Three things you probably didn't know about amorphous solid water

Amorphous solid water is the major component of interstellar and other ices in astrophysical environments. Recent experimental and computational studies of ASW have revealed rather counter-intuitive aspects of the behaviour of water molecules and ASW on surfaces at temperatures relevant to a range of astrophysical environments; agglomeration, spontaneous dipole orientation and supporting long lived excitons that propogate to interfaces. These may well be linked. This paper will report on these observations and poses key questions related to the likely impact of these observations on the the nature of icy grains in the interstellar medium.