Every human being has an all-encompassing relationship with water that spans their entire lifetime. Our bodies are 50% water. We drink water, bathe in it, and swim in it. We skate on it, snowboard on it, and have snowball fights with it. We can take its familiarity for granted.

On Earth, water is the simplest compound to understand. It's either liquid, solid, or gas, and by high school, most of us know it can be separated into its constituent atoms. But science reveals the strange truth about water ice. The Solar System contains some strange worlds with strange environments. For water to be water, it always has to have two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. But new research shows that under extreme pressure, water ice becomes a bewildering shape-shifter that leaves its molecular identity behind.

The research is titled " Evidence for symmetry-reduction in solid H2O above 222 GPa ," and is published in Communications Chemistry.…