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."

Comments

Ice 9?

[Tau Neutrino]

Holy Bokonon! It's the end of the world!

Re:Creepy if you have read Cat's Cradle

[Dynamoo]

Indeed. Perhaps Vonnegut should be compulsory reading for all aspiring scientists who might accidentally destroy all life of earth.

Pentagons? THAT'S your big solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Bad titles on /. and original articles

[Camann]

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.

Don't worry

[PPH]

We've fixed it. Its Ice 9.1 now.