Hot As Ice

Sandia National Laboratory has produced some ice that you probably would not want in your martini. Unless you enjoy really hot martinis, that is. Because the ice they produced is actually hotter than boiling water.

Scientists have turned water into ice in nanoseconds, which means really, really fast. That's not the most interesting part, though. The ice is hotter than boiling water.

The experiment was done at the Sandia National Laboratories' huge Z machine, which generates temperatures hotter than the sun (setting a record here on Earth) and where researchers test what we know about those plain vanilla "phases" in textbooks: solid, liquid and gas.

"The three phases of water as we know them—cold ice, room temperature liquid, and hot vapor—are actually only a small part of water’s repertory of states," said Sandia researcher Daniel Dolan. "Compressing water customarily heats it. But under extreme compression, it is easier for dense water to enter its solid phase [ice] than maintain the more energetic liquid phase [water]."

They only had to subject the water to a mere 70,000 atmospheres of pressure to do it. So you probably won't see hot ice at your local watering hole anytime soon. There are still more states of water that Sandia is examining, at least 11. You know, these folks just sit around thinking these things up all day long……