It looks like tiny tropical bamboo, or a new form of ocean coral. But this spikey strawlike structure is actually frozen water that may be found in outer space.
Courtesy of the American Astronomical Society
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It looks like tiny tropical bamboo, or a new form of ocean coral. But this spikey strawlike structure is actually frozen water that may be found in outer space. Researchers at the Andalusian Institute for Earth Sciences at the University of Granada in Spain created this pine needle–like structure in the lab using a rapid-freeze technique inside an electron microscope. Ice in space forms at temperatures far more frigid than the coldest pockets on Earth—between 3 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit above absolute zero (–459.67 degrees F, or –273.15 degrees Celsius). This image was recently published in The Astrophysical Journal and provides a glimpse of the molecular organization of such tiny ice structures. Whereas Earth ice, like snowflakes, always form hexagonal crystals, space ice can form many different crystal shapes, such as this "palm tree" formation [right].
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