Since we occasionally talk here about using the balls from a ball mill as the working surface of raising stakes, I though folks might be interested in another, totally un-blacksmithing-related use for a ball mill itself: pulverizing water frozen to -320°F/-195°C to create an amorphous type of ice with the same density as liquid water.

Shaking Ordinary Ice (Very Hard) Transformed It Into Something Never Seen Before - NY Times

Nope, that requires a sign in and membership to view

Ah, phooey. Well, the upshot is that with the crystalline lattice shattered almost at the molecular level, the ice behaves almost like a glass. This presents some interesting possibilities for the forms that ice might take in extraterrestrial bodies:

Quote

The findings could be of use to planetary scientists. The temperatures fall within what is found on Europa, and Jupiter exerts huge tidal forces on the icy ocean moon, which will be visited and studied closely by NASA and European orbiters.

“You get exactly the same kind of shearing motion,” Dr. Salzmann said. “The speculation is now that there could be some MDA [Medium Density Amorphous (ice)] in the outer solar system.”

The researchers also found a property of MDA that is unique among water ices. For most materials, if you compress it and then release the pressure, it simply returns to how it was before. But compressing MDA and then releasing the pressure and heating it released a large burst of energy.

That energy, released as the amorphous ice recrystallizes, could set off icequakes, for example.

That means perhaps the physics of the new ice could play a role in the shaping of the icy crust of Europa and the dynamics of ice farther down in the moon’s ocean, with implications for whether conditions there could be hospitable for life.

 

Very interesting

Space Daily has an article on MDA ice. https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/New_ice_is_like_a_snapshot_of_liquid_water_999.html I haven't gotten far but don't see any commercial rule breakers.

Frosty The Lucky.

P.S. The subject is a real rabbit hole for the curious.