Diamonds As Room-Temperature Superconductors

Stormalong writes "This article describes research into using diamonds as room-temperature superconductors. If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!"

Comments

prices would SOAR!

[catdevnull]

my goodness....Intel and deBeers... first post

Re:prices would SOAR!

[k-0s]

No thanks, I'll stick with AMD and cubic zirconias.

Re:prices would SOAR!

[k-0s]

But the thermal death with AMD cpus is terrible. We all remember the video by Tom's Hardware.

True but think of the money you'd save. Plus, no one can REALLY tell the difference anyways. I mean who is really going to check? The only one who'd know is you anyways. Oh, right, CPU's...sorry I went on a tangent about diamonds vs. cubic zirconias. (cheesy questioning voice) Or was I? Hmmmmmm (/cheesy questioning voice)

Re:prices would SOAR!

[tigerdream]

Actually I think the market would be flooded by the Russian holdings and diamonds would then be devalued. I am sure that the Russian government would love to be the leader in this arena. Diamonds are only valued based on perception, not reality. Any new technology the expands our communication, should be validated and checked for usability. Hope it works

Hmm.

[Renraku]

Now we can have computer rooms that look like levels from Megaman.

If true, will it be relevant?

[dtolton]

It sounds interesting, although it's hard to put too much weight
into it yet because their results have yet to be independently
verified. He also hasn't even shown it can "expel mangetic
fields to conclusivlely prove that the state is
superconducting."

At least the heading of the article was posted with a question
mark, rather than as an authoritative claim.

If the claim proves to be true, it would be interesting to see
what practical application it can be put to. Will the fact that
it could be a replacement for "hot" cathodes in TV tubes even be
relevant by the time this technology is ready for practical
application. With some of the other new technologies that are
on the horizon such as OLED's, it will be interesting to see
what the life span of the bulky CRT will be.

Re:If true, will it be relevant?

[YetAnotherAnonymousC]

He also hasn't even shown it can "expel mangetic fields to conclusivlely prove that the state is superconducting"

I Am Not A Physicist, but this point makes me especially skeptical. Isn't this test (showing that a magnetic field is perfectly cancelled out within the semiconductor) relatively easy to conduct? Wouldn't the researcher have performed this test before making any claims?

The only thing I can figure is that the hardness and cost of diamond makes it difficult to get a specimen that has the correct topology for the test...

Re:If true, will it be relevant?

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't my area and the article is a little weak on the details, but I think it is just a superconducting layer and it only superconducting across the layer (not along it). It's probably not of much use, except inside a chip.

I got this from one sentance: Current continues to flow from the diamond cathode through this layer to the anode, even though there is no voltage across the layer - a sign of superconductivity.

Re:If true, will it be relevant?

[qbwiz]

I don't think it means that. Since V=IR, and for a superconducting material, R=0, then V=0, and so it would have no voltage across it.

Re:If true, will it be relevant?

[eenglish_ca]

Superconductors don't produce heat when they conduct electricity as defined, correct? If such a cpu were made out of them then the speed would nearly be limitless only held back by other components. But right now the next thing before superconducting cpus is asynchronous computing so that we can reclaim wasted cpu time.

Also making cpus out of Diamond is quite ironic since current cpus have heat death while diamonds are heat born.

Engagement?

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring

You forget that most /.'ers associate "engagement" with a Counterstrike session ...

Re:Engagement?

[red_dragon]

You forget that most /.'ers associate "engagement" with a Counterstrike session ...

And with good reason. Did you actually believe that marriage was any different? ;)

Re:Engagement?

[CrazyDuke]

Alot of them sure act like they are "protecting the VIP."

Then there are the ones that start an argument and do their best to make sure you can't defuse it.

Then there are the accusations from no where that hit you like a headshot.

And of course if you lose you get kicked out; and only then you can see the situation from a better perspective after it is too late to do anything about it.

Re:Engagement?

[Aliencow]

There sure is at least as much cheating!

Re:Engagement?

[ErroneousBee]

But think of the uses embedded DRM could have. It sure beats those klunky belts I use when Im away on business.

Diamonds as CPUs

[bujoojoo]

"CPUs are Forever" is not conducive to Moore's Law.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[dhovis]

Eh....

Diamonds aren't forever, they are only a metastable state.

Besides, "A Diamond is Forever" is a DeBeers marketing sloagan created in the 1920s, not some ancient piece of wisdom.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[hero]

That's what really pisses me off. Diamonds are a very very useful natural resource, but instead of being able to take advantage of that, we're forced to pay huge prices only to have them end up as decorations on some floozy. deBeers is evil.

-hero.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[jonnyfivealive]

its called a joke. laugh.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[pfankus]

Besides, "A Diamond is Forever" is a DeBeers marketing sloagan created in the 1920s, not some ancient piece of wisdom.

...which was featured in /. a little bit ago here. br>
The original article is quite a good read about the diamond industry and how *not pricy* actual diamonds really are. The true price seems to be paid in marketing, inflated costs, monopoly of the industry, and exploitation of indiginous people. Hell, you can make diamonds from the ashes of your dead greatgrandmother!

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[Bender_]

Diamonds are a very very useful natural resource, but instead of being able to take advantage of that, we're forced to pay huge prices only to have them end up as decorations on some floozy.
Well, why ? Industrial Diamonds are cheap. And aritificial Diamonds have matured somewhat. Some russians labs are already producing diamonds of considerable size. There is a also promising research into polycrystalline Diamonds, just serach for "CVD Diamond"

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[stratjakt]

A cut, polished, precious gem calibre diamond with no significant flaws is quite rare. No doubt the cost to the consumer is marked up quite a bit, but it's a little like saying "theres only a few hundered dollars worth of materials in a Ferrari". It may be true, but there's a whole lot more to a Ferrari than some fiberglass, steel and aluminum.

Anyways, it's worth noting that the DeBeers monopoly got a huge kick in the kiwis a couple years ago when a small (for the industry) startup beat them to the discovery of huge diamond lodes up in the canadian arctic. I can't remember the name of them, but Discovery has been airing a documentary about the discovery.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[gl4ss]

well, rich people used to use aluminum plates(to eat from) when it was expensive, guess there could have been better uses for that back then too.

rare==expensive==show off==beautiful.

and as said artificial diamonds are so cheap that theres not much point using real natural diamonds for industrial purposes, the only point why they're expensive is that people are ready to pay for them, like any other collectibles really (famous painting originals, pearls & all)...

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[4of12]

Besides, "A Diamond is Forever" is a DeBeers marketing sloagan created in the 1920s, not some ancient piece of wisdom.

DeBeers has recognized that it needs to market more effectively to the Slashdot crowd, many of whom have yet to make a substantial investment in a diamond.

Their new slogan will be

"Diamonds May be Thermodynamically Unfavorable at 1 atm and 300K, But Decay on a Time Scale Much Longer Than Your Marriage."

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[CrazyDuke]

Heh, the actual jewlers cost of a stone is about 5-15% of its insured "value." The only exception occurs when the people not in the industry are allowed to buy too and they go "Oooh! A $1000 diamond for only $250! I gotta buy/bid on that!" such as ebay. Diamond, traditionally, is only worth a little more than sapphire, mainly because it is harder, and therefor, harder to cut (It still has to be done by hand).

As for "A Diamond is Forever," sure you think that and wonder when the house burns down how someone managed to pry all your diamonds out from your jewelry. Diamonds burn. If you have any decent valued diamond, get it insured.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[mark-t]

it's worth noting that the DeBeers monopoly got a huge kick in the kiwis a couple years ago when a small (for the industry) startup beat them to the discovery of huge diamond lodes up in the canadian arctic

Anyone got a reference for this?

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[_ph1ux_]

I dont think that the price of artificial diamonds will stay as low as whatever they may be if all of a sudden there is a new application for them.

The artificial diamond makers will then try to pull a "deBeers" on the mrket - which may cause real ones to either drop or rise in price..

DeBeers cartel will either shorten suply of real ones in order to raise price. If there is a huge flood of artificial diamonds it would cause the already super abundant diamonds to seem more rare.

Another angle might be attempts bhy the diamand-mongers to have some study that shows the properties of "Real" diamonds to be superior to "Immitation" diamonds for the purposes of computer applications.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[Wyatt Earp]

No, natural diamonds are expensive because DeBeers controls the market.

Aluminum was expensive because it was very hard and expensive to refine.

Gold, Platinum and Silver are rarer metals on Earth, but diamonds are quite common but a cartel is trying to control the entire supply.

For example diamond mining on the Namibian coast consists of sorting diamonds out of the along the coast.

Right now the only non-DeBeers diamonds I know of are the Polar Bear diamonds from Canada.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[_ph1ux_]

I think you meant "Conductive" :P

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[einhverfr]

That's what really pisses me off. Diamonds are a very very useful natural resource, but instead of being able to take advantage of that, we're forced to pay huge prices only to have them end up as decorations on some floozy. deBeers is evil.


I am really lucky ;-) My fiancee likes diamonds about as much as I do (not that much). Her engagement ring has a lovely blue zircon in it. (People forget that zircons and cubic zirconia are NOT the same thing-- actually yellow zircons used to be among the most treasured gems of the ancient world).

Only on slashdot would people talk about giving engagement cpu's.....

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[Quikah]

Sirius diamonds.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[Guppy06]

The diamonds we see in jewelery are far from the only diamonds out there. After a diamond is mined, only a certain few are good enough quality for that, and the vast majority are considered "industrial grade," for use in cutting tools, etc.

AFAIK, man-made diamonds are never good enough for jewelery and are alwasys considered industrial grade.

On top of that, most of the price of diamond jewelery comes not necessarily from the stone but the skill that went into crafting it. The person shaping the stone has to deal with not only trying to carve the hardest stone known to man (where those "industrial grade" diamonds show their usefullness), but one mistake pretty much ruins the stone entirely.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[gl4ss]

de beers couldnt 'control' the market if there wasn't any (people willing to pay for 'useless' pretty things).

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[Dylan Zimmerman]

Be thankful that she didn't ask for a red diamond. There are only five known to exist and the Smithsonian owns four.

IIRC, at least two were donated anonymously. Talk about amazingly cool.

Also, Alexandrite is far more expensive carat for carat than diamond. Last time I chacked, it was at about $60,000 per carat for real ones with about a 75% color change.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[gl4ss]

(at leat some, i would guess all)real diamonds already come with laser imprinted verification that they're real(theres artifical diamonds too on the jewelry market).

there's already quite many applications for them (industrial diamonds).. and i don't think boosting up the production would be such a big deal would the consumption increase enough. the raw materials for making them aren't awfully expensive either..

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[Dylan Zimmerman]

Gemcutting isn't really that hard. If you make a mistake, then you can always make the gem into smaller ones. All of the patterns that gemcutters use are metered to tenths of degrees, so there isn't really much possibility of mistake unless you start with the gem misaligned in the grip.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[dhovis]

I am really lucky

Me too. I managed to talk my wife out of getting a diamond on ethical grounds. We went with moissanite instead. Her ring has a green moissanite flanked by two clear moissanite stones.

The funny thing about clear moissanite is that people refuse to believe it is not diamond, even when they are told directly. Moissanite actually has a higher index of refraction than diamond, and so it sparkles more! Plus, moissanite only costs one tenth as much as an equivelant quality diamond. Most people have never heard of it, because it is not a naturally occuring stone. The plus side to that is that I can definitively say that I know the stones came from a factory in North Carolina. Can you tell me where your diamond came from?

You can tell the difference under a jeweler's loop (if you know what you are looking for, moissanite is birefringant), but moissanite will actually fool the cubic zirconia testers that most jewelers use.

In the interest of full disclosure, I do own some stock in the company that makes moissanite. I bought the stock because I was impressed with the product, but you are welcome to take everything I say with a grain of salt.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[Wyatt Earp]

Actually, they could. They control most of the distribution system.

They do have a wildly sucessful marketing unit.

If people stopped buying them for jewlery and there was another use like CPUs DeBeers would still control the market.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[einhverfr]

Zircon is doubly refractive which leads to some interesting properties. Additionally it has a greater dispersion rate than diamonds, which means that in the right light, althought hey don't sparkle like diamonds, they shine with amazing fire (more varied color in the sparkle).

In the middle ages, yellow zircon (also called Jacinth) was highly sought-after, along with sapphires, rubies, and emeralds, yet we see surprisingly little value in the stones today.

I am a fan of natural stones wherever possible for jewelry, which is why I am not the huge fan of CZ or Moissanite, but I realize that people might choose artificial ones. But for budget-stones there are many amazing ones that are comparatively inexpensive (red spinel, tsavorite, tourmaline come to mind).

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[Wavicle]

The artificial diamond makers will then try to pull a "deBeers" on the mrket..

"de Beers" was able to pull a "de Beers" because the diamond deposits were geographically localized. Artificial diamonds can be produced anywhere. If demand surges, entrepreneurs will fill the supply void and prices will be kept low.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[geekoid]

" actually yellow zircons used to be among the most treasured gems of the ancient world"

Does that mean you gave here a tin ring?

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[sketerpot]

This "real diamonds vs. artificial diamonds" debate really annoys me. I'm sure this doesn't bother DeBeers, but it seems to me that if you need special equipment and/or highly trained people to tell the difference, then the difference is so small it doesn't matter. Screw DeBeers.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[einhverfr]

Does that mean you gave here a tin ring?

Funny you mention that, but no.

I am actually looking at creating magickal jewelry based on Renaisance grimoirs. Although I will probably not use lead or tin because they are too soft and lead is too toxic. Although I might consider using pewter to represent Saturn in place of lead. I will also use aluminum rather than amalgum for Mercury ;-) Although titanium might also be good for that (it is much harder to work though).

Funny-- slashdot editors talk of diamond engagement cpu's and I think of jewelry with obscure historical significance (and if you believe in it, other mystical properties as well).

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[threephaseboy]

but Discovery has been airing a documentary about the discovery.

Score: -1, Redundant

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[_ph1ux_]

although I would say that this logic is applicable in theoretical economics - i dont think that its really true in real world applications.

The reason i say this is due to the fact that the idea that the artificial diamond makers are not going to want to give any portion of their market share away to anyone - DeBeers or otherwise. They will want to drive the price up as far as they can jsut like DeBeers did - just because they are not DeBeers does not mean that they are any better.

Any market that shows the potential for great profit gets two things - 1) eager investors 2) unscrupulous business executives.

The whole argument about diamond deposits being geographically localized is debatable in that there seems to be evidence that diamonds are much more widely available and common than reported - and this is the whole reason behind the debeers monopoly - that they have sold the world on the idea that these are rare gems - when in fact they are as common as quartz (which they are just a more refined variety of crystal)....

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[Wavicle]

This is the wackiest pseudo-economics I've ever read here.

They will want to drive the price up as far as they can jsut like DeBeers did

This is the goal of every for-profit business. You know why restaurants don't create an artificial shortage of toothpicks and charge you $10 for a wooden implement to clean USDA Prime T-Bone from your teeth? Because unlike De Beers, they have competition.

People believed in mass scale collusion between corporate players in the early 90's when there was a sudden spike in the demand for RAM and the price soared. I still have $33 1 Megabyte SIMMs I bought in the early 90's. After seeing the thirst the public had for SIMMs and the fact they'd pay outrageous prices for them, the market was ripe for an extended "shortage of supply". The existing companies probably tried to play this card... but anybody with enough capital to build a fab in malaysia could start pumping out RAM chips on the cheap. And if they wanted to make money as an unknown brand, they would have to sell their product substantially cheaper than the competition so that the public would accept the risk of an unknown manufacturer. This is exactly what they did... they undercut the big manufacturers... the result... 128MB DIMMs are listed at $16 today on pricewatch... one two hundred fiftieth the cost per meg they were 10 years ago...

What does this have to do with artificial diamonds? Simple, if the demand is high and so is the price, anybody with enough capital to build a fab in malaysia can start producing them cheap.

The RAM chip industry had eager investors and unscrupulous businessmen. Didn't make much difference. Capitalism... it isn't just a neat economic theory. All around you are examples of market demand driving competition and competition driving prices.

The whole argument about diamond deposits being geographically localized is debatable in that there seems to be evidence that diamonds are much more widely available and common than reported

If you know somewhere where there are large deposits of gem quality diamonds... WHY ARE YOU POSTING ON /.?! Go put together a business plan. If you can show your geology is for real, the investors will beat a path to your door.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[Magnus Reftel]

Sure! Though it was in Iceland.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[Wavicle]

the point that I was making was that there are many many places in the world where diamonds are produced.

The link you furnished said there are only 3 major locations producing gem quality diamonds. Does 3 count as "many many"?

It also said that synthetic diamonds are threatening the natural diamonds for industrial use... which was my point... Did you notice the cost of industrial diamonds? 50 cents to 5 dollars per CARAT?! That's really cheap. But like I said, if you can synthesize it and produce it anywhere, entrepreneurs will step in and produce them cheap. This is exactly what happened, and is what you said wouldn't happen in the real world.

the thing is that by just being all "factual" as you are trying to be - you accomplish nothing. by saying "evey profitable business" that doesnt make you sound more intelligent - but more uninformed.

Wow, ad hominem... very classy.

debeers is a monopoly - a recognized monpoly almost all over the world...

Hmmm, let's see what I wrote in my post: Because unlike De Beers, they have competition.
- Yup, looks like I said De Beers is a monopoly. What point are you arguing here?

restaurants is a poor example in that people NEED to eat

Notice how none of my argument concerned eating... Unless you eat toothpicks.

but do we NEED diamons?

We need them for industrial use. This just happens to be where they are their cheapest because market forces have driven them down.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[Technician]

I wonder if my favorite silicon crystal grower can perfect the process to "pull" flawless 8 inch and 12 inch diamonds? A few of those on the market would make the sand sized stuff worthless.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[SgtChaireBourne]

it's worth noting that the DeBeers monopoly got a huge kick in the kiwis a couple years ago when a small (for the industry) startup beat them to the discovery of huge diamond lodes up in the canadian arctic

Anyone got a reference for this?

No, but I remember the uproar when the smaller company beat them to buying up the land/rights to the land where there was plenty of the right type of kimberlite. Whether it turned out to have diamonds, I do not recall.

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[Legume]

Me too. I managed to talk my wife out of getting a diamond on ethical grounds.

You're playing a dangerous game there, what happens when she decides tantalum is just as unethical? :?)

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[Kris Warkentin]

here

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[_ph1ux_]

I was rather drunk when I replied to you there... sorry about that! :)

Loved One

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you mean "one day your loved one might BE a diamond CPU"?

Re:Loved One

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Don't you mean "one day your loved one might BE a diamond CPU"?

That line takes on an whole new meaning if you remember this story

Re:Loved One

[questionlp]

What happens to zombie processes in such a system anyway? Will the helpdesk technician also become a certified exorcist to deal with machines that become possessed and start spewing split pea soup (not to mention all of that head or process spinning creating spin locks).

The last thing I want to hear from my computer is that I should clean out the dust and dust bunnies every couple of minutes!

let go!!!!!

[digitalsushi]

If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!

Arghh!!! paradox!!! get it off, get it off!!!

Re:let go!!!!!

[Rosonowski]

Mage?

Re:let go!!!!!

[Lord Apathy]

I did give my love a CPU instead of a ring one time. I wonder if that might have had a hand in us breaking up a few days later?

One problem

[Paladine97]

We need women before we can give them diamonds!

Diamond prices

[MagPulse]

I've heard that diamonds are priced a lot higher than they have to be, because their scarcity is tightly controlled by the people who control the major sources of them. I wonder, if they turn out to be a source of superconductors, if the world might pressure them in to lowering prices to reasonable levels.

Re:Diamond prices

[Telastyn]

Actually, alot of research into manufactured diamonds will be more effective in causing problems with deBeers' monopoly. This will likely cause such research to be promoted more, and iirc industrial grade diamonds have been manufactured for some time now (but are not clear, or pretty; but certainly viable for this use). Even if this does prove true, how would you create a 'wire' of diamond? A more likely solution will come from bucky-ball research [3d carbon tube molecules, likely with a large ion trapped inside].

Re:Diamond prices

[Xibby]

Those are precious gem quality. Industral quality diamonds can be made through some process, or made from the precious gem rejects. My guess is that they're using industrial quality, but I should go RTFA. :)

Re:Diamond prices

[Van Halen]

Well, as it stands right now, De Beers has a worldwide monopoly on natural diamonds. They have enough stockpiles that they could flood the market at any time and cause diamonds to become cheaper than cubic zirconium. Or so I've read.

In recent years, some scientists have been able to product synthetic diamonds - only distinguishable from "real" diamonds by the fact that the synthetics glow under phosphorescent light (or something like that). I believe the natural diamonds don't do this because of their imperfections. They looked at the possibility of selling synthetics as an alternative in the gemstone market, but De Beers simply threatened to run them out of business with the aforementioned market flooding. The cost of producing synthetics would remain mostly constant, and it wouldn't be worth it if diamond prices took a nosedive.

Now, enter this new possibility (they're still investigating whether it's even true, according to the article). If it becomes economically desirable to produce synthetic diamonds for superconducting purposes, I wonder if that would alter the gemstone diamond market? Perhaps producers could make synthetics primarily for superconducting applications, but slowly insert more into the gemstone market, pulling it out from under De Beers' noses. Eventually they'd be forced to flood the market and the end of an evil, expertly marketed monopoly could come to pass? One can only hope!

The above summary was from memory based on what I've read. I could have gotten some things wrong, so feel free to google for links. I'm too lazy. ;-)

Re:Diamond prices

[GooberToo]

deBeers has already seemingly purchased the rights to such technologies in the past. deBeers does to artificial diamond technology what the oil industry has long done to alternative fuel/energy sources.

Long story short, the technology to create non-industrial grade diamonds, flawless and in almost any color, for dollars each, has existed for years. deBeers visited the plant and it was shutdown the next day. Hmm....wonder what happened there...go figure...

In various parts of the world, diamonds are a dime-a-dozen and are directly responsible for much mistreatment of fellow humans. Remember, the next time you buy a diamond for your sweetie, slave (and probably child) labor, blood, sweat and tears literally goes into each one. Ahh...nothing says love like the suffering of your fellow man.

Re:Diamond prices

[PCBman!]

They glow because they're doped--rubies were shown on a PBS show a few years back. Lab created gems are generally doped with elements to make them distinguishable somehow--don't think scientists and engineers don't get bribed to produce a perfect gem.

Yes, single crystal 'gems' created in the lab are for all intents and purposes, perfect, they have to be to be used in any experiment concerning the creation of semiconducting devices.

It probably would NOT change the gemstone market due to cost of growing diamonds. IIRC, CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition) is currently the only way to produce diamonds for manufacturing. This is in no way as cheap or easy to do is pulling a 'perfect' silicon ingot out of a molten bath.

Re:Diamond prices

[tybalt44]

Remember, the next time you buy a diamond for your sweetie, slave (and probably child) labor, blood, sweat and tears literally goes into each one. Ahh...nothing says love like the suffering of your fellow man. If this concerns you, then you should probably buy Canadian Arctic Diamonds which are exploitation- and conflict-free.

Re:Diamond prices

[Surreal_Streaker]

...if the world might pressure them in to lowering prices to reasonable levels.

WHAT!? Have you ever heard of increased demand directly decreasing prices?

Perhaps the increase in demand would spur competition which would ultimately drive prices down, but otherwise you are way off base.

Re:Diamond prices

[Telastyn]

I was under the impression that such technology was relatively new, and immature [www.gemesis.com for example]; care to point to sources to the contrary?

Re:Diamond prices

[WatertonMan]

The artificial diamond production technology is relatively old. Of course quality varies and is improving. Just here in town there are two companies that make then and they've been here as long as I can recall. I've not read it, but a history of the diamond manufacturing industry can be found in the book The Diamond Makers by Robert Hazen

Re:Diamond prices

[Courageous]

My wife's coworker got a $20,000 diamond engagement ring recently. Nothing would make me smile more than learning it was worth $20. :)

C//

Re:Diamond prices

[Telastyn]

Indeed, 3 threads up I acknoledge that industrial [not jewlery quality] diamond making tech as been around for a while [50's-60's?]. The differences and target requirements are a bit different. Thanks for the link :]

Re:Diamond prices

[dhovis]

They glow because they're doped--rubies were shown on a PBS show a few years back. Lab created gems are generally doped with elements to make them distinguishable somehow--don't think scientists and engineers don't get bribed to produce a perfect gem.

Uh, What?. Synthetic gemstones are chemically indistinguishable from the real thing. For a while, the distinguishing characteristic of lab created gemstones was their remarkable lack of defects. However, enterprising companies that make synthetic stones have figured out how to include the defects that you normally see in natural stones. So you can no longer tell the difference. There is no law to require they be marked, and there is no inscentive for the manufacturers to do so. If you saw stones that glowed, they were probably made that way for industrial use. Ti-doped Sapphire (Al2O3) is used for "tunable" lasers, for example. In fact, the first laser was made from ruby (Cr-doped Sapphire). These days people can make synthetic sapphires the width of a telephone pole and several feet long. They are used as windows on the barcode scanners in the supermarket because sapphire is much more scratch resistant than glass.

Frankly I don't understand why people value stones that were dug up out of the ground more than ones created in the lab. It's not like there is a real difference. Besides, if you actually visited a gemstone mine, you would probably lose all the romantic ideas you have about the origin of the stones.

As far as synthetic diamonds go, there are several possible ways to produce them. CVD is commonly done to produce diamond films for research. GE Superabrasives produces industrial diamonds using a high pressure process for decades. The diamonds are small, but they are cost effective. GE also produces "clarity enhanced" diamonds. They take natural diamonds that are lousy color and treat them to make them a more appealing color. Can you tell? I doubt it.

I'm a materials scientist, and I suspect that synthetic diamonds are less than a decade off. When that happens, the whole house of cards that is the diamond industry will come crashing down. Diamonds are not rare, but DeBeers controls most of the supply. When they loose that control, diamonds will crash to a price befitting their rarety.

And don't go around thinking that diamonds have ever been a good investment. The vast majority of diamonds actually depreciate relative to inflation.

Re:Diamond prices

[Guppy06]

"Remember, the next time you buy a diamond for your sweetie, slave (and probably child) labor, blood, sweat and tears literally goes into each one."

Says the person typing on a fossil fuel powered computer...

Re:Diamond prices

[the_2nd_coming]

DeBears are the ones that control alm ost all the diamond mines in teh world, but they can make perfect synthestic diamonds in the lab that are actualy sold for rings and such. and by synthetic I mean made in the lab, not made of glass, they are still a 100% carbon marco molecule.

Re:Diamond prices

[mark-t]

[DeBeers] have enough stockpiles (of diamonds) that they could flood the market at any time and cause diamonds to become cheaper than cubic zirconium

This is absurd. For one thing, they have nothing to gain by doing this. If they were to try this sort of maneuver, every single jewelery store in the world would get pissed off, since they'd be stuck with expensive stock that they can't even unload at their own cost! Second of all, if they did this, cubic Z would just simply stop being manufactured. But the technology would still exist, so if DeBeers did decide to reinflate their prices after they were sure of a monopoly again, manufacturing of Cubic Z would start up right away too.

If they did this, jewelery stores would be so royally p***ed off at them, they

Re:Diamond prices

[PCBman!]

I really gotta preview what I type a couple of times 'fore submitting.

I meant they were gems for jewelers. Obviously fakes, but they gave off a different color in UV light due to dopent (SP?).

Gotta love lab grown crystals for their physical properties though.

Re:Diamond prices

[dhovis]

I meant they were gems for jewelers. Obviously fakes

Sigh.....

I suppose it is worth noting that there are two categories of manufactured gemstones: Imitation and Synthetic

Immitation stones look like some prized gemstone, but are chemically different. For instance, Cubic Zirzonia (ZrO2+Y2O3) is an immitation diamond. To the naked eye, a good CZ is indistinguishable from diamond, but it is a completely different stone. The tester that jewelers use to determine a stone is CZ or diamond actually measures thermal conductivity, because diamond conducts and CZ insulates.

Synthetic stones are chemical copies of a prized gemstone produced in the lab. Synthetic sapphire can be made which is indistinguishable from sapphire that has been mined. You cannot tell a good synthetic sapphire from a real one. Period. The stones have no memory, and there is no analysis that will tell you when it was made.

Re:Diamond prices

[Prof.Phreak]

And don't go around thinking that diamonds have ever been a good investment. The vast majority of diamonds actually depreciate relative to inflation.

That's why everyone should collect Gold. There is only a set amount of it in the solar system, and it's nowhere near increasing, and there are no economically feasible ways of making it :-)

Not to mention it has a ton of uses outside of jewelry.

Re:Diamond prices

[GooberToo]

Sorry, no I can't. It was on a documentary I saw on TV several years ago. They also happened to mention something about a mine here in the US being shutdown the day after deBeers visited too. I just don't recall which state it was in either.

Re:Diamond prices

[GooberToo]

Thanks for the information. I have a better fix. I just don't buy diamonds. IMO, it's only a matter of time before they become worthless or almost so (decades, centuries, who knows?)...they are artifially inflated and controlled and have an actual value of any rock you find in your back yard.

Long story short, I don't buy into the BS that is diamonds.

Re:Diamond prices

[GooberToo]

On one you at least have a choice. Wow...that was really hard to figure out. Besides, comparing one to the other is so completely out of balance you obviously have no idea what it is you're talking about.

Wow...was it Wacko-Monday that they let all you guys out???

Shesh...

engagement

[frizz]

What better way to say "forever" than with a diamond? What better way to say "maybe 18 months" than with a cpu?

Re:engagement

[Guppy06]

" What better way to say "forever" than with a diamond?"

You say "forever," I say "second law of thermodynamics."

Thermal and Electrical Conductivity

[Michael.Forman]

High electrical conductivity and high thermal conductivity tend to run together. For instance copper has an electrical conductivity of 5.8x10^7 S/m and a thermal conductivity of 200 W/mK.

A notable exception is diamond with a low electrical conductivity on the order of 1 S/m and a high thermal conductivity of 700 W/mK.

Because of diamond's superior thermal conductivity and low electrical conductivity, it functions as an excellent material for use in a heat sink.

What interests me is, that by adding free electrons by doping the diamond with oxygen is he seeing actual superconductivity or just the high conductivity one would expect, if diamond had free electrons.

Michael.

Visit das Schlößl.

Re:Thermal and Electrical Conductivity

[Compuser]

High electrical conductivity and high thermal
conductivity do tend to run together, but exceptions
are numerous, including sapphire which (in some
range of temperatures) is actually a better heat
conductor than copper, yet is an hard insulator.
A slightly worse heat conductor, alumina, is
also a hard insulator.

Re:Thermal and Electrical Conductivity

[imsabbel]

The problem is that the thermal conductivity of diamond is a result of phonon conduction. If you dope the diamond, the loss of phonon conductivity will be far greater then the gain through electron conduction.

Re:Thermal and Electrical Conductivity

[Bender_]

High electrical conductivity and high thermal conductivity tend to run together. For instance copper has an electrical conductivity of 5.8x10^7 S/m and a thermal conductivity of 200 W/mK.

This is known as Wiedeman-Franz Law in Physics. It describes the relationship between eletron heat transfer and conductivity. However it is only valid for Metals. Heat transfer in semiconductors is dominated by lattice vibration transport. Due to the bandgap there is little phonon/electron interaction.

A notable exception is diamond with a low electrical conductivity on the order of 1 S/m and a high thermal conductivity of 700 W/mK.

Its not an exception, its a semiconductor with a large bandgap and behaves exactly as expected.

Re:Thermal and Electrical Conductivity

[b_pretender]

mod parent up, Bender is right on the money.

Originally the Weiderman-Franz law was said to apply to *all* materials, so yes, Diamond was an exception. However, people soon learned about lattice vibrations and disproved^H^H^H^H refined Wiederman-Franz law to only deal with metals.

On inreresting point is that Diamond has the highest thermal conductivity of *all* non-superconducting materials. Put that on your OCed CPU and smoke it!

Re:Thermal and Electrical Conductivity

[Michael.Forman]

Fascinating!

I know only of the properties of diamond, as I've used it for a substrate in planar microwave active antenna arrays. As a dielectric it provided very low loss and an amazing thermal conductivity. (The only complaint is that the relative permittivity was a bit low.)

I am unfamiliar with the concept of phonon conduction but will add it to my queue of things to research. I find material science very interesting.

Thank you for your comment.

Michael.

Obligatory Simpsons Quote

[dr_dank]

"If it is not superconductivity then it must be violating the second law of thermodynamics," he says.

"In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"

so what cool things

[kisrael]

so what cool things would we get from a room temperature superconductor? All I can think of is maglev trains, but I know that's betraying a huge lack of knowledge.

Does a lot depend on how cheap we can mine or manufacture these diamonds?

Re:so what cool things

[egomaniac]

The single most important development that would come out of a room-temperature superconductor would be the elimination of batteries, fuel cells, gas tanks, and every other such power storage technology.

Because a superconductor conducts with literally zero resistance, you can create a ring of superconducting material, pump as much current into it as it will tolerate, and just let the current cycle forever. No degradation whatsoever. Then when you want power, you just tap into the ring and pull it out on demand. Superconducting rings are real devices, by the way -- they're just big and expensive and require cryogenics.

If we could make them out of something that operated at room temperature, then we could (probably) make very small superconducting rings, and if the power density were high enough, we could use them instead of batteries or fuel tanks. And they would never, ever wear out, no matter how many times you charged or discharged them. The amount of power they could contain is dependent on the superconducting material in question, but a high-power-density room-temperature superconductor (if such a thing is possible) would eliminate all of mankind's power storage and transmission problems. The only concern left would be generation.

Re:so what cool things

[michael_cain]

Electrical power distribution has horrible losses in long-distance transmission. Assuming the material is cheap enough, and can be used in cables, and that "room temperature" covers normal outside temperatures as well, you could get much more efficient power transmission. Reduce the number of new generating plants needed, reduce emissions, etc.

Re:so what cool things

[pclminion]

Because a superconductor conducts with literally zero resistance, you can create a ring of superconducting material, pump as much current into it as it will tolerate, and just let the current cycle forever. No degradation whatsoever.

The coil energy is stored in the form of a magnetic field (the coil is a giant solenoid). The stored energy will eventually bleed off through magnetic interactions with the environment.

Then when you want power, you just tap into the ring and pull it out on demand.

Yikes. If you try to "tap in" to an inductor, it will produce an enormous voltage and immediately arc to close the circuit. The only way to get energy out of a superconducting solenoid is through some magnetic interaction. Whatever device you use to do this, it's gonna be expensive.

we could (probably) make very small superconducting rings, and if the power density were high enough, we could use them instead of batteries or fuel tanks.

Again, the energy is stored in the solenoid's magnetic field. A solenoid storing any sizable quantity of energy is going to have an enormous magnetic field. It's going to be very tricky to design devices that work properly very close to an extremely large magnet.

Re:so what cool things

[zenyu]

The single most important development that would come out of a room-temperature superconductor would be the elimination of batteries, fuel cells, gas tanks, and every other such power storage technology.

All the superconductors I've read about stop being superconductors when exposed to a strong magnetic field. Wouldn't this keep you from increasing the current arbitrarily? If so wouldn't you possibly get more power per gram or power per m^3 with a battery/fuel cell? Superconductors might still make great storage devices for fixed applications like a solar/wind farms, but I'm not so sure they would make sense in your laptop.

Re:so what cool things

[b!arg]

So would you say a room-temperature superconductor is on the same order as cold fusion?

Re:so what cool things

[reverseengineer]

Superconductors have a number of important uses in analytical instruments, too. A superconducting magnet sits at the heart of most nuclear magnetic resonance machines, as such magnets are capable of carrying enormous currents with almost no resistance, enabling them to produce magnetic fields of over 20T (400,000 times the strength of the magnetic field of the earth). Most of these magnets are made from alloys of niobium, with critical temperatures (the temp below which superconductivity occurs) around 23 Kelvin, meaning they need liquid helium to cool them. I happen to have a student job dispensing cryogens for research groups on campus- we charge about 4 bucks a liter for liquid helium, and some groups will go through a full 65L dewar in a couple days. Efforts have been made to move to the Type II (cuprate ceramic) superconductors discovered in the late 1980s, but as others have mentioned, ceramic can't be extruded into wire the way most metals can. Still, there is significant financial incentive to use Type II materials- liquid nitrogen, which boils at 77K, only costs about 20 cents per liter. Of course, with a room-temperature superconductor, there would be no cooling expenses, and there would also be no need for bulky cryostats surrounding equipment- it's likely we could see mobile MRI and NMR machines.

In addition to their uses as magnetic coils, superconductors can be used to exploit something nifty called the Josephson effect: if you separate two superconductors by a tiny insulating gap, a supercurrent of Cooper pairs can quantum tunnel across the gap. This effect can be used in a device known as a SQUID (Superconducting QUantum Interference Device), which is essentially a fantastically sensitive magnetometer- some SQUIDs can detect fields of less than a picotesla. This has already had important applications in materials science- there are scanning-SQUID microscopes, and is finding a number of uses in medicine- specifically measuring the magnetic activity of the brain and heart. Also, SQUIDs will probably have a future in computers, as hyperfast switches, sensitive hard disk heads, or as sensors used in quantum computers, detecting the state of a qubit. IBM tried to make a computer using Josephson junctions as switches back in the late 1970s- there were a number of hurdles that prevented this device from becoming a reality, mostly the incredible rate at which "conventional" silicon chip ICs were improved, and the fact that this conventional technology does not require you to immerse your computer in liquid helium.

And yeah, there could finally be maglev trains- those operate off of the Meissner effect, discovered in the 1930s- superconductors are perfectly diamagnetic- they will expel any external magnetic field, causing the magnet (or superconductor) to be levitated. This is the effect that the scientist who observed the possible diamond RTS admits he has not done experiments to check, and it's the effect I'd really need evidence of in order to believe his findings.

Re:so what cool things

[Guppy06]

"just let the current cycle forever. No degradation whatsoever."

*cough* entropy *cough*

Re:so what cool things

[Efreet]

Unfortunatly, I don't know of any way to print diamonds on chips, which is the one big advantage of SQUID based superconductors. Right now the research group I'm a solder monkey for is using Niobium printed on silicon for the SQUIDs. It would be nice if we could run the thing at temeratures above 200 mK (and use He-3 instead of He-4), but I just don't think that diamonds would be practical for our work.

Re:so what cool things

[ShooterNeo]

Interestingly enough, "room temperature" is only a design requirement due to our physiology. Were it possible for most/all energy consuming processes to be completed in outer space, ordinary high temperature superconductors would be more than adequate for the task.

Re:so what cool things

[JaredOfEuropa]

"...something nifty called the Josephson effect"

Isn't it called the Josephon effect? (without the 's') Just a nitpick.

Re:so what cool things

[verloren]

Another limitation is the large magnetic fields SMES (Superconducting Magnetic Electricity Storage) installations create, and not just from a technical point of view. There is almost no research into the effects of prolonged exposure to large magnetic fields on humans, but given the fuss about the 'emanations' from power lines (valid or not) this would probably become a big issue.

Cheers, Paul

Re:so what cool things

[reverseengineer]

Nope, it's named for Brian Josephson , who as the link mentions won a share of the 1973 Nobel for it. I've read, however, that his more recent research interests have strayed well outside the scientific mainstream- parapsychology, ESP, cold fusion, homeopathy, etc...

Re:so what cool things

[Christopher Thomas]

Another limitation is the large magnetic fields SMES (Superconducting Magnetic Electricity Storage) installations create, and not just from a technical point of view. There is almost no research into the effects of prolonged exposure to large magnetic fields on humans, but given the fuss about the 'emanations' from power lines (valid or not) this would probably become a big issue.

You could shield against this easily enough by using a coil geometry that doesn't have an external field (a toroidal coil is one example; the field exists only inside the donut).

Re:so what cool things

[Handpaper]

it's likely we could see mobile MRI and NMR machines
Because the damned things are so expensive, the only one of them I've seen is mounted in a trailer (artic-style) which usually lives at Stanmore Orthapaedic Hospital (formerly RNOH) in North London. This was ten years ago. NMRs have been mobile for quite some time now.

I'm my own...

[BMonger]

(to the tune of I'm My Own Grandpa)

I'm my own CPU...

diamond age

[wolfb]

Room temperature supercondition would open up so many possibilities -- it may start a new era for technology. If diamonds are the key, would future generations call it the diamond age?

No connection to Neal Stephenson's book called the Diamond age, as that refered to something quite different...

Re:diamond age

[GQuon]

Room temperature supercondition would open up so many possibilities

And if they were able to raise that temperature, they might be able to make the enormous electro magnets needed to keep fusion matter away from the walls of a fusion reactor.
The problem before (if ever) hot super-conductors are made, is that either
- the electro magnet would melt from the heat of the fusion
or
- the electrical resistance in the electro magnet would heat it up so much that it melts.

It's not absolutely sure that this is the way we will be making fusion reactors, but it seems like a good idea. (The other way is with frickin' laser beams.)

If successful, perhaps one day you could give your

[Typingsux]

love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!"

That's great! Then I can base my next CPU purchase on 6-8 weeks of my salary.

Professor Frink, is that you?

[MidKnight]

If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!

Wow; the geek factor of that quote is off the charts!

"Professor Frink, Professor Frink, He makes you laugh, he makes you think...."

now imagine

[greenalbatros]

... a beowulf cluster of THOSE!!!!!!!

Re:now imagine

[MrNemesis]

Why stop at just a Beowulf cluster?

You could marry Natalie Portman, put a ring on each finger, and make a true Karma-crushing Beowulf cluster and be the envy of all fellow /.'ers!

Extra Links For This Story

[cybrpnk2]

SciFi Today ran this story a couple of days ago with LOTS of interesting extra links here.

Success!

[Anonymous Coward]

If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!"

Now THAT would be what I would call success! A nerd getting engaged, wow...

The only conceivable possibility...

[Alsee]

he believes that the results of his experiments ... can only be explained by a new type of superconducting state. "If it is not superconductivity then it must be violating the second law of thermodynamics," he says.

Yep. Once you exclude the possiblility that you somehow screwed up your experiment you can safely conclude the only possibility is violation of the second law of thermodynamics.

-

big whup. you still can't make wires

[js7a]

Firstly, I read about this in sci.physics.* or some metafilter rss some days ago. It's still very theoretical that any kind of large mass production is even possible, let alone practical.

Even if it turns out to be practical, there is still the problem faced by the ceramic superconductors: even if you can get them to ambient temperatures, they still are brittle, rigid, and unmalleable and therefore totally unlike wires. The best you could hope for is to lay these things end-to-end in a trench by the side of the road, and the first earthquake or vibrational disturbance that comes along is going to snap, crack, and pop the circuit open. Unlike wires and fiber optics, which at least stand a chance of anything short of a backhoe.

Ordinary wind power is of far more practical importance than superconductors, fusion, fuel cells, and solar energy combined. However, Slashdot editors regularly pick those topics for the front page. In the rare event that /. does something on wind power, it's always in the non-front-page "Science" section. Come on, "stuff that matters" should actually matter. Did you know that the entire U.S. electrical grid could be powered by less than 150,000 modern wind turbines?

Re:big whup. you still can't make wires

[mark-t]

Ordinary wind power is of far more practical importance than superconductors, fusion, fuel cells, and solar energy combined

That's a very profound assertion, considering wind power *IS* solar energy.

Re:big whup. you still can't make wires

[TechnoWeenie]

Did you know that the entire U.S. electrical grid could be powered by less than 150,000 modern wind turbines?

I did not know this, so I did some quick googling and found some interesting numbers. According to the DOE the total U.S. generation of electricity for 1999 was 3691 billion kilowatt hours.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epav1/i ntro.html#tab1

According to the Danish Windpower Industry Association, a modern wind turbine will generate about 2 to 3 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year.
http://www.windpower.org/faqs.htm#anchor727849

If these numbers (and my math) is right, your conclusion is off by about an order of magnitude

Re:big whup. you still can't make wires

[geekoid]

Why can't you make a powdered superconducter, then put it into tubes? If you want a back-up, run wire s down the center. That way if the superconducter has a gap, the power will use the wires(least path of resistance), until it can get repaired. Unless a backhoe comes along, then you screwed.
Evil,evil backhoes.

Re:big whup. you still can't make wires

[Ytrew Q. Uiop]

Even if it turns out to be practical, there is still the problem faced by the ceramic superconductors: even if you can get them to ambient temperatures, they still are brittle, rigid, and unmalleable and therefore totally unlike wires

In your post, you seem to be referering to the notion of replacing conventional power lines with superconductors, and quite rightly note that ceramics make poor wires.

Wires aren't the only use for superconductors, though. They can also be used as to store electricity, by inducing a current in a coil which then keeps "looping" forever, until the electricity is used. Even without room temperature superconductors, one company, American Superconductors, sells a product based on this principle that helps regulate spikes and surges in power grids. You can read one of their press releases here, if you like.

If a room temperature superconductor were in fact to be discovered, (and we haven't yet had verification that it has been), it might well be a very big deal. If we can store a lot of energy in a single loop, and we can make a lot of loops in a small amount of space (which may or may not be viable -- time will tell), then suddenly technologies which aren't viable today because of batteries become a lot more viable.

I, for one, would love an electric car. It's cold and snowy in the winter where I live, and I'd like to own a car that I know won't stall when it's cold out, like ones based on batteries do. I'd love the whisper quiet engine, and the immediate response to my commands, without waiting for the engine to "rev up".

Right now, the existing electrical cars aren't bad, but they don't travel far enough on a single electrical charge: energy density is the problem. If room temperature superconductors provide a viable alternative, then I, for one, would welcome the invention, even if we never use it directly in power lines from the power grid.

And yes, wind power is a good idea. So is geothermal energy (check out what Iceland is doing with that), and lots of other renewable energy alternatives. However, one problem with all these solutions is that a great deal of energy is wasted because we just don't have very good ways to store it: if room temperature superconductors offer superior storage solutions, then it's a benefit for everyone, no matter what your prefered method of power generation.

--
Ytrew

Re:big whup. you still can't make wires

[Guppy06]

"Did you know that the entire U.S. electrical grid could be powered by less than 150,000 modern wind turbines?"

If wind were more efficient and/or powerful than fossil fuels, we'd still see cargo ships rigged with sails.

Too low-tech? Modify a diesel-electric ship with a windmill ("sailing" with the wind may be a little tricky, but nothing a little tacking can't handle). Come back when it's only 10% more expensive to operate than using the diesel generators alone. While you're at it, cover the deck with photovoltaic cells and try those out as well. If it supposedly works for stationary power generation, it should also work on 300+ meter ships. The generators involved are of the same scale.

Nineteenth-century coal-fired steamers were cheaper and easier to use than sailing ships, even when you consider they had to carry thousands of tons of coal on top of the weight of the boilers. And fossil-fuel technology has progressed by leaps and bounds since then. If these alternative energy sources were actually more viable than fossil fuels, capitalism dictates that they would have taken over by now.

Think of it as Fermi's Paradox for energy production.

Re:big whup. you still can't make wires

[Mac Degger]

Not exactly...fossil fuels win at sea for one reason only: they won't run out on you. Solar and wind power however have the problem that you'll invariably find a day when you can't move due to lack of sunlight/wind.

Re:big whup. you still can't make wires

[Guppy06]

"Solar and wind power however have the problem that you'll invariably find a day when you can't move due to lack of sunlight/wind."

And those problems don't apply to stationary power generation because why?

Re:big whup. you still can't make wires

[Mac Degger]

Because you're connected to an international powergrid; there is, literaly, not one single day in the year where there is no wind or sun in enough parts of the world. And if you're afraid there would be...you could prepare for that by storing energy in massive fuel cells, just like there are oil/gas reserves.

Re:big whup. you still can't make wires

[Guppy06]

"literaly, not one single day in the year where there is no wind or sun in enough parts of the world."

And the amount of acreage this would require doesn't bother you? Have you considered what the price of all that real estate would be?

Re:big whup. you still can't make wires

[Mac Degger]

No. Becasue the acreage wouldn't be that great...especially because you can also place thes4e things at sea. Not only that, but the property where these things would be build are outside of cities, where the land prices are dirt cheap/owned by the government anyways.

quick, call slashdot!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm doing research on turning human crap into a room temperature, superconducting, teleporting, anti-gravity, and faster than light propulsion system. If successful it will make star trek possible.

There, now post me on slashdot!

Re:quick, call slashdot!

[BTM1001]

Actually, I never once saw someone on any Federation vessel use a restroom. Therefore, there would be no continous source of fuel for the "wessel".

Re:quick, call slashdot!

[mark-t]

John Frakes actually answered this frequently brought up point once on a TV special that was taped, in part, on the set of the Enterprise bridge. Indeed, there is a door from the bridge that supposedly leads to a washroom (off to the left of the bridge, if I remember correctly) but it's never shown or mentioned in the show because bathroom oriented material really only makes for tolerable sitcoms, at best.

-5 Offtopic

These things sound really cool?

[Can it run Linux]

Will they be able to run Linux?

Re:These things sound really cool?

[Master Rux]

Can you thing of anything Linux can't run on?

Diamond Fabrication

[The Jonas]

if the world might pressure them in to lowering prices...

It might not even be necessary.

From this link.

February 1998

©SIGNAL Magazine 1998

Innovations Propose Marriage Of Diamonds, Semiconductors


Nature's hardest substance sparkles aplenty as a heat-sink substrate for computer chips.

Robert K. Ackerman

Researchers are coming ever closer to diamond fabrication technologies economical enough to be incorporated in mass semiconductor fabrication. The ability of chip designers to use diamond as a heat sink for microprocessors will permit significant advances in processing power by enabling denser designs.

Approaching the Holy Grail of cost-effective diamond substrate fabrication are several companies employing different technologies. These range from conventional pressure systems that have crossed logistical Rubicons to deposition methods enabled by novel applications of exotic processes.

The potential playground for semiconductor diamond substrate begins in military systems and ultimately extends into the consumer marketplace. Programs sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) aim at incorporating the technology into sensor suites aboard the Air Force's new Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor air superiority fighter aircraft. The agency is pursuing a number of different approaches that would be wed to existing circuitry for improvements in efficiency and performance.

Concurrently, companies not necessarily involved in the DARPA effort are generating larger, better and less expensive diamond substrates. Existing technologies already are able to generate 4-inch wafers, and larger wafers at lower costs beckon. The potential market for this diamond technology runs in the billions of dollars, according to some industry analysts.

Engagement Rings

[breon.halling]

"If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!"

That's assuming you don't ever want to get married. =p

What slashdotters would demand...

[GQuon]

would be that they are "free as in deBeers".

Prove your love

[jonerik]

If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!

Because, God knows, women can be counted on for preferring a practical gift over a romantic one.

Re:Prove your love

[dragonsister]

If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!

Because, God knows, women can be counted on for preferring a practical gift over a romantic one.

Which way are you joking? :-) This is why DeBeers had to spend so much money on their advertising campaign in the 1920s; why they had to make a movie thing of surprising the prospective bride with a ring; because, given the choice of him spending two months salary on a ring or on the downpayment on a house, her decision would almost invariably be for the house ... an opinion that she doesn't get a chance to offer if the ring is a surprise.

Certainly in my circle of friends, the average cost of engagement rings is around one week's salary, not two months (by an odd coincidence most of the rings are sapphires of one form or another!); and most of the couples have mortgages (we live in a city where houses are affordable!)

Women do like romance, but it doesn't have to be expensive. The occasional surprise of one kind or another does go down well, but making special time together is far more important! Yes, this means leaving the computer! :-) Even (gasp, choke!) at times that might be inconvenient to you! (Quietly putting up with a bit of inconvenience, making her your priority, does a lot to make your lady feel loved.)

I concur with the other comments about Moore's law and the inappropriateness of an engagement CPU. Buy her the CPU later, when her computer needs upgrading. If the physics is substantiated and the massive climb from possibility to economic production completed, you probably won't be able to see or touch the diamonds inside the chip anyway.

Rachel

Think of the marketing possibilities ...

[Zorlon]

Oracle + Diamond CPU + Intel = Unbreakable Diamond Inside

Screw the superconductivity, the real discovery is

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

Room temp superconductivity is nifty. What's (literally) incredible is that the guy is claiming to have produced "Bose-Einstein-type condensate" at room temperature, as opposed to the usual few-billionths of a degree above absolute zero.

I find "experimental error" to be far more plausible, but of course it's hard to know without seeing both the original researcher's work as well as third-party confirmation results.

--

No problem!

[Tackhead]

> We need women before we can give them diamonds!

You misunderstand.

"Since we'll never have women, now we have a use for all those frickin' diamonds!"

And if you *do* have a woman, all you have to do is say "Honey, there's a Slashdot posting that says diamonds can be room-temperature superconductors. Can you hand me my, uh, I mean your engagement ring for a few minutes? Yes, honey that is a 1kV supply and a vaccuum pump", and you'll be back in bachelorhood with the rest of us.

CPU in a ring

[xYoni69x]

Cool! I can't wait to get a titanium Itanium ring.

What about the Cost?

[Zerbey]

Now, I may be wrong here... but are these the same diamonds that are used as jewelry? How big will they need to be? The diamond ring I bought my wife when I asked her to marry me cost a fortune, many times more than a CPU. (She's worth the expense, of course!).

I also shudder having to think of the poor guy in Sierra Leone who spent all week mining for the diamond to make enough money to feed his family. What will he see of this?

Giving your loved one a diamond ring CPU...

[DarklordJonnyDigital]

Giving your wife a diamond engagement ring that's actually functional?

Someone ought to tell this guy!

Interesting

[Cruciform]

When we hear of the horrible things the diamond industry has done to quash human rights, price fix, etc. it's a great reason not to buy a diamond engagement ring.

But how much will that going to matter when it comes down to clock cycles?

Someone needs to start coming up with rational explanations for our girlfriends now so we're not caught unprepared.

As we all know

[dzym]

The romance of any particular gift is inversely proportional to the size of the gift multiplied by the usefuless multiplied by the price.

So, a diamond CPU fails it.

Re:As we all know

[the idoru]

i think you mean the size of the gift *divided by* its usefulness multiplied by the price.

shiny things dangling from your body parts arent terribly useful. it's not romantic if you can actually use it to do something.

But...

[JonnyElvis42]

If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!

...What if I want her to say "Yes"?

Not really

[autopr0n]

Artificial diamonds aren't really that expensive.

April first was last week.

[mark-t]

Although I commend the PhysicsWeb journal for not being too sensationalistic by choosing to use an interogative form in their article title rather than the more tempting declarative form, this sort of breakthrough at this time simply defies credibilty as far as I'm concerned.

I'd need to see a lot more evidence than what's in a science journal before I'd be willing to buy it.

Superconductor or Semiconductor

[tjhayes]

I doubt that we'd be giving an "engagement CPU" just because room-temperature diamonds may be SUPERconductors. CPUs are and will in the future be made of SEMIconductors. Big Difference there!

to you sir, i give all my ficticious mod points

[jonnyfivealive]

as i have no real ones, or i would properly bestow them upon your brow. that was good for giggles, chap

A beowulf cluster would be...

[lpret]

my girlfriend's hand. She loves diamonds. Hmm, methinks that if we break up I can "borrow" those back to power my next computer?

Re:A beowulf cluster would be...

[CrazyDuke]

Heh, as long as they aren't lots of big diamonds. You can get 1 to 2 cts of diamond for about $30 when they are the little 1 to 1.5 mm jobs. Diamond dust.

Re:Yea, so?

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

And vacuume[sic]s are sooo hard to maintain...

Why, last week I spent four hours pumping all the air out of my lightbulbs...

Diamonds

[athakur999]

If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!

Screw that. With these guys, you can turn yourself into a CPU! When you die, your children can play Doom VI because of your remains.

What everyone REALLY wants to know....

[freeze128]

Yeah, but can you OVERCLOCK it? :)

taco's secret revealed

[b17bmbr]

If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!

He's obviously single

[WarDancer]

perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring

There a fundamental flaw in that statement. From my experiments, I observed that women in general usually do NOT want to be offered something usefull. They want even less something even remotely close to what we desire.

It's like saying : "perharps one day you could give your love a pc/xbox/ps2 instead of jewelery/flowers/chocolate"

Of course, if you have a girlfriend that actually wants one of these, I don't know why you're wasting time around here :o)

David Hudson

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are TRULY interested in room temp. superconductors (they already exist as specially formed minerals in the human body) you should check out David Hudson's ORMUS patents.

http://www.ormus.ws/ormus/patents/patents.htm

OT:wind turbines

[glenebob]

"Did you know that the entire U.S. electrical grid could be powered by less than 150,000 modern wind turbines?"

How many acres does it take to hold that many wind turbines? How many of them need to be running at capacity at one time to power the entire U.S. electrical grid? All of them? How many would we need to guarantee that 150000 were running strong at all times, and how many acres would THAT take?

Re:OT:wind turbines

[js7a]

How many acres does it take to hold that many wind turbines?

Well, first off, as someone else pointed out, I should have said 1.5 million turbines, not 150,000, so as not to assume constant peak output as I had mistakenly done. However, each one of those turbines takes only 36 square meters, meaning that all 1.5 million would take less than 14,000 acres, or about as much oak forest that is lost each year in California alone, or less than twice the area of the Stanford University campus.

That power costs about 4 cents per killowatt hour, compared to 3 cents for poorly-scrubbed coal (compared to European scrubbing standards, which result in 4 cents/kwh), anywhere from 7 to 15 cents per kilowatt hour for natural gas (depending on market rates with occasional shortages) 11 cents/kwh for nuclear (plus hidden externalities for waste disposal). In other words, it's the best deal around.

How many of them need to be running at capacity at one time to power the entire U.S. electrical grid?

Right, you hit the nail on the head for the 150,000 figure. Again, I should have said 1.5 million for average output values. The occasional drop caused by widespread windlessness could be backed up by hydroelectric power stations, or storage systems.

Re:Screw the superconductivity, the real discovery

[CatKnight]

yeah, a bose-einstein condensate of electron pairs. you are probably thinking of the matter-wave scientists recently produced, which is much harder to achieve. I'm not sure exactly what this guy was referring to with the bose-einstein condensate stuff, the article was very vague. Maybe he was talking about something related to cooper-pairs?

Manufacturing?

[DuSTman31]

Myself I'd like to know what kind of manufacturing is available to make this possible.

With silicon semiconductors, a massive crystal of the stuff can be grown by suspending a small crystal "seed" an molten silicon and very slowly pulling the seed upwards while rotating..

Carbon, on the other hand, isn't so obliging - It doesn't melt, it sublimes directly from a solid state into a gaseous one, so this way's out..

Using diamond as a basis for microcircuit manufacture can't seriously take off until we can either find a way to create large crystals, or grow large ones from existing small crystals..

Re:Manufacturing?

[merlin_jim]

One possible method is CVD - Chemical Vapor Deposition. When I was going through High School, for a couple hundred dollars of lab equipment (most of which was usable for other experiments and found in the store room of the chemlab), you could setup a lab to grow a diamond film. Now the diamond film grown there was mostly amorphous carbon, but there were micron-sized diamond crystals embedded in it.

The process involves flowing a mixture of alcohol (-COOH), Water Vapor, and Hydrogen over a hot (2400 degree Centigrade) tungsten filament, flowing the resulting gas over a warm (900 degree Centigrade) Si or Mb plate in an oxygen free environment. The idea being that when the mix hits the tungsten, the alcohol combines with the Hydrogen to from two water molecules, leaving the carbon as a free radical.

This was a repeat of an experiment from the 50's. I imagine they've improved the process to the point of being able to reliably grow larger crystals by now. I seem to remember that the heat differential between the filament and the plate was a problem (smaller heat differential = bigger/better crystals at a trade off of time to grow) and that the substrate was also a problem... an existing diamond crystal seed of some sort would provide a much better substrate. An Si substrate, for instance, means that the attatchment points on the surface of the plate for the carbon free radicals doesn't match what you would find in diamond, so adjacent deposition sites can't work together to form the same larger crystal.

Re:Manufacturing?

[Bender_]

Carbon, on the other hand, isn't so obliging - It doesn't melt, it sublimes directly from a solid state into a gaseous one, so this way's out..

You can grow diamond from the vapor phase. (CVD-Diamond). This does work and is state of the art. There are also some people out there who try to grow diamond from a fluid phase using a precursor/solvent, but results have yet to be shown..

Re:Manufacturing?

[evilWurst]

Why would we need large diamonds for small chips? Why not just use the industrial diamond coating techniques we already have?

Just coat something else with a thin diamond layer and cut away at it.

Re:Manufacturing?

[Bender_]

They have information on CVD-Diamond. Also do not forget to check out pictures. Of actual diamond products.

Re:Manufacturing?

[NeuroManson]

I believe the diamond in question is going to be the traces in the silicon wafer, vapor deposited on the surface (instead of the existing semiconductors that are layered onto the chips). No need for big crystals here.

If you don't want the watered-down pop-science...

[rsw]

The actual papers are available online.
Part I
Part II

Mirrored:
Part I
Part II

Re:Screw the superconductivity, the real discovery

[Compuser]

I haven't checked out his papers but the article
doesn't make it sound like that is what he claims.
You have to realize that there are many similarities
between a BEC state and a Cooper pair SC state, so
that some theorists will be loose with their
terminology. He seems to mainly claim that the
electronic density is high enough for a condensed
state to develop. If more experiments show that
amgnetic field is expelled and there is a state
with coherent phase (ODLRO) then it will get
real exciting real fast. Until then, I'll stick
to my studies of BSCCO and YBCO.

Wow!

[Grendel Drago]

deBeers visited the plant and it was shutdown the next day. Hmm....wonder what happened there...go figure...

Wow, what an extraordinary claim! Care to back it up with some sort of evidence?

--grendel drago

Re:Wow!

[aardvarkjoe]

Oh, come now. The veracity of such claims should be obvious to anyone with a tin foil helmet.

Re:Wow!

[Grendel Drago]

I see that the Anus Shades have gotten to you, too.

--grendel drago

Re:Wow!

[GooberToo]

Well, once you take your tin foil hat off and the aliens stop reading your mind, you can attempt to go learn more about it. The information was gleaned from a documentary on deBeers, the diamond trade and the resulting slavery forced on the population as a result of deBeers and the government that he owns.

Feel free to ignore it if you like...but being so rude about it only makes you appear like a total jackass to those of us who happen to know even a little-bit on the topic.

I call bullshit!

[wirelessbuzzers]

...and in other news, Saddam Hussein has fled Iraq to become a Buddhist. Hearing that turkey guts can be turned into oil, W decided that there is no further purpose for a war in Iraq, and so has backed out of the country and given its smoking remains to France.

Re:Screw the superconductivity, the real discovery

[wass]

Room temp superconductivity is nifty. What's (literally) incredible is that the guy is claiming to have produced "Bose-Einstein-type condensate" at room temperature, as opposed to the usual few-billionths of a degree above absolute zero [colorado.edu].

The article skimped out on theoretical details, but the Bose-Enstein-type condensate refers to the superconducting phase-transition where the electrons form Cooper-pairs (through an electron-lattice-electron interaction). These Cooper pairs are spin-zero (the electrons pair anti-symetrically into the singlet state), and act like bosons, which can condense into the Bose-Einstein condensate.

Note that this is NOT exactly like a Bose-Einstein condensate because the bosons themselves contain two fermions, which are effectively coupled. These are similar, but not the same as the rubidium atoms in the BEC experiment you linked to. So it is kind of a BEC, but not exactly.

Now regarding your mention of a few-billionths of a degree above absolute zero, that is for the rubidium-atom experiment. THe superconducting phase-transition, which is what this article was referring to, happens in many elements at a few Kelvins, and in High-Tc materials up to the record of 150 K (I think).

Beyond that, there is other stuff that is sketchy, such as the professor retiring and not verifying that the diamond superconductors demonstrate the Meissner Effect (magnetic field expulsion from the interior of a superconductor) and other things. If this was really superconducting, I'd be sure he'd stay on as emeritus for at least a few years and keep going with these experiments, where he has a head-start over all other groups. If this is really room-temp Tc material that the article purports it to be, then this is HUGE news, and he should stay emeritus than quit research entirely. Hmmm...

Please...

[krangomatik]

Don't buy conflict diamond CPUs!

Re:Sounds expensive

[DiscoOnTheSide]

They already do. Ever price out an Itanium? My student loans pale in comparison :)

Can I Give her Diamond Token Ring?

[multi-flavor-geek]

They are all Token Rings any way, but hopefully I can get meaningful 2 way communication next time, and not just a bunch of lost packets and wasted resources.

Re:Can I Give her Diamond Token Ring?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

You big HIPPI, the only kind of conversation you know is LOCALTALK. Some of us like to keep things more international, and ditch the backwoods jargon. You know, keep the topic ARC a somewhat wide. In any event, get off your cheapskate ass and go find the nearest ATM, withdraw some cash(at least FDDI dollars) and buy that girl a real ring.

Re:Can I Give her Diamond Token Ring?

[multi-flavor-geek]

Well, I try to make all of my connections to BNC (blond ~n~ cute). Unfortunatly my networking skills seem to be rather lacking, as I just can't seem to ping any of them. Maybe with the diamond token ring my success rate for pinging a BNC will improve. Otherwise I will have to go back to using ether again....

Re:Can I Give her Diamond Token Ring?

[KinkyClown]

Beware of the spontanious spawning of child processes :)

Current Difficulties

[EngMedic]

Again, this is one of those "it works well in theory" deals. In theory, diamonds are superconductive. This relies heavily upon the symmetry of the crystalline structure. In nature, diamonds have enough imperfections to destroy the superconductive nature. SciAm had an article last summer.

Re:Current Difficulties

[otis wildflower]

What about carbon nanotubes then?

Re:Current Difficulties

[EngMedic]

those show promise. difficulties lie in two areas, iirc. first, making them long enough without significant imperfection is still a challenge, and second, methods of manufacture are slow, costly, and ineffective (only about a 20% yield)

Wind Farms ain't necessarily all good

[wass]

Did you know that the entire U.S. electrical grid could be powered by less than 150,000 modern wind turbines?

Global wind transports are an important atmospheric commodity to transport heat around the globe. They're also very important for spreading pollen and seeds, and other biological necessities.

Sure, windpower doesn't produce CO2 or other pollutants. But most proponents entirely ignore the other environmental impacts it would have, such as reducing intra-continental air transfer (ie, there's less wind as you put up more turbines), altering the trade-winds (loosely affecting air flights that make use of tailwinds, but greatly affecting avid sailboaters and kite-flyers). Plus other effects that would probably manifest themselves if we put up too many windfarms.

If intra-contintal crosswinds are greatly cut down, expect countries away from the equator to remain colder as less warm tropical air can travel up there, and vice-versa with the tropical countries. I assume you were talking about the USA power grid. How would Canadians farmers (and all other citizens too) feel if their air temperature dropped because we prevent adequate transfer of warm air to their country?

I don't know the numbers for these questions, but wind is an important ecological force that many people take for granted, and proponents of wind-farms like to ignore.

Re:Wind Farms ain't necessarily all good

[js7a]

Even if the entire planet converted to 100% wind-powered electricity overnight, the drag on wind flow from all the turbines would be tiny compared to the lost drag caused by deforestation over the past decade alone.

Re:Wind Farms ain't necessarily all good

[wass]

the drag on wind flow from all the turbines would be tiny compared to the lost drag caused by deforestation over the past decade alone.

Do you have numbers for those claims? Wind turbines are designed to specifically remove kinetic energy from the wind. Trees will only remove kinetic energy of the wind through friction as the branches sway in the breeze.

Are you bullshitting, or do you have actual information on your claim?

Re:Wind Farms ain't necessarily all good

[wass]

You were joking I hope... because of all the buildings in all the cities of all the world, none interfere with the wind.

Are you joking? Have you ever seen a series of high-rise buildings that channel the wind and create a wind-tunnel effect? Read this report for some info about how Canada is dealing with this common effect.

You seem to miss my argument completely. Wind turbines are purposely designed to extract as much kinetic energy from the wind as possible.

Buildings, on the other hand, are (mostly) static objects that can channel and redirect wind. They don't take away it's kinetic energy (except a tiny fraction through friction from shear flows).

If you have any documentation that will demonstrate that the reduced convective flows will not affect regional temperatures or tailwinds used for migratory birds, or other large-scale environmental impacts, then please show me. I haven't seen any reports refuting these concerns, and windfarm advocates sidestep this issue.

Re:Wind Farms ain't necessarily all good

[HBI]

Must be bullshitting. One reason I say that is that it is not all that clear that any deforestation happened during the last 10 years, worldwide. It might have, but then again no one is watching many parts of the planet.

I would mention that the Eastern US is more heavily forested now than it was in 1900.

Re:Wind Farms ain't necessarily all good

[Mac Degger]

"is not all that clear that any deforestation happened during the last 10 years, worldwide"

What? You easily check this yourself by having a gander at some satelite photo's.

Re:Wind Farms ain't necessarily all good

[Mac Degger]

Not really. satelite image interpretation is only difficult when one is trying to see what hight that building is, or what kind of car/truck/tanks is rolling along there. Checking to see if that patch is foilage or groundcover is very easy to do.

As for "Just because it has nice, colourful pictures does not mean it is a mickey mouse job." What exactly do you mean by that? The guys who made the photo didn't do a 'mickley mouse job'...they just posted the data which came from the satelite. Or do you mean me and my interpretation? Well, trust me (and if you had a look at some satelite imagery yourself, you'd know this): deforestation (ie the absence of trees) is damn easy to spot. Especially if you have a picture showing the same area a couple of months back, when there where trees.

Now please stop posting about things you obviously haven't even taken the time to even google for.

Re:Screw the superconductivity, the real discovery

[HiThere]

It said that he was seeking patents. Perhaps his contract would have hindered him getting them in his own name?

There could be lots of reasons that he retired.

Giving her a Diamond Engagement CPU ?

[cmehta1]

Yeah..imagine where two months salary lasts for a lifetime of getting bitch slapped for being so stupid

(OT) Sapphire vs. alumina.

[Christopher Thomas]

exceptions are numerous, including sapphire which (in some range of temperatures) is actually a better heat conductor than copper, yet is an hard insulator. A slightly worse heat conductor, alumina, is also a hard insulator.

This parallel is not surprising, as sapphire is alumina doped with anything other than chromium or vanadium (those two count as "ruby").

Tapping directly works fine.

[Christopher Thomas]

Yikes. If you try to "tap in" to an inductor, it will produce an enormous voltage and immediately arc to close the circuit. The only way to get energy out of a superconducting solenoid is through some magnetic interaction.

If you pick the number of windings carefully, tapping directly into the inductor works just fine.

The inductor wants to maintain the current flowing through the coil. If that is the amount of current you expect to draw for your load, both load and coil will be perfectly happy in the new configuration. If you wish to draw less current (or tolerate interruptions without arcing), drop a resistor in parallel with the load. This will limit voltage across the load to the amount needed to push the coil's current through the resistor.

When you aren't using the load, of course, you short across it so as to reduce resistive power loss. Typically this switching is actually performed by having a closed coil, and heating the part you want to cut out above the superconducting breakdown temperature, if I understand correctly.

The only design difficulty is that this requires a large number of windings (sheet current is typically millions of amps or more, which means you need millions of windings for a load that draws 1A).

Storage density turns out to be low.

[Christopher Thomas]

Because a superconductor conducts with literally zero resistance, you can create a ring of superconducting material, pump as much current into it as it will tolerate, and just let the current cycle forever. No degradation whatsoever. Then when you want power, you just tap into the ring and pull it out on demand.

The problem is that storage density is limited both by the maximum magnetic field your superconductors can tolerate, and by the tensile strength of your coil (interaction between the field and the current causes very large outward pressure on the solenoid).

I did the calculations assuming a material with the tensile strength of carbon nanotubes and no field limit at all, and still wound up with an energy density a couple of orders of magnitude below that of chemical fuels (by weight and by volume).

You might replace batteries with something like this, but fuel cells are already leaning on this market and have higher energy density than an inductor can achieve.

In summary, while it's a neat idea, it turns out to not be useful in most practical scenarios.

Hmmm

[Tablizer]

"Diamonds, a nerd's best friend" ?

Great...

[chinton]

Does that mean I'm gonna have to pay three months salary for my next CPU?

1.5 million turbines, sorry

[js7a]

According to the DOE the total U.S. generation of electricity for 1999 was 3691 billion kilowatt hours. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epav1/int ro.html#tab1

According to the Danish Windpower Industry Association, a modern wind turbine will generate about 2 to 3 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year.
http://www.windpower.org/faqs.htm#anchor727849

If these numbers (and my math) is right, your conclusion is off by about an order of magnitude.

You are right. I calculated using average peak turbine output, which, given that the wind doesn't blow all the time, is about 1/10 of average sustained output. I should have said 1.5 million modern turbines. Thank you for checking that.

Looks like fringe science to me

[Muhammar]

So this guy has been working on diamond-based semiconductors and got an unusual result. He is retired and does not have instrumentation to do more tests. So what does he do? He proclaims room emperature superconductivity on surface of the material to make his data fit.

Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence and I do no see it here. Wishful thinking more likely.

To replicate results..

[asadodetira]

They'll be forced to buy diamonds.. The research was sponsored by diamonds producer.. Win-win situation Even if the findings are not true, they can sell a bunch of diamonds to scientists.

Diamond engagement CPU?

[PrimeWaveZ]

Much as I my girlfriend and I are geeks, I think she'd kick my ass if I got her an engagement CPU.

Now, the 17" PowerBook is another story... ;)

Really corny article text.

[Ignorant Aardvark]

"If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!"

And promptly have her kick your nuts in.

You could then ....

[R33MSpec]

Introduce The ALL NEW Beowulf Diamond cluster ring!

Excuse Me...

[pyrrho]

... but you seem to have some entropy stuck in your throat... there is a little on your shirt as well... :)

Not for long...

[Goonie]

Apparently there's a lab in Russia that's turning out gem-quality artificial diamonds. It's still possible for De Beers to tell the difference, but your average jeweller couldn't and punters certainly couldn't.

Re:Not for long...

[InfoVore]

It is apparently quite easy to tell these diamonds from natural diamonds. I saw a program on this not that long ago. Any competent jeweler could easily tell the difference:

1) Man-made gem-stone quality diamonds are generally too perfect.
2) These diamonds generally have non-natural coloring. Some are actually artificially colored (sky blue diamonds anyone?)
3) These diamonds fluorese under UV "Black" light.

As I understand it, one of the big goals for these guys (besides breaking the DeBeers distribution barrier) is to make the diamonds as 'real' as possible. So, they are working on ways to introduce flaws and color variations into the stones. I got the feeling from the program, they aren't that far away from their goal of manufacturing a 'natural' diamond.

DeBeers is so worried about the whole situation they are now micro-etching the DeBeers logo onto all their diamonds. This essentially means that anyone who buys a DeBeers natural diamond will be paying a premium for... a corporate logo.

DeBeers is aparently trying to become Nike.

I.V.

shit...

[Hooya]

now that i finally brainwashed my wife into "don't expect me to buy diamonds for you since deBeers is evil and a diamond is worth as much as just about any rock but are expensive as they are just because deBeers controls distribution et.." (there was an article out somewhere titled 'ever tried to sell a diamond?' that i made her read).. now this.. if i tell her, "honey, maybe diamonds are really worth something.." she's going to bitchslap me.

couldn't they have used some other friggin' rock? hope i don't live long enough to be programming a diamond cpu that my wife gave me on our anniversary.

A Nerdy Present!

[Jim_Hawkins]

If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!"

Finally! Something a Slashdotter can give to his woman -- and then he can use it too!

Wait...there's a problem with that...Slashdotters don't have women. ARGH! Foiled again!

Zardoz CPU?

[crovira]

Anybody remember the gem that was the wearable computer in the movie Zardoz?

I'd laugh my ass off if it was scientifically sound.

Nature imitating art indeed.

I think they need a lot more room....

[dfenstrate]

However, each one of those turbines takes only 36 square meters, meaning that all 1.5 million would take less than 14,000 acres,

I followed your link, but it seems to me that they were only talking about footprint of the devices themselves- 36 sq meters seems reasonable for that.

But there needs to be a significant distance in between the the turbines, or they'll buffet each other horribly- the ones first in line will catch all the wind, and the rest will be worth crap. I couldn't be sure, but it seems to me that to prevent buffeting, you'd need about at least an acre of land per turbine (an acre being something like 200x200 feet, i think.) I know it's not the best source, but in the movie "seven", the finale is located on a wind farm, and there's a whole lot of space between them.
Also, don't forget they need room to swing around as well.

Another thing that bothers me is the increase in maintanance- can you imagine having to service 1.5 million turbines? The cost and logistics would be astronomical. A nuke or fossil power plant concentrates a lot more power generation in one system, increasing reliability and easing maintanance.

Certainly, wind power has it's place, in the right areas, but it's not the miracle you seem to attribute to it. My 2 cents anyway.

Re:I think they need a lot more room....

[wass]

I couldn't be sure, but it seems to me that to prevent buffeting, you'd need about at least an acre of land per turbine (an acre being something like 200x200 feet, i think.) I know it's not the best source, but in the movie "seven", the finale is located on a wind farm

I drove through Altamont Pass in California a few years ago, which has tons of wind turbines, and might have been where they filmed that scene in "Seven". The windmills were maybe 100-200 meters apart. Maybe more, but definitely a lot further than 6 meters apart (which would be the distance for that 36 sq. meters number quoted above).

Also, this location was in a mountain pass that is really windy, so this was probably an exceptional place for harnessing the wind. Other places probably need to space the towers farther apart to ensure enough room such that the turbines aren't located in each others wind shadows.

NIMBY

[chadjg]

Even if the numbers added up on this deal, social factors are prohibitive. All the major wind farms I've seen are in remote and undesirable areas.There are two related reasons for this. First, the land is cheaper. Second, and more importantly, it avoids the unholy bitching that happens when you do anything industrial near somebody's house. I think a modern windmill is a beautiful thing, but nobody else does. Windmills will only be useful in a distributed, efficient grid. That, and good for disposing of morons and Darwin worthy birds.

Sci-Fi Today

[apsmith]

Yup, the SFT guys have been doing a great job of getting these breaking science news stories out before slashdot, and written very informatively too. What do the editors here get paid for anyway? :-)

"If successful, perhaps one day you could give..."

[Joey7F]

"If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!"

You don't know a whole lot of women do you?

For marriage that is defintely out, but for engagement purposes, perhaps it could serve as a token ring?

--Joey

Not entirely stupid...

[Goonie]

When you get down to it, the whole point of the whole jewellery exercise is for women to show off their wealth, or that of their partners, not because of its intrinsic beauty. Therefore, it's entirely possible that they will be able to convince people to buy branded diamonds when an equivalent, unbranded product would look identical and cost a small fraction of the price. They're buying it precisely because it's expensive.

For completeness, the exact same comment applies to men who buy Rolexes...

Bose-Einstein-type condensate

[adoll]

at which a Bose-Einstein-type condensate of electron pairs forms.

This is the dead give-away that something is happening that the author can't explain. Bose-Einstein condensates are a form of matter that only exists around absolute-zero. The fact the author is using it to explain something in a common, room temperature diamond means he doesn't have a clue!

Will this technology ever be useful? Beats me, but scientists need to be able to explain it better than this.

-AD

Re:Bose-Einstein-type condensate

[31eq]

No, not a Bose-Einstein condensate of a gas. A Bose-Einstein-type condensate of electron pairs. That's what happens in a superconductor. Electrons (spin 1/2) pair off to become integral-spin bosons. That means they behave similarly to bosonic atoms and can form the equivalent of a Bose-Einstein condensate. But only the electrons, so it can occur at a much higher temperature than real Bose-Einstein condensates where atoms have to behave quantum-mechanically.

It would be nice if scientists could explain the technology to you or I, but it's more important for them to get it to work. Only leading researchers will be able to help with that, and they'll know all about the electron gas model. There are books out there that explain superconductivity in an accessible way. To understand it fully, you'll need a background knowledge of quantum mechanics. But don't worry too much. If you're really interested, you'll pick it up.

Industrial diamonds == cheeep

[adoll]

Not all diamonds are expensive. Only the 'gem' quality ones will set you back the price of a water-cooled Athlon system. Gems constitute roughly 10% of a diamond orebody; the rest are classified as 'industrial' diamonds and sold much cheaper to people like Boart-Longear for use in mining drills.

Here is a sample of a diamond orebody valuation study from one of the Canadian companies mining diamonds in the Arctic.

-AD
PS, yes, I'm a mining engineer.

Australia too

[adoll]

The Kimberley region of Western Australia is the Free World's first major non-African diamond field. It is still one of the world's largest producers.

-AD

DRM

[bigmattana]

Well, as it stands right now, De Beers has a worldwide monopoly on natural diamonds.

Yeah, I'm sure it will be a while before we see processors made from diamonds. We'll have to develop some sort of DRM (Diamond Rights Management) before they will let us use them in in the format we want them in.

yeah, right

[ansonyumo]

Interesting that this "research" comes from the freakin' diamond capitol of the world! (Yes, I read that they are using synthetics, but anyway...)

In other news, ansonyumo finds that bullshit cures cancer.

Engagement?

[Becquerel]

Diamonds are a geeks best friend.

Is this a DeBeers conspiracy to drive up prices?

[Dr. Spork]

Did you notice that this scientist is in South Africa, home of DeBeers, and refuses to verify his experimental results? Wow, that would really be something if a company paid off academic scientists to create a buzz about their product with some journal articles. Now, before you flame me, I'm not silly enough to actually think this is what's going on in this case, but it sorta makes you think it's only a matter of time before this sort of collusion becomes common. I expect the first manifestation will be some paid off, retiring biochemists with nothing to lose but their reputation, publishing articles which claim breaktrhough results using some process/chemical which happens to be patented by a certain company. It's a great way to drive up that company's stock prices, especially if the claims are vague enough to never be definitively falsified.

Re:lattice vibration transport

[Technician]

Heat transfer in semiconductors is dominated by lattice vibration transport. Due to the bandgap there is little phonon/electron interaction.

A good example of this is the solid state cooling modules we are familiar with. They contain rods of doped silicone. Half the rods are P type and the other half N type. As the electrical current pass through the rods, it carries heat with it. When more heat is carried, than is generated due to resistance, one end of the rods cools while the other end heats. The hot end has both the heat carried from the cold end and the heat from resistance. It isn't very effecient. I don't know the numbers, but it works like 50 watts in = 20 watts of heat carried away from a CPU, but 70 watts worth of heat needs dissapated in the heatsink. They do work for cooling a CPU, but they burn a lot of energy producing plenty of heat in the process.

Re: "Magickal Jewelry"

[einhverfr]

First the on-topic part:

Giving one's love something of symbolic importance as an engagement present is important. I fail to see how a CPU would work here ;-) Symbolism is what ceremonies such as weddings are all about and most of not all magico-religious traditions are based on symbolism.

Much as a room-temp superconductor is really neat, diamonds are used in engagement rings because they sparkle and are extremely hard (so that they are more durable under normal wear and tear than other stones). The Romans new this and would embed small rough diamonds on the insides of their gold rings as a way of trying to ensure invincibility (nothing can scratch a diamond).

Now for the off-topic rant:
First, the idea that gems have some effect on one's life is in itself no more or less superstitious than believing that there is a god who answers your prayers. I have visited a Shinto shrine where they were actually selling good-luck charms. However, there is a difference between what I consider to be superstition and valid belief is a little different. I don't want to go into it here too far except to say this:

1: The actual belief is not right or wrong. It is how that belief fits into a system of thought. If I don't understand why or have a model of a framework, then it is superstition. For example, if I believe that it will bring good luck for a bride to wear red in a wedding, that is OK, as long as I am connecting it to Chinese cosmology ;-) But if you are trying to have a standard wedding in the American tradition, then that would be a little odd and superstitious ;-)

2: Religious belief is something which has existed throughout the ages, and has been something important to many important scientists, such as Einstein as well. I beleive that religious beliefs come about because they embody something universal to the human experience. It is not a question of a true religion but rather languages of the soul. Just as English is not the One True Language, neither is there a One True Religion.

The jewelry I was speaking of was specifically for Hermeticists using it in Hermetic rituals. Other types may be possible as well, but that is the target audience.

But hey, this is a debate which has raged for *millenia* and if you read some of Pliny the Elder's works, you see the same arguments being put up there, and in Firmicus Maternus's "Mathesis" one sees a rebuttal to the same arguements seen today. So this idea that there is somehow progress which has made these "primative" systems of thought obsolete is ludecrous. I would point the reader to the introduction of A.E. Wallis Budge's important archeological text "Amulets and Superstitions" for another scholar's opinion.

Just etch in the DeBeers logo

[irritating environme]

Go ahead, try to figure out who did it! Which country it came from!

What will women buy to get their men to waste 1,000 - 1,000,000 bucks now?

How will women be able to foment rebellion, misery, rape, murder, war, and chopping off of hands in Africa?

Re:ok, love here are my thoughts on sex wars

[dragonsister]

I can see there's a sore point there ... though I'm not sure how I triggered it. My comment was not intended to be a rant (see the smileyfaces) and I was only taking a teasing poke at the slashdot stereotype of a computer-addict! :-)

I'm Australian and I haven't seen the kind of problems you describe. I suspect there's a big difference in our schoolyard culture. Anyway, I've mainly seen friends in long relationships with 'nice' partners.

Rachel

not bullshit

[js7a]

In the 1990s, world forests lost 90 million hectares. A wind turbine uses 0.0036 hectares to produce about 1.5 gigawatt hours per year. Current worldwide electricity production is around 16,000 terawatt hours. Therefore, if the whole world entirely switched to wind, it would require 38,400 hectares, or 1/2344 of the area of forest lost in the 90s.

Do you really think that a turbine could extract more kinetic energy from wind than 2344 times its land area of forest extracts with friction? Remember, modern turbines have three rather thin blades, whereas forests are by definition filled with foiliage. In terms of surface area against the wind, a single tree within the same area that a turbine takes would have thousands if not millions of times the area. Also, trees aren't very rigid against moderate windspeeds, converting wind into waste heat much more than solid objects do.

Plus, the amount of heat that atmospheric carbon dioxide causes to be forced into the atmosphere will more than make up for 16,000 TWh of turbine extraction. (0.3 watts per square meter yeilds more than 150,000 TWh over the earth's illuminated surface area.)