Despite its abundance, water remains a mysterious substance with a host of strange properties. A new discovery from researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology just added to the anomalies — even at high temperatures, water freezes solid when placed in tiny tubes.-

The discovery came as a surprise to a team of chemical engineers led by professor Michael Strano, who had been trying to send electric currents through water in nanotubes.

“We noticed unexpected changes in some measurements and discovered that the changes resulted from heating,” graduate student Lee Drahushuk, co-author of a paper detailing the discovery, told Digital Trends. “From there, we varied temperature systematically …