A Deadly, Fast-Spreading Form of Super-Ice Could Be Killing Off Alien Life-Forms

[Judi Lynn]

By Rafi Letzter, Live Science Staff Writer | November 5, 2018 07:00am ET

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https://img.purch.com/h/1400/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5zcGFjZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzA4MC81MDAvb3JpZ2luYWwvaWNlLWNhdmUuanBn

Credit: Shutterstock

There's a new kind of ice.

It forms at speeds of more than 1,000 mph (1,600 km/h), it lies deep beneath our feet, it could destroy hopes for alien life, and — finally — scientists understand how it works.

Back in March, researchers writing in the journal Science revealed that they have found the first evidence for this ice, called "Ice VII." Scientists had predicted its existence beforehand. Under the right conditions, it was believed, ice could form in a pool of water without a layer of heat at the leading edge of its growing surface. That — along with super-intense pressures and temperatures — would allow the ice to form without most of the usual brakes that slow its growth, Science Alert reported. It would also have a different crystal structure, or arrangement of atoms. Now, scientists say they've found that elusive ice for the first time in the frozen-water cores of diamonds that bubbled up from deep inside the Earth.

The diamonds, which contained Ice VII, had come from a point inside the planet known as the mantle's "transition zone," between 255 miles and 410 miles (410 and 660 kilometers) deep. (The mantle is the rocky layer between Earth's crust and core). And they knew that it had a crystal structure very different from the sort of ice that forms in clouds or lakes or in your freezer. [9 Strange, Scientific Excuses for Why We Haven't Found Alien Life Yet]

More:
https://www.space.com/42329-ice-vii-forms-fast-in-diamonds.html

[unblock]

1. Kewl. A bit like ice-9 from Kurt Vonnegut's "cat's cradle".

[cstanleytech]

2. Except if it was truly a threat to preventing life from forming on worlds in theory

it should have done it to our world but it did not because without the right pressure and right temperature this ice cannot form which the author of the article completely failed to consider.