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> Dumb question: What does `ice' in `ice-9' stand for? > ANother: What's the `9' for? 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