This process, known as frost
heave, can literally destroy highways with the forces of upheaval - water sucked
up then accumulating as ice near the surface, powered by the gap in temperatures
between the cold surface and the warmer soil below.
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**Under Ongoing Reconstructive
Surgery - Please disregard!**
We are often told that frost heave is a
process arising from the expansion of water as it freezes into ice. True, water expands
as it freezes - and it is uncommon to most matter to respond to cooling by
expansion. But the process of frost heave is far more complex, but deeply more
telling.
A crowd swells as people stream in from
all directions to some place of interest. If the place of interest is a concert,
the members of the audience will expend great amounts of time and energy to
afford the ticket; and a change of time, energy and distance will be
required to locate oneself at the event horizon. After all these
energy-draining expenditures, the crowd will have accumulated - colonizing in
this one place in a process strikingly similar the formation of an ice
lens.
"Cool" makes for a big
"draw".
An ice lens begins as water molecules,
powered by a difference between soil and surface temperatures, migrate towards
the freezing front, a zone below the surface of the soil where the
temperature is cold enough freeze water. Over what is often relatively great
distances these molecules flow to spend their thermal energy, eventually
freezing in place in an ice lens. Compounding this, the ice develops a concave
curve where it meets the water, resulting in a suction - a draw - that becomes
self-perpetuating. Chemistry, naturally, plays a part, as there is energy and
various molecules about.
But these molecules are travelling
upwards - this appears rather contradictory.
Indeed it is. Battling gravity, the
water molecules are powered by a difference in temperature that will often
disappear or reverse itself in the spring. On melting, the ice lens will begin
trickling back downwards as water once again - what was downwards
thermodynamically is now upwards thermodynamically. Frost heave shows us
that "up" and "down" are both relative and impermanent.
A hollow basement wall, with its top
exposed and its inner face insulated, will literally bend the field
of ice lenses that form in the soil outside. "Down", in this case, is
toward the surface and towards the wall, which is perpendicular to the surface.
If the wall were uninsulated, the cold air within would be warmed enough
to prevent freezing, and the ice lenses would form parallel to the surface, as
is normal. One bends the ice lens formation back into a plane simply by making
the basement behave like the warmer surrounding soil, and not the cooler outside
air.
In the science of cryogenics, when
freezing an organ for later transplant one must bear in mind the formation of
ice lenses as well. But instead of forming along a plane, or a mere bending of a
plane at a right angle, the ice lenses actually wrap around an entire
three-dimensional surface. "Up", it this case, is
"in".
One can imagine this by picturing the
entire planet tossed into winter at the same time. Now imagine if our planet
rotated so slowly that night was winter and day was summer.
Finally, imagine a planet so small and porous as to allow the meltwater to flow
from the thawed side to the ice lenses forming on the cold side. It is for this
reason that thawing a frozen organ for transplant must be very careful and even.
If it is thawed improperly, new ice lenses may form, uncontrolled, rupturing
more cells and destroying the organ. "Up" thermodynamically, in this
case, is reversed, becoming "out".
Up, down, in and out
are all a merely matters of perspective. A change of energy or perspective will
convert up into down, or in into out. One can move up
to a given city, or down to the same city. One can move out to the
country, or get a place in the country. As water molecules move out
of the soil and into an ice lens, they may travel up or down
gravitationally.
*[One can imagine electrons in an
electric circuit or sand falling in an hourglass doing much the same - moving
from energetically higher places to energetically lower places. It's only
natural though - if you don't have any energy, it's hard to go anywhere
(...and if you don't have any money, either!).]
