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Scientists Turn Tequila Into Diamonds
MaxwellEdison writes "Researchers, oddly enough from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, have found a way to make diamond films using tequila. They were originally testing methods of creating the films with organic solutions like acetone when it was noticed the ideal ratios of water and ethanol turned out to be about 80 proof, or 40% alcohol. '"To dissipate any doubts, one morning on the way to the lab I bought a pocket-size bottle of cheap white tequila and we did some tests," Apátiga said. "We were in doubt over whether the great amount of chemicals present in tequila, other than water and ethanol, would contaminate or obstruct the process, it turned out to be not so. The results were amazing, same as with the ethanol and water compound, we obtained almost spherical shaped diamonds of nanometric size. There is no doubt; tequila has the exact proportion of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms necessary to form diamonds."'"
Diamonds make girls easier to sleep with; tequila makes girls easier to sleep with. We really should have seen this earlier.
further proof, quervo is god.
~DF
Drinking too much of the tequilla beforehand might impact the observations.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
That's a waste of good tequila, c'mon...
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
a project with lots of Tequila involved.
This is good news. Shortly, you'll be able to use the same substance that got you into this mess, for the ring.
But now we'll have to protect these scientists, as well as tequila factories, lest DeBeers have them assassinated.
just like with using ethanol with food, how's this going to affect being an alcoholic?
As much tequila as I've put away in the past, I'm thinking I should have examined more closely the output from a recent bout with kidney stones...
Raging in an online forum won't do anything for the world around you. To see change, you must take action.
About a billion dollars worth of margaritas.
There goes the price of Tequila....
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
I've been doing the reverse for years. I'm not even a scientist.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Tequila has lead to diamonds before, more often than other places in Vegas ;)
Once again, eggheads and their muddled brains. Ask yourself: Is that a good thing?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
...embedding nanoscale worms in the diamonds.
That I'll need to be 21 to buy my wedding ring? Damn.
Please be quiet, sir, or everyone will want one.
Is that a Rolex?
No, it's an Anejo, you insensitive clod!
I guess that explains the aftertaste.
Peace and happyness to you, by LullySing
Just got caught with the tequila at work, and had to come up with an excuse quickly.
Umm... we're... um... um... trying to make diamond nanospheres with it! Yeah, diamond nanospheres! That's the ticket.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
... I have seen some code recently, that I think would be easier for me to digest with Tequila ... hell, in my company, it would be easier to put in a purchase request for Tequila than diamonds
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Uh, I'm not sure I follow your logic there, even though I agree with the end result. TFA points out they had discovered this by using ethanol and water mixed. They made mixes from pure alchohol and water, it was only after they found the ideal ratio that someone realized it was the same as tequilla. Had prohibition been going on, they would have discovered the real money making part: the ratio of water to alchohol needed to make diamonds.
Interestingly, most labs that use ethanol for things like sterilization get most of it not in the form of pure ethanol but 70% ethanol. There seem to be two causes for that in the US, one is of course that higher-purity ethanol is harder to make, I'm not sure what goes into getting 100% ethanol, but I've heard you can't distill it that pure. The other is that the 70% stock is usually denatured, it often has methanol added. The addition of methanol makes it undrinkable (er, well you could drink it, but you'd go blind and die if you drank enough of it) and also makes it taxed less.
I wonder if these guys weren't trying to cut down on laboratory costs, maybe methanol reduces the efficiency (ruling out the denatured alchohol), but the non-methanol contaminants in tequilla don't. Maybe tequilla is a lot cheaper than even denatured alchohol in Mexico.
I have personally turned tequila into many things. Including vomit and diarrhea.
TGIF...Its 5:00 somewhere...Isn't Tecuila a Carb...I can drink more!
Ladies and Gay men Contact me! - tsdfitz@yahoo.com
Maybe tequilla is a lot cheaper than even denatured alchohol in Mexico.
Or maybe they just needed an excuse to be able to bill Tequila to their lab expense account!
How's 200 bottles of Tequila going to look on my next grant application?
It's hard to get 100% pure ethanol because ethanol is hygroscopic. This is part of the problem with using pure ethanol in vehicles (water ends up in your fuel without proper precautions), and why butanol may be a better choice for fuel.
Also, I'm not sure why nobody's mentioned it, but vodka is about the closest you can get to a 60%-40% water/ethanol mixture. Very few if any extra chemicals. Why use tequila instead of vodka?
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
In simple distillation it is impossible to get 100% ethanol. The highest purity you can get is 95.6% ethanol and 4.4% water because ethanol/water is an azeotrope. There are several ways to get pure ethanol, one of which is to add compounds like benzene which makes it unsuitable for human consumption.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Because of the goddamn Russians, pinko.
Because the research was done at UNAM. And the only thing worse than cheap Mexican tequila is cheap Mexican vodka. Even the worms refuse to drown in it.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
Debido a su Mexico! Ahora, dónde dejo mi prostituta?
-=Bang Bang=-
Because the research was done in Mexico instead of Russia? Wonder if the Physics departments at various colleges in Kentucky are working on their proposals yet,,,
ATTENTION BREWERS: Promotional opportunity is knocking! Fund some physics reasearch.
Those temperatures and pressures seem relatively low. I wonder if this stuff could be achieved using something like a pressure cooker hooked up to a clay kiln. The idea of a DIY stainless steel diamond coating process is quite pleasing to me.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Scientists at GE invented artificial diamonds more than 30 years ago. It sounds like what these guys really discovered is that they could use an impure solution in the process. That might be helpful if alcohol were expensive but I think your common drugstore ethanol is cheaper than food grade.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
I just want my blue agave syrup.
So can we can "transform" diamonds into great tasting tequila? ... and dont be a wise ass an tell me that we can sell the diamonds and buy a great bottle of tequila.
is there nothing you can't do? From creating diamonds to making me forget my freshman (and most of my sophomore)year at college.
Good Times,good times...
Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
They plan to begin industrial-scale applications around 2011, and hope to interest a tequila producer in widening its market beyond the traditional beverage.
I for one look forward to my Jose Cuervo RAM sticks.
:wq
Erm, I may be wrong, but don't most distilled liqueurs come as 80 proof here in the States?
Google: "All your data are belong to us."
You can't mention tequila with out thinking of the song.
Da dada dada Da da.
Hard.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
Why use tequila instead of vodka?
Duh, you can't make a good margarita out of vodka.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Why would anyone waste good tequila on rocks? Call me back when someone can turn cheap beer into tequila.
I would think that whiskey would work better, since whiskey is made from peat, and peat eventually turns into coal, and coal eventually turns into diamonds.
Why not use filtration and/or sieving? Ethanol molecules should be much larger than water molecules.... I know we're talking about creating nanomaterials here, but surely somebody has tried it.... :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I'm sure the fact they were in Mexico had nothing to do with the drink of choice...
Possibly related to that, water and alcohol form an azeotropic mixture. In practice this mixture (of about 95%alcohol and 5% water) is the closest to pure ethanol you can achieve through distillation.
Why use tequila instead of vodka?
Because tequila is cheaper in Mexico?
You have to scroll down pretty far to find it, so...
Tequila - Not just for breakfast anymore!
Victory or awesome!
What's next?
"Canadian scientists create maple-syrup neural-net AI"
"Scottish researchers make solar panels out of whiskey and haggis"
"Chinese military launches actual rice rocket"
That's an interesting idea and would be really cool, but if anyone has done it, I'd imagine it would be outrageously expensive compared to standard methods. For many applications, as the misnamed unknowingfool alluded to, benzene is a pretty cheap way. For human consumption purposes, 95% ethanol is not noticeably different from 100%. But there will definitely be a big market for nanofilters that could separate ethanol from water as soon as it's working and cheap.
Cuervo Gold now to be known as Cuervo Yellow Diamond.
Professor: "Your supposed to be working on bourbon in the nano-rocks not bourbon on the rocks!"
GA: "We had to adjust the alcohol to water ratio, so we are slowly melting ice into the bourbon with frequent ratio checks."
Professor: "OK, carry on. Oh, and give me one for sampling purposes."
...millions of women have turned tequilla into diamonds since, well the invention of tequila. Heck with the standard XX vs XY process they even get a bit of platinum out of the tequila to wrap around the diamond. ;)
You will never find a bottle of Tequila with a worm in it. Only *Mescal*, a harsher liquor made from other types of Agave plant, can be found with a worm in the bottle.
I study there, I saw it happen. Then we went for some tacos... Also, cheap Mexican vodka isn't even made by mexicans...
This just in! Scientists in Russia have confirmed the results using Vodka! The article even mentions a Japanese lab trying using Sake...
Only in Mexico would you use the words "scientist" and "cheap tequila" in the same article.
Sigs? We don't need no steekin Sigs!
That's kind of like skydivers' responses to the "why jump out of a perfectly good airplane?" jokes - "have you seen the airplanes we're jumping out of?".
A few years back I was in Mazatlan with friends, and checked out tequilas in the local liquor store. The range of selections explained why one of the local restaurants was pouring the stuff like water - the cheap stuff was about $5/gallon. If you wanted Cazadores or drinks at a fancy bar, you still had to pay real money, but if you wanted ethanol that had been aged in plastic for no more than 15 minutes, and didn't have to pay US-level or Europe-level alcohol taxes, it doesn't actually cost that much to make.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Tequila is better than gold!
:(){
Damn, wasn't Sammy Hagar rich enough already?!?
But what about the rum?
The reason 70% is used is because purer alcohols dehydrates the bacteria and causes them to go into a sporuative phase and more difficult to kill. Ethanol, EtOH is sometimes denatured with methanol and sometime with other alkanes like heptane. EtOH typically comes out of the still at 190 proof or 95%, if memory serves me correctly you can get it up to 98% with additional treatment but it's expensive.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
n / t
you had me at #!
That God hates Russians...
you had me at #!
should be the very least
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
but this is the first informative I read in this thread.
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
public class Tequila extends Beverage implements AlcoholicBeverage, CarbonNanotubeFactory, DiamondFactory { /* TODO: thikn of a waay toi make tihs clsas impkle,ment CancerCure swomehow
keep[ thoser reseeaarch gramts comming guys!1 ~VMC */
}
...you Crazy Mexicans
You will never find a bottle of Tequila with a worm in it
I beg to differ. I put a worm in a bottle of Tequila then put it in my fridge. My parents promptly found it.
Actually Water Filters are really good for cheap vodka, a couple of passes and the taste is vastly improved. Vodka is also best served as cold as you can get it.
With a separate glass for juice (Apple juice is especially nice although usually reserved for Zubrowka. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zubrivka ).
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Hello, I'm a researcher from National Autonomous University of Mexico, and I'm an alchemist.
[group] What's that in your jacket pocket?
The bottle of tequila? Err, that's for my research, I can create diamonds from it !
[group] Sure... Welcome brother, you're with friends now..
The opinions expressed here are those of this individual, and may not reflect the policy or practice of the collective
looks like there are some tricks for breaking the azeotrope and getting purer alcholol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azeotrope#Separation_of_azeotrope_constituents
I was also under the impression that if you already had some very pure stock you could mix that in to get past the azeotrope and then continue distilling (and keep some of your product for use in the same way on the next batch, is there something impractical about that method).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Since the end result is the same following the application of either substance (getting poon) who needs the transformation?
Have gnu, will travel.
What are the applications?
I know a metallurgist who has developed a cheap method of growing diamond onto ferrous surfaces. Is this a possible method for growing diamond on non-ferrous surfaces?
I know there are a lot of jokes floating around here, but could the applications be useful? Can we grow diamond ball-bearings or something? Ideas?
Come on, this is Slashdot. We joke around, but SOMEBODY must know some uses for this idea.
-
For now, the scientists are continuing to test different tequilas abilities to produce diamonds. Theyre also working on creating doped diamonds, which contain impurities, to serve as semiconductors.
Up here in the states, we drink expensive tequila!
More importantly, can they turn diamonds into tequila?
... by being constipated after a long day of drinking.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Drinking good tequila is actually medicinal, if not overdone, as is with other good alcoholic beverages. Probably because teq comes from a plant which very heartily grows in the desert. Vodka used to always be made from potato which is also very hearty, as being developed by both the Incas, Mayans and other Native tribes to survive in all kinds of climates. Obviously, tequila was used because the experiment was conducted in Mexico, being readily available. The only thing that got me was the cheap tequila part. Cheap tequila in Mexico is considered good tequila here. I know because I have done the taste tests. I'm shitting diamonds now. Of course I had to stand next to a radiator, while I smoked from my vaporizer first.
Finally! My days of straining my Goldschlager are coming to an end.
Learn About Outsourcing. http://www.pioutsource.com
I wonder what they turned the worm into.....
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Trying not to be a troll, I think american units are hilarious. 80 proof is ofc 40Â alcohol, everybody knows that. Dito with 1 foot being 12 inches and 3 feet being a yard. That Fahrenheit is based off the natural body temperature of humans, minus one, and when a guy in Denmark thinks it's freezing, is a lot less known. That you/they haven't gone off medieval units yet is a wonder of majestic proportions. Lobby this, please, not gay marriage and teenage abortions!
Or you could use 2 columns running at different pressures. Distillation at different pressures moves the azeotrope point (so called pressure swing) enabling you to get very pure alcohol. Of course, the capital required for a second column to produce that last few percent means it may not be worth it.
TURN IT BACK!!!!!!!!
erm... Results 1 - 9 of 9 for "slashdot orgy". (0.15 seconds)
Now if they could only get it to turn back after the divorce.
This sentence no verb.
Well, there's cheap Mexican public universities.
When they make diamonds with Pinoqachole, THEN I'll be pleasantly surprised!
.
.
- aqk
F U
That was YOU???!!!
I was with your parents that night!
They drank the tequila; and gave me the worm!
.
- aqk
F U
Apparently in Scotland, it's turning into diamonds all by itself ...
Well, at least with help from those nouveau riche in China and India.
.
- aqk
F U
I bet this works with Mezcal as well, just imagine Diamonds con gusano.....
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
Because the alcohol really holds on to that last little bit of water. The water doesn't settle so you can't sieve it out the bottom.
Lastly, the technology you speak of has already been done. Not only that, it's very common. Reverse osmosis is taking impure water and squeezing it against a membrane so relatively pure water comes through. If the pressure were removed the water would wick back through the membrane to diffuse the the more impure side.
If you're selling a bottle of it at a store, then yeah, it has to be 51% agave. If Tony's pouring it out of a jug at his restaurant, it needs to be at least vaguely tequila flavored.
Last news I read on the subject was that there had been a shortage a couple of years ago, mainly due to rapidly increasing US popularity, but then agave farmers overplanted and now there's an oversupply (so you're seeing things like agave syrup at Whole Paycheck) and farmers are looking at tearing it out and going to other crops.
At least with tequila, there's some chance for the market to adapt, as opposed to single-malt scotch or something. The agave still takes some time to grow, but most distillers aren't aging their product more than 2 years, usually rather less, as opposed to scotch where the cheap stuff is 8 years old. If you want Macallan to start making more of their 25-year-old stuff, get a time machine and let them know.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks