Austria, Mar 9: Scientists have identified the 19th form of water ice. We are all familiar with the six-sided crystals of ice (ice I), like in snowflakes found on Earth. This new ice is four sided and is formed at ultra low temperatures, and under ultra high pressure. It only exists in laboratory experiments, but tells us a lot about different varieties of ice which could be found deep in the Earth’s mantle, or on very cold planets and moons. The difference in each ice form is because of the different arrangement of oxygen and hydrogen in the internal structure. Ice VI, ice XV and ice XIX are all very similar in terms of density because they share the same kind of network of oxygen atoms, but they differ in terms of the positions of hydrogen atoms.
