Led by Professors Raffaele Mezzenga and Ehud Landau, a group of physicists and chemists from ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich have identified an unusual way to prevent water from forming ice crystals, so even at extreme sub-zero temperatures it retains the amorphous characteristics of a liquid.
In a first step, the researchers designed and synthesized a new class of lipids (fat molecules) to create a new form of “soft” biological matter known as a lipidic mesophase, by mixing those lipids with water. In the newly created material, the lipids spontaneously self-assemble and aggregate to form membranes. These membranes form a network of connected channels less than one nanometer in diameter. In this structure, there is no room in the narrow channels for water to form ice crystals, so it remains disordered even at extreme sub-zero temperatures. The lipids do not freeze either.
Using liquid helium, the researchers were able to cool a lipidic mesophase consisting of a chemically modified monoacylglycerol to a temperature as low as minus 263 degrees Celsius, which is a mere 10 degrees above the absolute zero temperature, and still no ice crystals formed. (1)
Water freezes at zero degrees.
Unless you mix it with something else.
But then, it is not water.
And it can freeze at lower temperatures.
Everything is what it is.
But it can change to something else.
At the end, all things freeze at the same temperature.
If they are the same.
Or at different. If they are not.
Nature doesn’t care.
In the deepest cold…
Under the heat of the summer sun…
There are no temperatures.
Just things which boil and freeze.
There are many paths inside the forest of existence.
Do you care about how Achilles will reach the turtle?
Possibilities.
There is nothing to compare anything with.
For everything is connected with everything.
And all measurements are just reflections in the mirror.
Potential.
At the end you will be in the clearing…
Only to realize that the clearing is you.
Consumed by fire.
Breathing cold air…
