That makes sense. It’s one water molecule, and it can’t move anywhere, even if it wanted to, so its state is always frozen.
it’s possible you could make an extremely shock resistant material this way.
Your premise seems correct, but water molecules are 2.7 Angstroms in size (1 nm = 10 Angstroms). I agree though, that they are very confined in this tiny space.
I’m just an Engineer, not a scientist, but that is exactly what I was thinking. Aren’t phases DEFINED by the amount of movement (energy) the molecules have? If you shove 8 molecules in a space where only 9 would fit, don’t you kind of define it? It seems from the article, that the vibration of the molecules is exactly what they are measuring... According to what I found, they are talking about a tube with the diameter of only about 3 water molecules.
(No flames, please, I’m just a mechanical-thinking guy. I don’t pretend to be an expert on such things...)