Ice

Ice build-up can pose a problem for roads, aircraft, wind turbines and power lines, among many other things. Now scientists have developed a new structure made of copper nanowires that can passively de-ice surfaces with an efficacy of close to 100%.

While it's nice to have ice cubes available for cold drinks on hot outings, bags of store-bought ice often melt too quickly and take up cooler space. The Evo Icer offers an alternative, in the form of a portable battery-powered ice cube maker.

The igloo is an ingenious form of winter shelter, but building one in the traditional fashion definitely takes some skill. That's where the Inland Iglu comes in, as it allows users to build an approximation of an igloo using their garden hose.

Ice on roads isn't a good thing, but neither are the eco-unfriendly chloride-based salts used to melt it. Scientists have developed a greener and more effective alternative, however, that could be mixed into the asphalt and remain active for years.

Ice and water aren't very exciting to most of us, but they’re super strange from a scientific standpoint. Researchers have now discovered a brand new type of ice that’s described as being a true “snapshot” of water, and may be found on alien worlds.

In most hotels, if the temperature dropped to -5 °C inside the room, there would be complaints made to the front desk, but that's the whole point of Sweden's Icehotel. The annual attraction is now open and is defined by amazing ice sculpted art.

Plastic straws are the poster child of waste, but alternatives also have issues. A start-up called The Ice Guys is crowdfunding an intriguing solution that fights the plastic boogeyman and keeps your drinks cool at the same time – the Ice Straw.

In addition to rising air temperatures and warming waters, Arctic’s sea ice also has hostile weather conditions to contend with, and new analysis of an extreme event earlier this year suggests it may be more vulnerable to these than we thought.

Antarctica isn’t exactly the type of place you’d expect to be teeming with life, but a newly published study suggests the frigid environment at the end of the world may be a little more hospitable than it seems.

The Soviet Union launched the Sputnik 1 satellite in 1957. Fast forward to 2022, and we are now launching more than a thousand satellites each year, propelling the field of Earth science into unprecedented terrain.

Among the many mechanisms shaping the Antarctic ice sheet are the processes playing out in its lower layers, and a newly discovered sub-glacial river suggests it may drain away faster than we thought.

Engineers at the University of Houston have put forward a new solution to keep planes ice-free, developing an ice-shedding surface coating they say is 100 times stronger than other state-of-the-art materials.