In the photo: On the left, the approximate location of the bag and jar of ice in the freezer at the time of the icicle discovery.

On the right, for better visibility, I moved the jar in the freezer to the others.

Science in the kitchen.

I periodically pour water into plastic jars and put them in the freezer, so that I can then select a piece of ice and put it in pots with plants – meltwater, according to some experts, stimulates the growth and development of plants. (See “Meltwater” and “Mysterious pictures”)

The other day I did a procedure that I’ve been doing for years. Today I took out one of the jars, exactly the same as the others, and saw in it an icicle appendage that spontaneously rose at an angle upwards. (See photo)

This has NEVER happened and, in theory, it should not have happened.

Usually, the ice in the middle of the jar bulged slightly upward, because the freezing of water is accompanied by an increase in the volume of ice and its volumetric expansion.

But what if such an arrow-shaped icicle suddenly grew out of the ice? It’s completely incomprehensible!

I came up with a reason: The jar was standing next to the plastic wrapper of a loaf of bread and accidentally the end of the bag touched the water. When freezing, the ice “crawled” up the bag.

Is it plausible?

Yes.

But wrong!

Since the ice would have to freeze to the bag and I would choose a bag from the freezer along with a jar!

The icicle had no physical contact with the bag.

By the way, there were several more jars in the freezer at the same time, and there were no such “heaving” icicles in them!

The new idea may also be wrong, but I couldn’t think of anything better:

The air in the freezer at minus thirteen degrees is very dry. Streams of cold air during the freezing process could ELECTRIFY the plastic wrapper of bread and its electric field caused the directed growth of the icicle in its direction.

(By the relative position of the water jar and the bag, this is possible. The other jars were far away from him.)

The fact is that the water in the middle of the jar freezes last, being already surrounded by an ice shell, that is, when this “middle” water freezes, a large pressure develops, squeezing it out.

(That’s why a small bump usually grows in the center of the jar.)

Since the electric field of the bag created a kind of “preferential extrusion relief” due to electrostatic induction, the icicle “reached out” to the source of the field.

My former classmate, a candidate of physico-mathematical sciences and an associate professor of the Department of Physics at a prestigious Moscow university, asked me once:

“Listen, how do you manage to make all sorts of “discoveries”?”

I replied, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just sensitivity to SOMETHING STRANGE?”

(I didn’t think about it when I called my first novel “I See something Strange…”)

I would appreciate readers who offer a better explanation!

4 I 2019

P.S. An experiment with two jars of water placed in the same place near a loaf in a plastic bag gave a COMPLETELY NEGATIVE result! The hypothesis of electrostatic “germination” of icicles has not been confirmed! While. I’ll try again…

Could it be that the Higgs Boson slowly filtered out of the jar into the freezer at a thirty-degree angle and opened a kind of spatial tunnel into which the icicle sprouted? But, I think, bosons, fermions and other particles, as well as “dark matter”, will be left “for later”.

5 I 2019

P.P.S. Four years have passed. During this time, I have conducted hundreds of experiments in order to reproduce this icicle in at least one. IN NO EXPERIENCE has this been even close to being observed. Obviously, then there were some special directions of the flow of icy air, which caused such a peculiar cooling and freezing of the water in the jar that the icicle was squeezed out at an angle of about 45 degrees upward.

Or the Saturnalia and Jovians penetrated there for a while and left a sign of their visit…

16 I 2023

P.P.P.S. Seven years and ten months have passed! During this time, I have conducted THOUSANDS of DIFFERENT experiments on “growing” such an icicle!

UNSUCCESSFULLY!!!

Truly, this is an article for the «Journal of Irreproducible Results»!

There is no other way to accept the hypothesis about the visit of the Jovians and Saturnalia!

Can anyone suggest a better hypothesis???

6 XI 2026