Scientists find ice not known on Earth trapped in a diamond

[TexasTowelie]

Trapped in the rigid structure of diamonds formed deep in the Earth’s crust, scientists have discovered a form of water ice that was not known to occur naturally on our planet.

The finding, published Thursday in Science, represents the first detection of naturally occurring ice-VII found on Earth. And as sometimes happens in the scientific process, it was discovered by accident.

Ice-VII is about 1½ times as dense as the regular ice we put in our drinks and skate on in winter, and the crystalline structure of its atoms is different, as well.

In normal ice, known as ice-I, the oxygen atoms arrange themselves in a hexagonal shape. In ice-VII, these atoms are arranged in a cubic shape.

Read more: http://www.bendbulletin.com/nation/6075437-151/scientists-find-ice-not-known-on-earth-trapped

[Cary]

1. Sounds like Kurt Vonnegut

[TomVilmer]

3. Yeps - Ice-nine

Ice-nine is a fictional material that appears in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle. When ice-nine comes into contact with liquid water below 45.8 °C (thus effectively becoming supercooled), it acts as a seed crystal and causes the solidification of the entire body of water, which quickly crystallizes as more ice-nine. The project is abandoned when it becomes clear that any quantity of it would have the power to destroy all life on earth. A global catastrophe involving freezing the world's oceans with ice-nine is used as a plot device in Vonnegut's novel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-nine

Fantastic book!

[Javaman]

5. one of my favorite books. nt

[cstanleytech]

6. Not really as Kurts version did not need intense pressure to form and spread this version needs

really intense pressure which on the earth only happens in certain rare places like deep inside the earth.

[DFW]

2. Depending on what this leads to

It could be the introduction to a momentous new find about the history of the planet. Little things like this sometimes are way more significant than they seem. I have an old amethyst crystal that has a bubble in the rock with water (I presume) inside it. I have alwas wondered about its make-up.

[Lint Head]

4. I wonder if this is where the slang term ice is used to refer to diamonds.