Lord knows why Guile's ice-9 is called ice-9, but I suspect it has
something to do with the "seed of doom called ice-nine" that Kurt
Vonnegut describes in "Cat's Cradle" (strange coincidence, but I
happen to have a copy in my desk). It's a form of H20 ice that is
solid at room temperature. Basically - a doomsday form of
ice. Letting it loose on the world would be really bad. There actually
are alternate packings of ice. This is from American Scientist
<http://www.sigmaxi.org/amsci/issues/Sciobs96/Sciobs96-09Ice.html>:
It turns out that there are several forms of H2O ice. The
garden-variety ice that most of us are familiar with (in ice cubes
and snowflakes) is called "ice I" (read "ice one"). But other forms
of ice can be made by squeezing water molecules together so tightly
that they are forced to stack together in novel (non-ice-I)
ways. To date, scientists have come up with about a dozen ways that
water molecules can form ice. The two latest additions--ice XI and
ice XII-were described in the past few months (Physical Review
Letters April 15, 1996, and Physical Review B April 1, 1996). Both
new forms of ice have been predicted using molecular-dynamics
simulations of interacting water molecules. In effect, computers
are being used as virtual-ice-making machines.
AG
--
Anthony Green Cygnus Solutions
Sunnyvale, California