"electrical and thermal properties of ice while remaining stable at room temperature"
This sounds pretty amazing. My first thought was there has to be some sort of application toward air conditioning. However, then I started thinking that an even better place to start would be to find ways to utilize this in clean energy. The scale / complexity of production could probably be a non-starter, but (just as an example) if I can put ice into a body of water and more or less guarantee it will never return to water form, at a large enough scale it probably could have hydro-electric applications.
Forgive me if the idea appears somewhat naive. Please correct me if I'm wrong about this but, given that the "frozen" water exhibits thermal properties of ice, in theory couldn't a closed system be built to generate electricity given the constant displacement of water running through the system. By taking advantage of the constant cycle of temperature variations within the system?
EDIT: Just looked it up, it appears difference in weight between 4 deg C and 21 deg C (1 ft^3 of water) is a little more than 1/10th of 1 lb.
Don't get me wrong. I agree with the laws of thermodynamics :) , but just like we exploit a "closed loop" / "seemingly perpetual" system between the moon and the oceans, or flowing rivers, couldn't there exist other "closed loop" systems? After all, on the scale of a human life that closed loop system (between moon and oceans) is, for all practical purposes, perpetual.
The quote "thermal properties of ice" is part of the line:
> And the finding might lead to new applications — such as, essentially, ice-filled wires — that take advantage of the unique electrical and thermal properties of ice while remaining stable at room temperature.
This tidbit of Science Journalism reads like a whimsical fantasy of the writer of the article after a cursory read of the abstract, rather than a statement of fact by the authors of the paper. It's important to differentiate these types of phrases when reading this sort of article.
The "thermal properties" here do not seem to actually include the temperature; they're heating it up to measure the melting point of the ice they form. There's no indication that it spontaneously changes temperature when exposed to this physical phenomenon, nor that the ice remains solid when returned to the liquid water, nor that the process generates a constant flow. If these things happened, I would definitely expect the paper to focus on that application.
More generally, any idea which would violate the laws of thermodynamics should probably be dismissed as a misunderstanding of the system. It's good to be curious, but you should also be skeptical.
