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New Ice Structure Could Help Seed Clouds, Cause Rain
ScienceDaily is reporting that a new ice chain structure may provide a better method for seeding clouds and causing rain. "Ice structures are usually built out of simple hexagonal arrangements of water molecules and this hexagonal building block motif is easily observed in the structures of snowflakes. However, during their studies Dr Angelos Michaelides and co-workers from the Fritz Haber Institute, Berlin, and the University of Liverpool have discovered a natural nanoscale ice structure formed of pentagons."
Holy Bokonon! It's the end of the world!
Lemmings are silly; dinosaurs are extinct.
Indeed. Perhaps Vonnegut should be compulsory reading for all aspiring scientists who might accidentally destroy all life of earth.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
In soviet russia, the pentagon snows on YOU.
FTFA - "Snow is made of hexagons. We changed it up and used fucking PENTAGONS."
Won't someone think of the children who on the way to school will be pelted
with snowballs of an ever increasing diameter?
I'm off to make fire hotter using a goddamn nano-rhombus. Donations for science anyone?
Maybe I just don't understand the subject enough but from TFA "... there is no a priori rule that hexagons should form... and when people are searching for new ice nucleating agents which can be used to seed clouds and cause rain, they do not necessarily need to focus on materials that have hexagonal surfaces - other types of surfaces may be good too."
Nowhere do I see a claim that this pentagonal structure is superior, just that this opens up the potential that there are other structures as well and that one yet undiscovered structure could be beneficial for cloud seeding.
I can't believe you don't know what a Hasemalphaginnojinglanaporphomism is.
Shouldn't it have been:
Pentagon may control weather!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I think to say that Science Daily does any reporting is stretching the definition of reporting a bit much. I think "rewritten from a press release" is more like it.
If you want a real news piece, with real reporting, check out the article on the same paper over at New Scientist. They actually talked with the scientist involved in the study (and one that wasn't).
Per Square Mile, a blog about density
We've fixed it. Its Ice 9.1 now.
Have gnu, will travel.
As snow melts any crud that is on the surface or embedded in the pile collects and makes the surface darker as the pile gets smaller. The clean snow piles that you observed melting more quickly weren't as large or were less dense than the dirty snow piles. I suspect that you probably didn't perform careful observations (as no reasonable, casual observer would) and that if you did you'd soon see that it all makes sense. Also I think you'd find it very difficult to find a clean snow pile in an urban environment. Maybe behind an arena? Even then airborne matter would accumulate on the surface. This happens just about anywhere that snow sits for a long time.
Go read it.