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Uranus and Neptune May Have "Oceans of Diamonds"

Third Position writes "Oceans of liquid diamond topped with solid 'icebergs' of the precious gems could be on Uranus and Neptune. The first-ever detailed research into the melting point of diamond found it behaves like water during melting and freezing — with its solid form floating on the liquid. A large diamond ocean on one or both of the planets could provide an explanation for an oddity they both share: unlike Earth, they do not have magnetic poles that match up with their geographical poles." The article doesn't mention what the pressures might be like in these outer-planets environments, but the researchers found that liquefying diamond requires 40 million times Earth's atmospheric pressure at sea level.

3 of 347 comments (clear)

  1. Re:For the dull knives in the drawer by Kral_Blbec · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Thank you for clarifying that waters formula is h2o. I am sure that most of the slashdot crowd would not have been aware of that.

  2. Re:Well, that's one way to get the space race movi by AmigaMMC · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Actually world economy is based on the value of gold (and oil, but gold first and foremost) and if all of a sudden there were mountains of it the economy would collapse.The U.S. for starters would have to turn Fort Knox into a museum.

  3. Enough of the phony self righteous crap please! by Viol8 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    ...ooh its so bad nasty de beers mining in africa , its against my ethics blah blah effin blah...

    Right , so in that case none of you own a mobile phone, computer, TV or 101 non essential electronic gadgets then? You do? Well who knew!

    In that case you might want to go find out where a lot of minerals for them get mined and what the conditions are like for the workers, particularly coltan.

    So I suggest you all get yourselves out of that hypocritical liberal glass house you're all standing in because you're just as guilty of exploiting african workers as some up market bimbo wearing a lot of De Beers ice.

    And another home truth you might not want to hear is that most of that continent is run by warlords in one form or another - its just that some of then killed enough people to get the title of President. There are a few exceptions such as South Africa, Botswana & Kenya, but most of the countries there are about as democratic as Stalinist Russia. Any country that does business there has to accept that fact or simply not bother and given the rest of the worlds need for minerals the latter option ain't gonna happen.