Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond has just awarded 575 million Danish kroner for free research, of which 3,167,998 DKK went to Professor Georgios Kontogeorgis for the project 'Investigation of the anomalous behavior of water using a new hypothesis.
Scientists Still Struggle to Decipher Water’s Mysteries: Could Water Be Two Liquids?
Water is, without a doubt, one of the most vital substances on Earth, yet it remains profoundly misunderstood. As Philip Ball of *Nature* magazine succinctly puts it, “No one really understands water. It’s still a mystery.” Water displays over 50 unusual properties that challenge our best thermodynamic models. Even state-of-the-art "association theories," which attempt to capture water’s hydrogen bonding structure, fall short of accurately describing its anomalous behavior.
Most theories model water as a network of hydrogen bonds forming a tetrahedral structure—an arrangement accepted by the majority of scientists. However, this conventional view could be wrong. Swedish researchers Anders Nilsson and Lars G.M. Pettersson and other researchers have put forward a radical idea suggesting that water might actually exist in *two distinct liquid states*, not one. In their “two-state” theory, only a fraction of water molecules form the traditionally accepted tetrahedral structure, while the remaining molecules adopt a different form entirely.
The “two-state” water theory has attracted considerable attention, sparking multiple studies in high-profile journals like *Science* and *Nature*. However, the evidence remains inconclusive. Experiments attempting to validate this dual nature of water yield conflicting results, and scientists continue to debate the theory’s validity.
To address these questions, researchers are turning to advanced thermodynamic models, hoping they might clarify if the two-state hypothesis can indeed explain water’s unique characteristics, not only in pure form but also in aqueous solutions as well as solutions with electrolytes. As efforts to unlock the mysteries of water continue, one question remains: Could this unconventional theory finally be the key to understanding one of Earth’s most essential elements?