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Icy stars reveal the secret of their patterns Some physicists gaze at the stars in the sky, but Victor Tsai of Harvard University and John Wettlaufer of Yale University in the US gaze at the stars on frozen lakes. Such star patterns often surround holes in ice, but the origin of their shape has always been a mystery. Now, by modelling their formation, the researchers have discovered that the shape is governed by the properties of the snow that covers the ice (Phys. Rev. E 75 066105).
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