Howling:"Molten Ice?"

The Howling → "Molten Ice?"

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OK, I might not be a professional chemist/physicist, but the "molten ice" in Planet of the Daleks seems... sketchy, to say the least, if we're supposed to believe that it's a variation on the traditional, H₂O-based ice. After all, a "molten" variation of that ice is already common on Earth - we call it WATER. So, in order for the story to make a lick of sense, are we supposed to assume that the "molten ice" on Spiridon is another type of chemical that is liquid at sub-zero temperatures, like liquid nitrogen, or is it just a new state of matter that water can take that is currently unknown to modern science? Dr. Anonymous1 ☎ 14:11, May 25, 2014 (UTC)

Dr. Anonymous1: Since I happen to know the HTML tag for subscripting, I've taken the liberty of formatting your H₂O properly. I hope you don't mind this breach of the "don't edit other people's contributions" rule.

I'm not a professional chemist/physicist, either, but I do know that supercooled water -- water that's still liquid well below its freezing temperature -- is possible, under certain conditions. It doesn't behave like the stuff in Planet of the Daleks, though. It tends to solidify very suddenly (& very thoroughly), as soon as it's even slightly disturbed.

The best bet for the "molten ice" in this story is, I think, something different & not (yet) known to us.

It was shown as being much more viscous than liquid water, although nowhere near as viscous as ice (although even ice does flow in glaciers). It behaves as if it's intermediate between liquid water & solid ice. I don't have either the physics or the chemistry to be sure this is a plausible explanation but, just from what's shown in the story, I'd be inclined to say it's some kind of gel. (Dictionary definition: Physical Chemistry. a semirigid colloidal dispersion of a solid with a liquid or gas, as jelly, glue, etc.) If both the solid & the liquid components were H₂O, we'd be getting close to what we need. We could postulate some chemical impurity that interfered with the normal freezing (i.e., with the hydrogen bonds between the molecules), so that enough of the water remained liquid to allow it to form a gel with the portion of it that did solidify.

What we really need is a knowlegeable physical chemist with a good imagination who's also enough of a DW fan to spend time & effort working out how the stuff might actually work! Any takers? --89.241.223.0^{talk to me} 17:11, May 25, 2014 (UTC)

In episode 3, Taron calls it an allotrope of ice, defining it as "a form of ice that never gets hard". In episode 5, the Doctor notes that "it's an odd phenomena, the water on this planet. It sustains sub-zero temperatures and yet remains semi-liquid." Doug86 ☎ 21:51, May 25, 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps on this planet there is some naturally occurring anti-freeze that is so common that it can effect all of the "water" on the planet.Phil Stone ☎ 23:27, June 1, 2014 (UTC)

The idea of an "anti-freeze" -- an impurity that interfered with normal freezing -- is more plausible than a straight allotrope. An allotrope wouldn't be found on only one planet. What is (or, at least, might be) possible is that the "anti-freeze" changed the structure enough to produce something very like a new allotrope, under the right physical circumstances. --89.241.222.211^{talk to me} 03:46, June 2, 2014 (UTC)