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Nanodiamonds Are Not Forever
An anonymous reader writes "Livermore Labs and the Belgian Institute of Astrophysics (Catholic University, Leuven) are reporting today that nanodiamonds trapped by U2 spyplanes are pretty common (one part per 1000 in meteors), but don't originate from violent supernovae as previously thought. Instead their absence in comets suggest they formed after our solar system (are not pre-solar) by chemical vapor deposition -- and from much less violent asteroid collisions. Their technique of spectroscopy is compared to looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack by burning down the haystack.
It seems these diamond time capsules are close to perfect tracers for guessing the initial conditions when life first formed in the universe. On April 23-24, a large flux of identifiable comet dust will streak through our stratosphere from the Grigg-Skjellerup earth-crossing dust trail."
That's why this is the front page for people who don't want edited content.
Work on non-default comment reason-modifiers while you're at it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
On a diamond-related note:
As this article in The Atlantic ("Have you ever tried to sell a diamond?") points out - diamonds are only perceived to be worth anything because of the diamond cartel.
In the marketing coup of the century they've managed to convince the world that diamonds are rare and precious - both of which are completely untrue. Think about that the next time you hear "diamonds are forever" - it's advertising propaganda that people have been brainwashed into believing is true.
IIRC, it uses a super-low density foam type material, that it simply exposes to the atmosphere when it gets really high. The assumption being, of course, that any dust and stuff captured is on its way down, not up.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
The conclusions in this article make a lot of sense actually- the conditions in the solar system are in many ways similar to a chemical vapor deposition setup- very low pressure, almost no oxygen, and yet still plenty of material to use as both a vapor (carbon) and substrate (asteroids, comets, dust motes, etc.). I'd expect that these nanodiamonds are simply the result of carbon atoms coming together and clustering on a surface, with the carbon of course in conditions suitable for diamond formation. I would expect that nanoscale clusters of the other carbon allotropes, graphite and fullerenes, should be found in abundance in the asteroid belt as well.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
Maybe they used aerogel?
Sapphires and rubies got clobbered in the 1970s, when processes for making them were discovered. Linde Chemical introduced the "Linde Star", a perfect star sapphire, and manufactured them in volume, which killed the gem market. Today, you can buy sapphire and ruby bar stock, and it's not expensive. You can buy a 9" long x 0.125 diam. ruby rod on Ebay for $28.88 Sapphire, because it's used for semiconductors, is produced in high volume as large-diameter bar stock. When you see something like this:
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We can currently supply sapphire ingots, blanks, windows and wafers up to 200 mm in diameter, bar stock up to 100 mm square and ribbons up to 80 mm wide. All sapphire products are available in stages ranging from raw through polished for epitaxial growth. With six grades of synthetic sapphire, Maintech is sure to meet needs of the customers. Processors and end users now have an opportunity to take advantage of extraordinary prices from Maintech, Inc. Normal turnaround time is FOUR WEEKS!
you know that it's not a valuable, rare gem any more. It's more like Napoleon's rare, expensive set of aluminum dinnerware in the 1700s.It looks like something similar is starting to happen to diamonds. Don't put your money in them.