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Fossils From Animals And Plants Are Not Necessary For Crude Oil And Natural Gas, Swedish Researchers FindResearchers in Sweden have managed to prove that fossils from animals and plants are not necessary for crude oil and natural gas to be generated. The findings are revolutionary since this means, on the one hand, that it will be much easier to find these sources of energy and, on the other hand, that they can be found all over the globe.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Sep 2009 | 3:00 pm Shining A Light On Disease: Tracking Light-emitting Bacteria During InfectionBy attaching light-emitting genes to infectious bacteria in an experimental system, researchers in Ireland have been able to track where in the body the bacteria go -- giving an insight into the path of the infection process leading to the development of more targeted treatmentsSource: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Sep 2009 | 3:00 pm Groups Are Key To Good HealthThe quality of a person's social life could have an even greater impact than diet and exercise on their health and well-being. There is growing evidence that being a member of a social group can significantly reduce the risk of conditions like stroke, dementia and even the common cold. New research highlights the importance of belonging to a range of social groups, of hanging onto social groups, and of building new social groups in dealing with life changes.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Sep 2009 | 3:00 pm Genes Identified May Help Breast Cancer DiagnosisResearchers have identified two genes which may help improve the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer patients. They found that the survival rate for patients with a low expression of a gene known as Fau, a tumour suppressor, is twice as bad as for people with normal levels, while a high expression of cancer-causing gene MELK has a similar effect.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Sep 2009 | 3:00 pm Safe Seed: Researchers Yielding Good Results On Food Cotton In FieldField trials of a new cotton are verifying previous lab and greenhouse studies indicating the crop could become a source of protein for millions of malnourished people in the world. The cotton was engineered so that the toxic gossypol is reduced to tolerable levels in the high-protein seed but remain at higher levels in the rest of the plant to ward off pests and disease.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Sep 2009 | 3:00 pm The Buzz On An Amazing New Mosquito Repellent: Will It Fly?After searching for more than 50 years, scientists finally have discovered a number of new mosquito repellents that beat DEET, the gold standard for warding off those pesky, sometimes disease-carrying insects. The stuff seems like a dream come true. It makes mosquitoes buzz off three times longer than DEET, the active ingredient in many of today's bug repellents. It does not have the unpleasant odor of DEET. And it does not cause DEET's sticky-skin sensation.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Sep 2009 | 3:00 pm Common Viral Infection In Infants May Persist Long-term In Central Nervous SystemA new study suggests that coxsackievirus, a significant human pathogen that commonly infects the central nervous system of newborns, may persist in the body as a low-level, long-term infection causing ongoing inflammatory lesions. This discovery disputes previous beliefs that while acute, coxsackievirus is also self-limiting.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Sep 2009 | 9:00 am Children With Fatter Midsections At Increased Risk For Cardiovascular Disease, Study FindsChildren with more fat around their midsections could be at a higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease later in life, researchers say.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Sep 2009 | 9:00 am Aging Muscles: 'Hard To Build, Easy To Lose'Have you ever noticed that people have thinner arms and legs as they get older? As we age it becomes harder to keep our muscles healthy. They get smaller, which decreases strength and increases the likelihood of falls and fractures. New research is showing how this happens -- and what to do about it.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Sep 2009 | 9:00 am Intelligent Crutch With Sensors To Monitor UsageA forearm crutch which incorporates sensor technology to monitor whether it is being used correctly has been developed by engineers.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Sep 2009 | 9:00 am The Nation's weather (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Sep 2009 | 4:12 am Water deal eludes Calif lawmakers at session's end (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Sep 2009 | 2:56 am Shuttle astronauts prepare for Texas homecoming (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Sep 2009 | 2:30 am Space shuttle Discovery lands safely in California (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Sep 2009 | 12:09 am Calif. debates high standard for renewable energy (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Sep 2009 | 11:21 pm US space shuttle returns to EarthNasa's space shuttle Discovery lands in California, after bad weather made a Florida landing impossible.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Sep 2009 | 10:04 pm Shuttle Discovery home safely after 14-day missionEDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, California (Reuters) - The space shuttle Discovery landed safely in California on Friday after bad weather forced a switch of its touchdown site at the end of a two-week mission to the International Space Station.Source: Reuters: Science News | 11 Sep 2009 | 9:50 pm Two Genes May Determine How Well MS Patients Do (HealthDay)HealthDay - FRIDAY, Sept. 11 (HealthDay News) -- Two genes in mice have been linked to improvements in the body's ability to repair itself when afflicted with multiple sclerosis, potentially leading to more effective treatments, a U.S. scientist reports.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Sep 2009 | 9:49 pm Space Shuttle Discovery Lands Safely in California (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - HOUSTON - Space shuttle Discovery returned safely to Earth Friday evening, landing in California after being diverted due to rain showers over Florida.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Sep 2009 | 7:15 pm Super-Dense Frozen Water Breaks Final Ice Frontier
Scientists have created the final predicted form of stable ice, called ice XV, in the lab. But don’t worry — Kurt Vonnegut had nothing to do with it, and the exotic new form of ice can’t destroy civilization.
“We have removed the question mark from the phase diagram of water,” says Christoph Salzmann of the University of Oxford in England, coauthor of a paper published online September 2 in Physical Review Letters. A phase diagram maps how molecules will behave at certain pressures and temperatures.
Earlier predictions guessed that ice XV might be ferroelectric, possessing the ability to carry a charge. Ice with that property could have had interesting effects on geological events on planets, Salzmann says. Instead, water molecules in ice XV pack in such a way that the charges all cancel out. Ice XV’s stability at high pressures and low temperatures may allow it to exist somewhere out in the cosmos—maybe in deep interiors of icy planets or moons, Salzmann says. The only places on Earth with high enough pressure to sustain ice XV are also extremely hot, so ice XV can’t form there, he says. Ice IX, made fictionally famous by Vonnegut in Cat’s Cradle, also exists only under high pressure. Images: 1) Flickr/darrenhester. 2) Ice XV structure. / Christoph Salzmann See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 11 Sep 2009 | 6:19 pm Space Shuttle Discovery Glides HomeSpace shuttle Discovery and its seven astronauts lands safely in California.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Sep 2009 | 5:35 pm When someone is raised female and the genes say XY (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Sep 2009 | 5:04 pm SLIDE SHOW: The Week's Top StoriesTake a look at the past week's top news in the Flashback Slide Show.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Sep 2009 | 4:35 pm Extinct Eagle May Have Hunted HumansComputer scans of an ancient, giant raptor reveal that it may have preyed on people.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Sep 2009 | 4:35 pm Life in the Dark: How Organisms Survived Asteroid ImpactsNew studies of mixotrophic algae have shown how such organisms could survive the darkened skies that follow a major asteroid impact.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Sep 2009 | 4:33 pm German ships blaze Arctic trailTwo German merchant ships negotiate the North East passage in the Russian Arctic, which was ice-bound until recently.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Sep 2009 | 3:45 pm A Truly Cosmic BurritoAstronauts use eggs, cheese, salsa and of course tortillas.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Sep 2009 | 3:38 pm Hurricane Fred now tropical storm, seen fading out (Reuters)Reuters - Hurricane Fred weakened to a tropical storm in the eastern Atlantic on Friday and forecasters expected it to fade in the coming days.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Sep 2009 | 3:22 pm NASA Picks Site to Search for Water on MoonNASA will crash a rocket motor into the lunar surface in an attempt to find water.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Sep 2009 | 3:15 pm Archaeologists find early depiction of a menorah (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Sep 2009 | 3:07 pm Universal ‘Death Stench’ Repels Bugs of All Types
Next time you’re faced with a serious bug infestation, you might try spraying your house with eau-de-death. Scientists have discovered that insects from cockroaches to caterpillars all emit the same stinky blend of fatty acids when they die, and this sinister stench sends bugs of all kinds running for their lives. Biologist David Rollo of McMaster University in Canada made this morbid discovery while studying the social behavior of cockroaches. When a roach locates a great new abode (like your kitchen cupboard), it gives off a chemical signal to attract its cockroach friends. To determine the chemical composition of these pheromones, Rollo and his team started crushing dead cockroaches and spreading around their body juice. “It was amazing to find that the cockroaches avoided places treated with these extracts like the plague,” Rollo said in a press release. “Naturally, we wanted to identify what chemical was making them all go away.” Of course, there was nothing to do but grind up more bugs. The team found that their concoction repelled not just cockroaches, but ants, catepillars, woodlice and pillbugs. And even though they’re technically crustaceans rather than insects, dead woodlice and pill bugs produced the same set of fatty acids as the other animals. Insects and crustaceans diverged from each other 400 million years ago, so the researchers think their death mix represents a universal, ancient warning signal. “Recognizing and avoiding the dead could reduce the chances of catching the disease,” Rollo said in the release, “or allow you to get away with just enough exposure to activate your immunity.” The researchers published their findings in this month’s edition of Evolutionary Biology. The scientists hope the right concoction of death smells might protect crops against pesky invaders. For instance, a log treated with the fatty acids repelled wood beetles in a forest for a full month. Thankfully, human noses can’t detect the fatty acid extracts. “Not like the rotting of corpses that occurs later and is detectable from great distances,” Rollo wrote in an e-mail. “I’ve tried smelling papers treated with them and don’t smell anything strong and certainly not repellent.” Image: Flickr/bensheldon. Note: This photo was chosen from a disturbingly large volume of dead cockroach images on Flickr. See Also:
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Source: Wired: Wired Science | 11 Sep 2009 | 2:34 pm Science NationScience for the People: Surprising discoveries and fascinating researchers.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Sep 2009 | 2:00 pm Japanese Quake TestIn Miki, Japan, a six-story wooden model condominium was shaken by the equivalent of a 7.5 magnitude earthquake. The test was said to be the largest simulated earthquake ever attempted with a wooden structure.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Sep 2009 | 1:57 pm Predicting Extraterrestrial WeatherModel developed to help track weather on other planets.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Sep 2009 | 1:50 pm New Extrasolar System Allows Planetary ‘X-Ray’
The discovery of two extrasolar planets orbiting the star HAT-P-13 will allow scientists to use one of them to “x-ray” the other to determine if it’s got a rocky core. Astronomers plan to use a large outer planet, HAT-P-13C, that transits the face of its sun, to probe the internal structure of the smaller HAT-P-13B. As the two planets pull on each other, they warp each other’s orbits. By measuring how eccentric the orbits of the planets are, they can use some fancy, old-school math to determine how much of the interior planet’s mass is located at its center. It’s like a planetary laboratory 700 light-years away. “C is allowing us to look inside B,” said Greg Loughlin, an astronomer at University of California, Santa Cruz, and co-author of the paper submitted to the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters. “X-raying the planet taps into these esoteric theories that were worked out in the 1930s, but hadn’t been picked up by the extrasolar planet community.” The new system, and the technique for analyzing it, reflect a growing trend in exoplanetology towards looking at extrasolar planetary systems, not just individual planets. Just this week, astronomers reported the first tentative sighting of an exomoon. Astronomers are excited about those because although we know 374 exoplanets, all 30 of the planets in the habitable zones around their stars are uninhabitable gas giants. But the moons encircling these planets could, like Jupiter’s moon Titan or Saturn’s Enceladus, be good candidates for some form of life. More and better observations of exoplanet-bearing stars combined with creative techniques for analyzing those systems are yielding fascinating new results. Each discovery tells us more about solar systems in general, which lets us understand how our own remote outpost of the Milky Way is special (or not so special).
Even planets that we know relatively well, like WASP-17B and HAT-P-7B, hold surprises. Both planets are actually orbiting against the direction of their stars’ spin. Scientists call that retrograde orbit, and the idea that a planet could do it is kind of shocking. Generally, it had been assumed that solar systems were like ours, forming from a single rotating disc of dust and gas, until gravity sorted things into their present configuration. “Right now, we have an extremely interesting observation to explain,” Gaspar Bakos, who studies exoplanets at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said of HAT-P-7B. Bakos, himself, is responsible for the recent observation of HAT-P-13, and many others. He is one of the next generation of planet hunters that is following up on the work of pioneers like Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley. They are redesigning the tools of the astronomical trade for a pursuit that’s very different from the search for dark matter or the first structures in the universe. While Marcy used the “wobble” in a star’s orbit caused by its orbiting planets, Bakos has been looking for planets that we can see pass in front of their stars. While it’s tougher to find these planets because they have to be precisely aligned with us earthlings, researchers can determine a lot about the stars once they’ve been spotted. Most fundamentally, because Bakos is measuring the dimming of the star’s light when the planet crosses its face, they can figure out the surface area of the planet. The bigger the planet, the more dimming that occurs. He’s built a fleet of six small, robotic telescopes, four of which he’s deployed in Arizona and two in Hawaii. They were developed based on a telescope concept from Polish astronomer, Greg Pojmanski, and advanced to their current state with the help of three amateur astronomers Bakos met at the Hungarian Amateur Astronomer Association. The HATNet telescopes — HAT stands for Hungarian-made Automated Telescopes — are about the size of a doghouse and, Bakos said, “would fit in the trunk of a car.” (One installation is pictured at the top of this article.) The doghouse telescopes are a far cry from existing monster telescopes like Keck, or any of the planned extremely large telescopes. Their dimensions and costs are modest. “To look at and examine many bright stars in the sky, there is a suitable instrument and it’s not necessarily big. There was a black period — the medieval ages of the ’90s — when they used to shut down everything that was a small telescope, ” Bakos said. “They were blinded by the science that big science and big telescopes bring, like detecting a quasar.” The study of exoplanets, in bringing exciting science back from the edges of the universe, is allowing scientists to put a greater variety of tools to use. But it’s not just what the telescopes are looking at that’s changed. What the robotic HATNet lacks in hardware size, it makes up for with software intelligence. “You need very intense software work that probably does not differ from that of the big telescopes,” he said. “We have a fairly good software pipeline. It’s a lot of extraordinary-type work.” And that’s exactly what you’d expect in the search for extrasolar planets. Images: 1. A HATNet telescope being installed at FLWO/Gaspar Bakos. 2. A moonlit night at a HATNet installation/Gaspar Bakos. See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 11 Sep 2009 | 1:28 pm Earliest Menora Depiction FoundArchaeologists find the earliest depictions of a menorah in Jerusalem.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Sep 2009 | 12:55 pm World's Oldest Woman Dies at 115The oldest person in the world, Gertrude Baines, died at 115, according to news reports. She was 115.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Sep 2009 | 12:22 pm WATCH: Coughing Robot Spews 'Flu Germs'A coughing robot shows James Williams just how far germs can travel.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Sep 2009 | 12:15 pm BIG PIC: 9-11 in RemembranceRemembering 9-11 with a rare perspective of that day's tragedies.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Sep 2009 | 11:55 am Smell of Death Is AncientA new study of cockroaches and other creatures find the smell of death goes way back.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Sep 2009 | 11:47 am Deep-Sea Robot Roves the Unexplored Ocean Depths
While Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity get all the press, there’s another intrepid robot venturing where human scientists can’t: The Benthic Rover, a robot that crawls along the ocean floor, has just completed its first month-long mission. About the size of a compact car, the new robot carries equipment to measure the amount of oxygen being consumed by organisms on the ocean floor, as well as the amount of food that filters down from surface waters. For the first time, scientists will be able to track how changes on the surface of the ocean affect marine communities down below. “What’s special about the rover is that we will be able to have a long-term presence in the deep ocean, collecting data that shows seasonal changes or changes over a period of years,” said engineer Alana Sherman of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, who led the team of engineers that built the robot. For the past two decades, MBARI researchers have been collecting data on marine snow, which is the nutrient-rich debris that filters down through the ocean and ends up on the sea floor. They’ve observed distinct differences in the pattern of the deep-sea food supply depending on changes in climate, and now, with the Benthic Rover, the scientists plan to study how climate change is affecting organisms living in the mud in the deepest reaches of the ocean. “What we now know is that there are definite changes after 20 years; we can see climate-induced changes in the food supply,” said MBARI marine biologist Ken Smith, chief scientist on the project. “We’re hoping to be able to measure sediment community processes with the same resolution, and then we can relate it to climate variables that we can get from satellite data.”
In July, the Benthic Rover took its longest voyage yet, spending a month crawling across the muddy ocean floor about 25 miles off the coast of California. Based on its initial success, the robot will now be sent on longer and longer missions, reaching depths up to 4,000 meters (about 2.5 miles) below the surface. After it combs the California coast, MBARI researchers hope to send the rover to Antarctica to study how the receding seasonal ice pack is affecting deep sea life. Powered by 96 alkaline-D batteries, the Rover can operate with little or no direction from scientists during its missions. But for this summer’s expedition, researchers connected the vehicle to the newly-completed underwater observatory, called the Monterey Accelerated Research System (MARS). “What was really great about this deployment was that we were able to identify and fix problems pretty much immediately,” Sherman said, “versus when we normally deploy the rover, it’s not connected to anything. We throw it overboard, let it sink to the bottom and maybe come back three weeks later to pick it up. If there was some bug in the code, it might be a show-stopper.”
To study deep-sea life, the robot uses two experimental chambers called “benthic respirometers,” which are essentially upside-down buckets that periodically bury themselves in the mud. By sealing off a small section of sea-floor sediment and monitoring changes in its oxygen concentration, scientists can calculate how much energy deep-sea organisms are consuming. A separate optical sensor measures how much food has has recently settled on the ocean floor using a blue light that causes the chlorophyll in marine algae to fluoresce. While its respirometers are designed to dig into the ocean bottom, the rest of the 3,000-pound robot had to be carefully engineered to avoid getting stuck in the mud. To cut down on drag, the researchers attached large foam pads to the sides of the vehicle, which reduce the Rover’s effective weight in seawater to about 100 pounds. They also cut off the tops of two push brooms and bolted them to the sides of the vehicle, to keep the treads from piling up mud and contaminating the scientific measurements. “It’s very hard to have a sustained presence in the deep ocean,” Sherman said. “For a vehicle that’s meant to be out for six months, if one screw corroded and leaked, there would be risk of it not coming back.” Images and video: (c) 2009 MBARI. See Also:
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Source: Wired: Wired Science | 11 Sep 2009 | 11:11 am Blow it Up: This Glass Can Take ItUniversity of Missouri researchers are developing and testing a new type of blast-resistant glass that will be thinner, lighter and less vulnerable to small-scale explosions.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Sep 2009 | 11:11 am Oldest Fibers Date Back to Stone AgeFiber technology first emerged in hunter-gatherer societies 32,000 years ago.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Sep 2009 | 10:55 am 7 Thoughts That Are Bad For YouSome personality quirks could take a toll on our health.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Sep 2009 | 10:43 am New Glass Resists Small ExplosionsNew glass design is thin, light and can withstand explosions.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Sep 2009 | 10:38 am Screen burnThe future of television goes on showSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Sep 2009 | 10:25 am In picturesEnvironmental photographer of the yearSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Sep 2009 | 10:02 am Japan Launches Cargo Craft to Space StationJapan launches its first unmanned cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Sep 2009 | 9:30 am BLOG: Tracking the Beatles Across the UniverseSince NASA transmitted a Beatles song to the North Star, how far has it traveled?Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Sep 2009 | 8:00 am The latest vibes from the British Science FestivalSue Nelson reports from the British Science FestivalSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Sep 2009 | 7:19 am U.S. scientists levitate mice to study low gravityLOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have succeeded in levitating mice, a feat that they say could lead to advances in treating bone loss for astronauts living for extended periods in low gravity environments.Source: Reuters: Science News | 11 Sep 2009 | 6:23 am Rare petrel photographed for first timeResearchers lured the critically endangered bird, which had never been positively identified at sea, by throwing frozen fish into waters 25 miles south of Fiji's Gau island A group of researchers in Fiji has captured for the first time images of the endangered and elusive Fiji petrel. Scientists photographed the chocolate-coloured sea bird soaring above the ocean about 25 miles south of Fiji's remote island of Gau in May, according to the UK conservation group BirdLife International. The researchers' findings were described in a paper published in this week's Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club. "Finding this bird and capturing such images was a fantastic and exhilarating experience," the paper's lead author, Hadoram Shirihai, said in a statement. The bird is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which compiles the world's red list of endangered species. The first Fiji petrel specimen was collected in 1855 on Gau, and a second not until 1984. Since then, there have been a handful of reports of birds crashing into houses on Gau, but no one had ever positively identified one at sea, the researchers said. The finding is significant because there is so little information about the bird, said Nicholas Carlile, sea bird project officer with the New South Wales state Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water in Australia. Carlile has studied the Fiji petrel for years and began to hunt for the animal's breeding ground in 2003. Despite all his research, even he has never seen one of the elusive birds. "There has been no positive sighting of the Fiji petrel at sea – it's very rare," Carlile said. "So it was absolutely fantastic to see those images." The researchers threw blocks of frozen fish pieces mixed with dense fish oil into the water, creating a smelly slick that attracted the birds. The scientists spotted up to eight petrels over their 11-day expedition. Expedition member Dick Watling of the conservation group NatureFiji-MareqetiViti said more surveys to locate the birds' breeding area are planned for next year. "Once we know the location, we can assess what needs to be done to turn around the fortunes of this species," he said. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 11 Sep 2009 | 5:46 am 'Lost seabird' returns to oceanThe extremely rare Fiji petrel is spotted at sea in its natural habitat, for the first time, by scientists.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Sep 2009 | 4:06 am Counting downLeading industry figure argues for a UK space agencySource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Sep 2009 | 3:28 am Singing the same tune: birds that evolved almost identical songsTwo species of songbird in Peru have evolved almost identical songs to keep each other out of their territory, say scientists.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Sep 2009 | 3:09 am
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To create the elusive ice, Salzmann and his colleagues dropped the temperature on another kind of ice, ice VI, in which water molecules are bonded to each other willy-nilly. As the researchers lowered the temperature to 130 kelvins (around -143º Celsius) and held the pressure around one gigapascal (almost 10,000 atmospheres), disordered hydrogen bonds in ice VI snapped into a highly ordered, tight conformation and created ice XV. Ice on Earth is downright fluffy in comparison with the newly discovered ice XV.
