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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."
A whole new marketing campaign suggests itself: "Give her the gift of the stars"
Or something like that, anyway.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
In his novel 2061: Odyssey Three Arthur C. Clarke described the core of Jupiter as nearly solid diamond, formed by the enormous pressure of the gas giant's atmosphere. Is there any probability that this is true, or was it only a science-fiction author's imagination?
why my wife came home today with an application for the space program... and my name was already filled out at the top.
...Lucy in the sky with diamonds?
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
In other news DeBeers has announced plans to launch millions of poverty stricken Africans into space. They'll be equipped with 60 minutes of oxygen and lunch box sized capsules capable of reentering Earths atmosphere.
Are they looking for Lucy too?
Larry Niven already described a sociey of asteroid belt miners in great depth in his Known Space stories of the 1960s and 1970s. Similarly, Michael Flynn had asteroid mining as one of the big commercial ventures that popped up when private corporations finally got up into orbit. Even without diamonds, there's enough precious metals up there that the notion of space miners has fired the imagination of many science-fiction writers.
You can make great sandpaper.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
That is the great lie the diamond industry wants you to believe. Ask any geologist. Diamonds are very common.
Actually, diamonds probably aren't worth the trouble of asteroid mining. Crushed diamond powder is cheap and plentiful right here on earth. It's only the larger chunks of diamond that are valued much, and even those aren't in short supply. The price of diamonds is only as high as it is because a cartel of the major producers work in collusion to keep the prices up. I suppose diamonds from asteroid mining might force them to lower their prices a bit, but it's unlikely that mining asteroids for diamonds could successfully compete with earth based diamond mining.
Quite possibly if we do end up with asteroid miners, they'll be throwing away cheap carbon compounds like diamonds, in favor of useful ores like iron or nickel.
So what does that work out to in carets per cubic parsec?
Squirrel!
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.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Diamonds are not scarce by any means on earth, it's simply a front put up by the DeBeers company.
NASA found out just now.. I knew that from my nursery rhymes :D
We have come a long way in synthetic diamond production. It would be way cheaper to refine that technology thanit would be to try scouring space for what is literally diamond dust.