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Comment by gaudat | Hacker News Reader

Say no to clickbait media. The paper quoted in the article is https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq2105

In fairness, a reputable newspaper summarising an academic article for a general audience is not "clickbait". For most people, "the compression of MDA at low temperature leads to a sharp increase of its recrystallization enthalpy, highlighting that H2O can be a high-energy geophysical material" (that's just from the abstract) is not really accessible.

In this case, the article isn't even open access.

>a high-energy geophysical material

Is there some heat of fusion delta from "regular" ice that means this can store a large amount of energy?

From article:

"But compressing MDA and then releasing the pressure and heating it released a large burst of energy.

That energy, released as the amorphous ice recrystallizes, could set off icequakes, for example."

Probably not large, but enough to melt some surrounding normal ice? Or causes material to expand rapidly by several percent?

"Clickbait" as a term is mostly a lazy putdown that needs to die unless it's something in the vein of "5 amazing facts about $X, you won't believe #3."

Newspapers and articles (and book titles) have been using headlines to hook readers since before there were clicks and there's really nothing wrong with wanting to engage an audience. Not everything is "just the facts."

This headline still feels like click bait to me. They've just swapped in "something new" for what might have been "this." At the very least, it doesn't really summarize anything about the conclusion but leaves you unable to decide if the article is interesting enough for your time without further reading. Headlines should generally give you information ("Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg"), and help you decide whether you want to read the full story.

Headline styles vary. Look at a print version of The Economist for example. The subhead/dek does tend to be a summary but the actual hed is often some sort of clever wordplay.

The phrase "transformed it into something never before seen" is pretty sus. They made ice... into more different ice. It's not like they made it into iridescent smoke or something.

A more honest headline would be something like "Researchers succeed in creating a new kind of amorphous ice". Not as exciting? Too bad! That's because it isn't as exciting as the misleading thing.

Having a grad degree in material science I personally understand the distinction between amorphous and crystalline ice and might find that headline intriguing. I suspect it would be a turnoff for the average Times reader.

Do you find the times article bait and switch? My reading was it is something never seen before, and I found it interesting and exciting and the properties discussed seemed unique (the pressure+heat=lots of energy particularly). But as an expert in the field, is the headline over stating the result to entice clicks?

>Do you find the times article bait and switch?

No.

It's accurate if unspecific. The dek is also a good teaser. "medium-density amorphous ice" is mentioned in the photo caption at the top. And the lede is both clever and summarizes things at a layman's level.

I'm not really an expert on ice. My thesis advisor is but I actually worked on Nickel Aluminides though that branch of my thesis advisor's work never ended up really going anywhere. But this seems like a very reasonable (and readable) article for a mainstream audience on the topic.

Sure. I might like to see some phase diagrams, etc. but I don't expect that in a newspaper.

Same (though, my physics background is much weaker than yours). However, I'm mad about two things in the headline and lay-article. The headline says "shaken hard" and the image caption says "obtained by putting ice in a bowl with steel balls." The article is clear, they put ice in a ball mill. They ground the ice up at low temperature. They didn't just shake it, they didn't just put ice and steel in a bowl. Jeez.

I'll grant that the whole shaken not stirred thing is probably overplayed. But it's all reasonable enough overall for a mainstream newspaper.

There's another piece of science journalism on the front page right now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34677306. The headline and the article are laughably far removed from the actual experimental finding. But it sounds so modern and brain-sciencey.

Sure, but you will concede that both the ordinary and the shaking are largely inaccurate , like everyone at home makes ice with liquid nitrogen and then can shake it with steel balls at 20 Hz.

>a reputable newspaper

Hardly.

General audience summary by a university involved in this research from last week, posted 3 days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34646625

Wait, are implying to say no to the venerable New York Times? Did you not know that this is a "newspaper of record" with "all news that fit to print"?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com