NASA Looking For "Diamonds In The Sky"

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Scientist Charles Bauschlicher and his research team have found a new way to look for 'diamonds in the sky'. It may not be romantic, but diamonds shine especially brightly in the 3.4 to 3.5 micron and 6 to 10 micron infrared ranges, which should make NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope the perfect tool to see them with. Though less common and more monopolized on earth, diamonds are surprisingly common in outer space and the nanometer-sized bits comprise 3% of all the carbon found in meteorites. That means that if meteorite composition is representative of interstellar dust, that dust would contain about 10 quadrillion (1 * 10^16) nanodiamonds per gram."

Comments

Re:Nanodiamonds

[Intron]

You can make great sandpaper.

Re:Diamonds at the core of gas giants?

[reverseengineer]

Arthur C. Clarke noted that the idea that Jupiter's core was a gigantic diamond was inspired by an article in Nature which speculated that a solid layer observed in the compositions of Uranus and Neptune was composed of carbon liberated by intense pressure from methane.

Laboratory experiments mimicking the temperatures and pressures found deep within those planets suggest diamond production is indeed possible, but would be more likely to be an agglomerate mass of diamond microcrystals than the yottacarat diamond solitaire envisioned by Clarke. Uranus and Neptune would probably make for better diamond production than Jupiter and Saturn due to a higher abundance of methane and thus carbon.

That being said, recent research suggests that Uranus and Neptune are not sufficiently carbon-rich to have produced an appreciable amount of diamond after all.

Re:Nanodiamonds

[NotQuiteReal]

Yes, diamond powder is great for grinding and polishing hard things, like silicon wafers.

Industrial diamond is manufactured cheaply. You can even find it on eBay for a couple of bucks a carat.

The trick is getting a consistent grit/mesh/size so that you know how polished you can make your wafers.

I worked with a guy in the 80's who had a side business making diamond grinding compounds for customers in the bay area - he would pre-load his secret mixture into grease-guns he bought at Sears. They were single use, he told me. I don't remember why, something about screwing up the seals, or maybe a used grease gun put contaminates in the grinding goop... anyhow he made really good money at it for some reason, there must have been more to it than meets the eye. He was a retired nuclear physicist, so he knew what he was doing, when it came to small particles.