslik83/Depositphotos
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Ice I is the ice we see forming
in ice and snow here on Earth, and stands alone as the only type of ice you’ll
find on the surface of our planet, with the exception of research laboratories.
Other forms, such as ice VI and VII, have been discovered to have developed deep
in the Earth’s mantle locked
inside diamonds that were slowly pushed upward over time, while other types
can be found on other planets and moons or in space.
These different types of ice form
in response to different pressures and temperatures, which shapes the way the
oxygen and hydrogen atoms and water molecules are arranged within them.
Scientists at Austria’s University of Innsbruck have been experimenting with
this process for years, making tweaks to the process that produces ice VI, which
normally forms under high pressure, to see what eventuates.
By slowing down the cooling
process and increasing the pressure even further, the scientists made a
breakthrough several years ago. This method led to the formation of a different
type of ice, which featured a different arrangement of hydrogen atoms.
"We found clear evidence at that
time that it is a new ordered variant, but we were not able to elucidate the
crystal structure,” explains study author Thomas Loerting.
Thomas Loerting and his
colleagues at the University of Innsbruck have confirmed the crystal structure
of a new form of ice, dubbed ice XIX Uni Innsbruck
Loerting and his colleagues have
continued studying this new form of ice, dubbed ice XIX, and have now managed to
confirm its crystal structure using a technique called neutron diffraction. The
team likens this to finding a needle in a haystack, having to sort through
thousands of candidates before landing on the correct crystal structure, which
was confirmed by a different research group in Japan in separate experiments.
It might be the 19th type of ice
scientists have confirmed, but the discovery does herald a significant first.
Ice XIX was found to feature some striking similarities with XV, with the oxygen
lattice found to be the same, although the hydrogen atoms were arranged
differently. This makes ice XV and ice XIX the first sibling pair in ice
physics, according to the researchers.
Illustration depicting the
structural similarities between ice XIX and ice VI University of Innsbruck
"This also means that for the
first time it will now be possible to realize the transition between two ordered
ice forms in experiments," says Loerting.
The research was published in the
journal Nature
Communications.
Source: University
of Innsbruck