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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.
So now /.ers can tell their "girlfriends" that if you want a diamond, you're free to look for one in Uranus?
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Like many sci-fi authors who predicted inventions long before they became practical, bluegrass can now claim foresight into future scientific advances.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"Pardon my French, but Cameron is so tight that if you stuck a lump of coal up his ass, in two weeks you'd have a diamond."
-- Ferris Bueller
I'd like to let everyone know that Mars is full of gold just under the crust, and every planet around Proxima Centauri is rich with uranium.
Get that space program moving.
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
I only point this out because you would be surprised at how many human beings don't know this, but for it to float to the top, that means its frozen state is less dense, hence expands, when freezes. Almost nothing else does this.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
There's no way this is even remotely possible.
I mean, diamonds are rare, aren't they? You know it, I know it, and De Beers know it.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
no. the shipping cost is greater than the value of the (semi-precious) gems you'd get. also the debeers would get upset, and the (highly controlled) diamond market would collapse.
The possibilities of exploring the outer "ice giants" is massive. I think, at least. I may not even make the pun because I think the idea of exploring them is so interesting.
Submarines are designed to handle a test depth of maybe 1600 ft which means maybe 50 bar of pressure. At that pressure, the atmosphere of Uranus is a little below freezing. The gravity is less than Earth. I suspect that with correct ballasting you could make a metal sphere float in the atmosphere for quite some time by keeping the insides pressurized to a convenient atmospheric pressure. So sticking around for a while isn't hard.
I can't find any good information on the radiation environment there and if you could put humans in the little bubble circling Uranus.. um.. yeah, I lied above.
Gentoo Sucks
Might be worth the cost of shipping if it did away with the diamond industry once and for all! Of course, what with marketing, De Beers would probably buy up the stock from Uranus and either dump it in the ocean, or sell it at 500% the price of normal diamonds as "space diamonds... the most romantic diamond yet. Shit that's been floating on the seas of Uranus for millions of years can now be on your hand - FOREVER."
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
40 million atmospheres is the kind of pressure that you'd measure under 400 million meters (400,000km) of material at a density of 1 g/cm^3 at a constant 1 g. Uranus and Neptune's gravity field is near 1g give or take and the density is not much more than 1g/cm^3 so the pressure in the core can not be 40 million atmospheres as there isn't ~400,000 km of material sitting above the core. Given that Uranus has a radius of ~25,000 km, density of ~1.27 g/cm^3, surface gravity of 8.7 m/s^2 and that the gravity field drops off roughly linearly with depth, the pressure is probably about a tenth of what TFA says diamond started to melt. Either someone dropped a zero where it didn't belong or Diamond isn't fluid in these planets' cores.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Escape velocity is such that while humans could be landed on Neptune or Uranus they couldn't be lifted off without advanced fusion powered rockets. I don't actually think the giant planets have much potential for us unless we find ways to exploit humungus amounts of mass. Applications like building ringworld and dyson spheres could require that much mass.
The moons of the giant planets will keep us busy for 1000 years at least.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I wonder why the headline isn't
Uranus and Neptune May Have "Oceans of melted coal"
"diamond" is by definition a solid crystalline form of carbon. If you melt it, it is by definition not diamond anymore.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
These diamonds aren't "precious". Either they're too far out of our reach and therefore worthless or they're within our reach and they're worthless because there's so many of them. If we could ever make it there and back the diamond market would crash. Not that that would be a bad thing. Debeers needs to have their illegal monopoly crushed by any means necessary.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
No, for a couple reasons:
A) Diamonds are only expensive on earth because of artificial scarcity. If we could bring them back to earth by the spaceshipload, suddenly they wouldn't be worth very much. Apparently this is different than the nature of unobtanium.
B) Space flight is extremely expensive. If it turned out the moon were solid gold, and we could go there and bring it back a ton at a time, it still wouldn't be cost-effectice to go get it. It really does cost that much to go into space.
Qxe4
Dibs on Uranus.
This is AWESOME!. We'll all be rich! Rich as astronauts! Because, of course, the value that we humans put into diamonds are because of their inherent worth to our quality of life and has nothing to do with the fact that we're a bunch of yahoos..
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
I recall someone doing some maths and determined that if there were a mountain of gold bars on the moon it would not be economical to go get some. Same applies here I'd imagine, much moreso.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
So, how is liquid diamond different from liquid graphite or liquid carbon? It's my understanding that the only difference between graphite and diamond is that the crystalline structure is 2-d in graphite and 3-d in diamond.
Is it just the fact that at those temperatures and pressures the natural crystals formed from the liquid are diamond?
yeah also... klingons are usually found on uranus.
Hal Clement thought too small. Mesklin may be too low pressure for complex life.
One of the reasons earth is so amenable to life is that ice floats, so the oceans remain deep and liquid. The hydrocarbon oceans of Mesklin would be shallow and cold, a thin layer of liquid ammonia or methane over ices and clathrates. Thus they wouldn't serve as a moderator of temperature and reservoir of life the way Earths oceans have.
But if life based on crystalline carbon at millions of atmospheres is possible at all, it's all the more possible if the carbon-cycle resembles the water cycle on Earth.
Escape velocity is such that while humans could be landed on Neptune or Uranus they couldn't be lifted off without advanced fusion powered rockets.
Yeah, well don't forget about the gravity. If humans landed on those planets I doubt they'd be very interested in taking off again. Although they might make good frisbees from then on.
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
Diamonds are only expensive on earth because of artificial scarcity
I don't think even that is the case anymore. Maybe in the past, and maybe that's why the present is where it is, where something has a perceived value that's arguably a great deal above it's actual or practical value. The diamond market goes to great lengths to maintain this public perception. The only diamonds that are scarce are large natural ones.
Heck, helium is fast becoming a scarce material, which is just weird to think about. But they're not making it anymore so I suppose.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Though if it would be possible to mine this form of coal in industrial quantities, it could suddenly become useful as a mineral... (yes, I know diamonds are useful already - but those are usually small amounts of manufactured ones). There's even one book by Stephenson more or less about it. And hey, you have whole moon out there full of hydrocarbons, in quantities many times greater than deposits on Earth.
Is it impractical now? Hell yeah. Will it always be? I don't know. But I'm sure many people would laugh at you only few thousand years ago for suggesting that dark rocks can be used as a source of energy. A thousands years ago for suggesting the same with whale oil on industrial scale. 200 years ago with that black oily substance seeping from the ground here and there. Rocks from which people get mysteriously sick used for power generation and most powerful explosives? Tapping the power of a volcano? Splitting water to get to the Moon? That's insane!
One that hath name thou can not otter
That was a very clever trick. NASA won't need to worry about getting the funding to build long-range spacecraft anymore now. Devious...
I really don't find this all that surprising, diamonds aren't even that rare on earth. The only reason they are so expensive is because diamond companies buy them all up and only put very few on the market. However, I have to admit, an iceberg of diamonds would look pretty darn awesome!
Escape velocity is such that while humans could be landed on Neptune or Uranus they couldn't be lifted off without advanced fusion powered rockets.
Yeah, well don't forget about the gravity. If humans landed on those planets I doubt they'd be very interested in taking off again. Although they might make good frisbees from then on.
As cmowire pointed out gravity on most of these planets is not so great, with the exception of Jupiter where it is IIRC 2.5 g or so. On saturn it is just over a g and on Uranus and Neptune it is below one g. While their mass is huge their density is low so gravity is modest.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The problem isn't somuch the escape velocity required, as it is getting the fuel there. Look how much fuel it takes to get the shuttle out of the atmosphere. Compare that with the weight of the shuttle itself. Now imagine what it would take to launch that much fuel into orbit, if you were going to take it with you and use it to take off from Neptune after you landed.
Fusion drive probably wouldn't be any more useful there as it is here. Currently the most practical way to orbit is to trade mass at appreciable velocity, and the problem there is you usually want the mass you're trading to come from the same thing that's generating the velocity, and that'd be rocket fuel. Not much of that on Neptune unfortunately, or anything else with those two qualities.
Owell the first people to go there or mars or whatever are going to be permanent residents anyway. I'd still go though, given the opportunity - I doubt they'll have problems finding takers for that one when it comes up.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
The Doctor already knew this. But watch out. What they don't mention is that planets with diamond waterfalls also apparently have strange, ethereal aliens that like to play "copycat" and have a thing for possessing lesbian women.
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C) good luck designing something that could survive the pressures and temperatures that cause diamond to melt, and yet that would also be capable of escaping the gravity wells of Uranus or Neptune. They may not be Jupiter or Saturn but they're still gas giants.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
That's nothing. I know of a planet that is made out of candy and chocolate and ponies. Just step into my vehicle, and I'll show it to you, little girl.
... and then they built the supercollider.
when we have a huge chunk of cheese hanging right above us?
such a dumb discussion. we can't even begin to think of getting anyone on the moon (again?), let alone up uranus....
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And you might also be interested to know that a mountain of gold doesn't eve exist on the earth. Apparently all the gold ever refined in the world would only fill a cube 20 meters on each side.
There's at least one notable substance that shares this property: Water.
And another notable one, silicon.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
If it turned out the moon were solid gold, and we could go there and bring it back a ton at a time, it still wouldn't be cost-effectice to go get it. It really does cost that much to go into space.
But returning a ton of stuff from space can be quite cheap. Returning gold from the moon could be cost-effective, if you were willing to spend quite a few billion dollars building a mass-driver to launch it to Earth, and facilities to build simple lifting bodies to land it safely.
That said, if you were to return enough gold to justify such an investment, the price of gold might drop too low to justify the cost :).
Of course in this case even if you could build a mass-driver on one of Neptune's moons that was accurate enough to launch payload to Earth, that would cost far less than getting the diamonds out of Neptune in the first place.
It's the SKIES that are made of diamonds.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
>if there were a mountain of gold bars on the moon it would not be economical to go get some.
Why not? All you have to do is get there, ie. the cost of the rocket and fuel, plus training and supplies.
Then once you're up there, all you have to do is throw all the gold back down.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
I'm waiting for Unobtainium.
Cue the Blue People and Human Mercenary Invaders!
You know what else De Beers is peeved about? Man-made diamonds. They're cheaper and more ethical than anything De Beers can find in Sierra Leone.
Synthetic diamonds are for the most part, industrial grade which tends to be opaque unlike gem quality natural diamonds which are transparent, contain Nitrogen and don't fluoresce under UV like synthetic diamonds generally do. Synthetic diamonds are synthesized in rapid fashion which leaves two major crystal phases in the finished material which is responsible for the fluorescence under UV light. Any transparent synthetic diamonds tend to either be devoid of Nitrogen (crystal clear) or have a yellowish tinge to them caused by Nitrogen in the crystal. Natural diamonds have Nitrogen in them but they form in such long periods of time that there is only one major crystal phase in them and the Nitrogen has migrated to regions in the crystal in such a way as to leave the diamond clear instead of yellow. So yes diamonds can be synthesized cheaper than those dug out of the ground. However, they are not quite the same as of today's technology and can often be differentiated from natural diamonds because of minute differences in their characteristics.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Actually a nuclear powered rocket will do just fine. Nobody there to get pissed off if you pressurize some of the abundant hydrogen into a tank and run it past a fission reactor.
Gentoo Sucks
Yes.
Even natural diamonds aren't the slightest bit rare on Earth. It's just the diamond cartels that make it rare.
"An ocean of diamonds? In my anus?"
It's more likely than you think.
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The atmosphere of Uranus is 83% hydrogen. If we can't turn that into fuel for a fusion reactor then we won't be operating in the atmosphere of that planet. So the planet has plenty of fuel, and fusion power is (as always) 50 years away.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
We're going to see rappers really getting into astronomy and space travel now. Only in an attempt to be the first rapper with a diamond pool in one of his videos. Or maybe have a tap with running diamonds in his mansion to one up Dave Chappelle sprinkling diamonds on his dinosaur eggs. Once 106 & Park gets involved in space aeronautics we may actually start seeing videos like this. You know, to get the kids involved.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
I think it was first mentioned in the book 2010 that Jupiter may have a core of diamond, nd later in the book 2061 an astronomer finds a piece of it (after Jupiter is blown up into a star by the monolith) on Europa.
So it would not be surprising to find diamond at the core of other gas giants. But so what, we could make diamond here on earth for less energy cost than digging it out of a gas giant and bringing it back to earth.
Well he did say water and diamond and not much else.
Water and diamond does include both water and diamond...
So now /.ers can tell their "girlfriends" that if you want a diamond, you're free to look for one in Uranus?
I'm sorry langelgjm but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all...
...DeBeers lobbies congress that the Space Program is a huge waste of money when there are real problems to be solved *here on earth*.
I heard that there's obscene amounts of unobtainium in one of the moons of Pandora, and it's yours for the taking!
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Then once you're up there, all you have to do is throw all the gold back down.
Well, you'd have to "throw" it down slowly enough so that it doesn't become a molten, white-hot projectile and embed itself several miles in the ground when it crash-lands.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
"...unlike Earth, they do not have magnetic poles that match up with their geographical poles."
Unlike Earth, neither does Earth. The Earth's south magnetic pole is presently about 25.6 degrees from the south pole. Granted, that's not 60 degrees, but apparently neither are theirs since according to TFA the magnetic poles on Uranus and Neptune "can be up to 60 degrees off the north-south axis", it they were, there's be no reason to say "can be".
There's no note regarding secondary poles on the giant planets like on the sun, but according the Oersted and Magsat satellite data and article in Nature in 2002 (416/8661, pp 620-623) there's an alternate pole developing in the South Atlantic west of South Africa. There's also a geomagnetic anomaly near Lake Baikal in Siberia that causes deflection in the magnetic field measured as far away as Japan, but there's no evidence (or none as yet) that it's a developing "alternate". But one's enough, when it comes to picking apart TFA. Not only is Earth unlike the Earth they compare against while constructing their theory, it's quite capable of being equal to the giants in its unlikeness in the complete absence of diamond seas with or without diamondbergs.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Think about this:
Diamond has no value in itself. It has technical applications, but there are already good substitutes, and for those applications (given the small amount needed, and the low quality of the diamonds involved) it's relatively cheap.
The value of Diamonds is artificially controlled: Scarcity, and symbolic value.
So, if normal Diamonds are expensive, Diamonds from space will be N times more expensive. They are actually MORE scarce, because They are fucking hard to bring back. Also, harvesting is more expensive (considering it were possible at all with current technology).
Also, there's is the "From space" thing. Currently, Synthetic diamonds are pretty cheap to produce, and they are legally diamonds. (I'm not talking about Zirconia, I'm talking about artificially produced diamonds). And still, people want real diamonds. Is there a difference between them? Nop, just the "This is scarce and comes from the core of the planet" thing.
So, Diamonds from outer space will be:
a) Fucking expensive
b) A great name for a band or B horror movie.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Actually it would be much smaller! There have been roughly 3.4B troy oz of gold mined, or about 116,000 short tons. 1 ft^3 = ~.5 short tons so ~58,000 ft^3 or ~1,642 m^3 or less than 1/4 your 8,000 m^3 cube =)
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We can also burn hydrogen.
It is likely cheaper to create the technology to create perfect synthetic diamonds than to create the technology needed to fish them out of a gas giant ocean pressurized to 40 million pounds per square inch.
The cake is a pie
That and Canadian and Russian production that basically broke the cartel. Though according to their reports they actually have better profits at 40% of the gem market then when they controlled 80+%.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The economy of mining other planets changes with increasing technology. If you have a cheap spaceship with a cheap propulsion system, it becomes more economical. If that propulsion system happens to run on HE3 then mining the moon becomes even more economical as the moon has tons and the earth has almost none.
As far as extracting mountains of diamonds from the massive gravity well of a gas giant, you would need some very advanced technology and a damn good reason. I doubt engagement rings are going to cut it.
Maybe if you needed a light, hard impact shield for ships moving at high sub-light speeds or something. I don't really know, the only uses I know of for diamonds at the moment are cutting things and getting laid.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
Do you mean chemically? In oxygen? Where are you going to find oxygen on Uranus? In water molecules I suppose but you still need a source of energy to crack the water which means fission, or preferable fusion power.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
But then you'd miss out on all the fun of mining it out of the Earth...
Not to mention that by the time we have the tech to be able to mine Neptune diamonds we won't need to. We'll be able to *make* diamonds ... or anything else for that matter.
[signature]
That's a big twinkie.
Nah, even lab created perfect diamonds larger than 1c are expensive. Gemesis 1.5c diamonds are yellow and only sell at about a 30% discount to mined diamonds. Apollo VS1 colorless diamonds seem to trade on par to their mined counterparts and they come in a max size of .3c.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Uranus' atmosphere is 83% hydrogen, 15% helium and 2% methane, making oxidation a bit of a problem. Maybe something in the environment besides oxygen would work. I dunno.
"I know that every word that man just said is true, because it's EXACTLY what I wanted to hear." -- Space Ghost
Not only that, but it would probably be much more practical to set up outposts near the supply to take advantage of them; if we can mine those diamonds, we should certainly be able to set up some industrial outposts to utilize the diamonds properly.
http://www.tenjou.net/
Get a one-way ticket and pay for the return journey in gold?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
De Beers Marketing
1. A diamond is forever.
2. A diamond is a family heirloom.
3. If he truly loves you, he would buy a diamond that costs him 2 months' salary.
Pure genius.
"The economy of mining other planets...[snip]...the only uses I know of for diamonds at the moment are cutting things and getting laid."
Cost is irrelevant, history clearly demonstrates the prospect of getting laid has moved mountains.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
And, unlike natural diamonds, man-made diamonds are perfect. Which of course De Beers turns into a positive marketing spin.
Also many less children DIE from harvesting mad-made diamonds.
*DrugCheese rants*
When the scientists melted diamond and saw it resolidify and float on such a small scale, how can they assume diamond really floats on larger scales? Might not have capillary action come into play or some other force?
Yes but the oxidizer costs kill you.....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Yeah but the catch is you need obscene amounts of unobtainium to get there.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Returning gold from the moon could be cost-effective, if you were willing to spend quite a few billion dollars building a mass-driver to launch it to Earth, and facilities to build simple lifting bodies to land it safely.
It'd be cheap to drop stuff from the moon down to earth until an AI named Mike gets recruited to help in the rebellion. Damn computers.
That and Canadian and Russian production that basically broke the cartel.
It might be more accurate to say they joined with the cartel to ensure that profits stay high through artificial scarcity.
If there's that much diamond available on another planet and if we were able to obtain it and bring it back to earth, its value would diminish very very quickly.
"... no text needed, if you can't figure it out then go have a drink.."
I respectfully suggest you stop drinking and re-read his post.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Our R&D lab is pursuing an approach that we believe will be less expensive: Genetically engineering a woman that is attracted to cubic zirconia.
Have gnu, will travel.
Watch out for the Na'vi!
I was going to reply that Slashdotters don't have girlfriends, but you had to go ahead and put quotation marks around it.
You have won this time langeljgm!!!
We can already make diamonds.
This is slashdot, so I suppose it should not come as a shock that the summary makes claims that don't stand up to even a casual examination. About 15 seconds on google scholar produces the following paper:
Correa, A.A. and Bonev, S.A. and Galli, G, Carbon under extreme conditions: Phase boundaries and electronic properties from first-principles theory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.103, 1204 (2006)
link to article
The second paragraph of the article in Nature Physics (subscription required) that this story is about mentions at least 11 other papers on theoretical calculations and experiments on the melting of diamond. So no, this is not in fact the first time that the melting of diamond has been studied. Indeed, the linked article itself refers to previous experiments at Sandia National Laboratory that melted diamond, but were unable to accurately determine the temperature and pressure.
This is truly impressive work by some very skilled scientists, but let's discuss it for what it is and not what it isn't.
Nope, only 3 of the 6 Canadian mines are members of DeBeers. Neither of the Russian mines are. The independent Canadian mines are owned primarily by BHP Billiton the largest mining company in the world and Rio Tinto Group which is the 4th largest mining company in the world, both are significantly larger than DeBeers.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
What if it sold for $20 million per kilo?
Yes, it also has traces of methane in it's atmosphere...
Oh, was that my outside voice?
"its", not "it's". Noticed that just as I pressed Submit...
Oh, was that my outside voice?
That's not completely far from the truth. The gravity well out of the earth is much, much deeper than the gravity well of the moon.. In essence, it takes 1/20th as much effort to get something from the moon to the earth, as from the earth to the moon.
I believe it would take about 2.3 km/s firing speed with no further engines or guidance to escape the moon's gravity well. This is *really fast*, but not completely out of the question. Add a few rockets, and it should be relatively easy to get material to the earth.
The ______ Agenda
"Oceans of Diamonds"??? De Beers has that already. Have you ever heard of "Artificial Scarcity"?
I'd like to let everyone know that Mars is full of gold just under the crust, and every planet around Proxima Centauri is rich with uranium.
That's quite intriguing, and something to consider, although gold might not be worth going to Mars for if there were a whole planet of it there. And I'd rather just see more news about Uranus.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Earth's magnetic poles don't match the geographic poles. They pretty much never have, except by coincidence.
Using your figures:
116,000 short tons.
1 ft^3 = ~.5 short tons
(insert cup of coffee here)
232,000 ft^3
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
Damn, that's twice in one week I was bad in my math on slashdot. It's still less than 6,600 m^3, though closer to the 8,000 m^3 cube =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I didn't mean legally joining, I meant aligning themselves with the overall philosophy and methods. I particularly like how the Canadians have their "Polar Ice Certification" to ensure that you get a real Canadian diamond, and not one of those crappy ones from somewhere else...
http://www.polaricediamonds.com/
Space flight is extremely expensive. If it turned out the moon were solid gold, and we could go there and bring it back a ton at a time, it still wouldn't be cost-effectice to go get it. It really does cost that much to go into space.
Sure, it's that expensive right now. Photovoltaics were silly expensive just 25 years ago, but now they are viable in many areas. My $250 phone is way more powerful than the 80286 my daddy spent $4,500 on back in the 1980s. My point is that technology advances!
If we were to make a space elevator out of carbon nanotubes, configured to be a semi-superconductor, (possible with the 5,5 aka "armchair" layout) we could have magnetically levitated elevators that shoot into the sky at supersonic speeds powered by bursts of electricity, a magnetic coil, and the associated Lorentz force, with no moving parts at all, powered by solar energy! To see how this might work, take a bar magnet and drop it down a metal pipe - any kind is fine. You'll see the magnet drop down the length of the pipe VERY SLOWLY as the electricity generated by the bar magnet pushes the electrons down to the end of the bar. If you could cram enough electrons into the bottom end of the pipe, you'd see the magnet shoot out the top!
This type of technology could dramatically reduce the cost of space travel, although the capital expenses would be pretty significant at first. Me, I imagine there being TWO space elevators touching the ground a few hundred (or even a thousand) miles apart, one for going up, and the other for going down. In this way, we could offset much of the energy for the "going up" elevator by the energy released by the other elevator(s) coming down.
Could we do this? Yes! It would cost much less than was wasted in Dubai, and would profit immensely more. Wouldn't it be nice if we had leaders would could lead, rather than just dicker at the public trough? Instead, we piss away our birthright on bonuses given to financial executives who could up Ponzi schemes. (aka "market bubbles")
Sad, really.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
So far Earth is the only planet with free oxidiser because living things use solar energy to make oxygen. I have hopes for fossil oxidisers on Titan though.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I remember a book published c.1980 which had exposes of common fallacies in science, and things that make you go "Hmmmm!". One of the stories was "Neptune and Uranus are 17% crystallised diamonds." Alright, the story above talks about liquid diamonds, but the idea of their being precious materials in the outer solar systems isn't new!
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As cmowire pointed out gravity on most of these planets is not so great, with the exception of Jupiter where it is IIRC 2.5 g or so. On saturn it is just over a g and on Uranus and Neptune it is below one g. While their mass is huge their density is low so gravity is modest.
It helps, but it's still a lot more costly energy-wise to launch from there.
If you were on the Earth's surface and then doubled your distance from the centre of the Earth, gravity will change from g to 0.25g (ie. the r squared term on the bottom of Newton's law of gravitation).
The Earth has a radius of 6,500 km, so to get that reduction of gravity, you need to supply enough energy to move about 6,500 km against gravity.
The radius of Uranus is about 25,559 km. Let's suppose the gravity on the surface there is also g for illustration. In this case to get the same reduction in gravity to 0.25g you need to supply enough energy to move about 25,559 km against gravity. In order to do that you would need to carry more fuel, which will compound your launch costs further.
To imagine it visually, think of the Earth's gravity as a gravity well with a gradient (ie. slope) of g at the Earth's surface. Imagine the same for Uranus. They both have the same slope at their surfaces, however, with Uranus, the gravity well is much larger, with gravity staying near g for a greater distance from it's surface. Clearly a larger gravity well is harder to escape even if the gravity is the same.
Try plugging in those values into Newton's law of universal gravitation yourself for confirmation.
Stephenson's Diamond Age isn't about mined diamonds, it's about when we're so capable of satisfying our every need with nanotechnology, that diamonds are cheap and easily fabricated (with interesting societal implications)... by far, my favorite Stephenson book.
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I'm not actually convinced that a space elevator could work. I'm going to suggest it would be better to try to find a cheap source of energy.
Qxe4
The shuttle is the way it is because nuclear launch systems are really messy on a populated planet.
A wide variety of nuclear propulsion systems are available and have even been vaguely tested on Earth. Like Project Pluto's nuclear ramjet. Nobody to piss off next door on any of the gas giants.
Gentoo Sucks
We can always go to Pandora and kill a race to mine something there
Thats easy:
Escape velocity of uranus: 21290 m/s
Escape velocity of earth: 11180 m/s
Interestingly it is actually only about twice as hard to get away from Uranus. Thats a lot better than I expected. Maybe its because of the low density and the fact that you start out in the fluffy atmosphere. Escape velocity from a singularity with the mass of Uranus or Earth is of course infinite.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
That's why I said "more or less", only as far large scale usage of diamond structures goes.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Not if you get the carbon from the corpses of Sierra Leone workers!
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
DeBeers is building a space ship
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
I'm not a DeBeers shill and I actually am disgusted by the diamond trade. However, I have yet to see a manufactured diamond that can at all compare to a high quality natural diamond. Take a 1.5 cd manufactured diamond and put it next to a 1.5 cd natural diamond of any decent quality. You will see the difference if that natural diamond is even down as low as G or H on the color scale. You get a VS-1 E or F and it's like night and day.
The problem with the manufactured diamonds is they're full of impurities which generally impart a yellow tinge. I would guess down into the M, O, or P range if you're lucky. A lot of them would be considered light fancy.
I guess it's all about what you're going for. Most people probably can't tell. I have a few friends with manufactured diamond engagement rings though and it's pretty obvious if you've ever spent any time looking at natural diamonds. I always thought the fascination with diamonds was silly until I actually came into possession of high quality ones. There is a certain quality about them that manufactured or cubic zirconia just doesn't reach.
If someone can start making colorless flawless diamonds of 1 cd or larger they will be very rich, or very dead if DeBeers has any say in the matter.
Not one fekking word to my wife. I will find you.
That sinking feeling deep in your gut when you KNOW you screwed up bad summed up with: {head desk} {head desk}
Earl Grey tea.... Hot.
That sinking feeling deep in your gut when you KNOW you screwed up bad summed up with: {head desk} {head desk}
Synthetic diamonds are for the most part, industrial grade which tends to be opaque unlike gem quality natural diamonds which are transparent, contain Nitrogen and don't fluoresce under UV like synthetic diamonds generally do.
from wikipedia.
About a third of all diamonds will glow under ultraviolet light, usually a blue color which may be noticeable under a black light or strong sunlight. According to the GIA, who reviewed a random sample of 26,010 natural diamonds, 65% of the diamonds in the sample had no fluorescence. Of the 35% that did have fluorescence, 97% had blue fluorescence of which 38% had faint blue fluorescence and 62% had fluorescence that ranged from medium to very strong blue.
Actually I found that to be helpful when I was shopping for a diamond for my wife, I wanted a certified conflict-free diamond and at the time DeBeers was a long way from offering any such certification (ie they were still knowingly buying rough diamonds from the warlords).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
However, they are not quite the same as of today's technology and can often be differentiated from natural diamonds because of minute differences in their characteristics.
Are people really so shallow that they worry some random person on the street will pull out a magnifying glass and/or shine a UV lamp to "out" the synthetic-diamond-wearer?
It looks the same in natural light, right? That's all anyone should care about.
You should have bought a diamond simulant. Most people can't tell the difference for a cheap one, and nice ones are even harder. I once took a nice one with a real diamond in to a jeweler, and he couldn't tell which one was real without magnification.
Cheaper, practically identical visually, always conflict free, almost as hard, easier to replace, and much cheaper. What isn't to love?
Never underestimate the power of Debeers to advertise away common sense.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I did simulants with a diamond deposition coating for some large earrings I bought her a few years later. For the engagement ring I had no problem following tradition as I was buying an inexpensive enough ring that the percentage difference between a nicely cut simulant and the mined stone was negligible (two years later we put 20% down on our house, the financial stability was worth more to her than any rock natural or not).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
blockquote>In natural diamonds, there is typically little if any response to short-wave ultraviolet, but the reverse is true of synthetic diamonds.
You're right. I really should have said what part of the UV spectrum I was talking about specifically.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Oh great. Now it's going to turn out some 10' tall blue people live in trees on Uranus and we have to kill them to get at the diamonds...
Yellow synthetic diamonds (nitrogen impurity) are easy to make, comparatively, and form the basis of a lot of the industrial uses. However, vapour deposition techniques are quite capable of making blue (with boron) or colourless synthetic diamonds that are visually indistinguishable from a pure volcanic diamond.
In fact the only way to distinguish them is to do a chemical analysis (eg with UV light) and compare the result against the impurities listed in volcanic diamonds from all the known mines.
There's a fairly good reason for that. They're actively marketing to people who don't want blood diamonds.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Diamond Nexus Labs has an online store for lab grown diamonds. I got one for my fiancee and thankfully (she is a nerd) she loves it more than a slave diamond. http://www.diamondnexuslabs.com/
http://xkcd.com/681/
We fetch your mail, we route your packets, we guard you while you surf. Don't fuck with us.
Gold is only valuable because it's rare. Practical uses require very little and nobody would value gold anymore if they knew that somebody had a mountain of it available.
Actually there would be a *lot* of practical uses for gold, if it weren't so darn expensive. For starters, gold-plating would probably be great for rustproofing and corrosion resistance. If it were cheaper, it could be used in places like insides of water heaters, greatly prolonging their lifetime. Gold plating would also be exellent replacment for paint and lacquer for many metal surfaces. Also it's an excellent electric conductor, and I think it would be superior to copper in almost every electric application. Gold might also help to make better slide bearings, possibly even replacing ball bearings in some applications. If price of gold were comparable to copper, it might also make excellent water piping for places where copper pipes are used today. And places that have gold plating today, it could be made thicker and thus more wear-resistant. And in medical field, a lot of places that now use plastics or even nastier stuff (like tooth fillings) could use gold.
And then there are all the uses that we haven't even thought about because gold is so expensive, but which would become feasible with cheaper gold.
Thats easy:
Escape velocity of uranus: 21290 m/s
Escape velocity of earth: 11180 m/s
Interestingly it is actually only about twice as hard to get away from Uranus. Thats a lot better than I expected. Maybe its because of the low density and the fact that you start out in the fluffy atmosphere. Escape velocity from a singularity with the mass of Uranus or Earth is of course infinite.
About four times as hard. KE=1/2 m v^2
Interestingly it is actually only about twice as hard to get away from Uranus
Thanks for that. I wasn't really prepared to do the integration to work it out.
However, remember that E = 1/2mv^2
So twice the velocity is four times the energy.
And unless your fuel is of negligible mass or your energy source is not carried out with the payload, you still need to supply even more energy to carry all that extra fuel.
In light of this, twice as fast does not equate to twice as hard.
Might I suggest a magnetic rail based system to launch payloads from Luna to Earth. I have reason to believe such a system could be quite effective.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
All the “worth” of diamonds is artificial anyway.
A diamond can easily be made and is worth a few cents. Tops. And it’s even of higher quality than anything nature has to offer.
The only people who still go “Ooohhh, diamonds!” are either very uninformed, or ignorant retards.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
The only diamonds that are scarce are large natural ones.
Then again, they can’t compete to industrial ones, in quality.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I put $100 on “You”ve got that ‘information’ from the DeBeers website.” ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
but ... but ... but.... the genocide is where all the shiny comes from!
Of course Uranus is a gas giant
... but now Uranus is a girl's best friend!
About four times as hard. KE=1/2 m v^2
Ah I forgot about that.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
You're right, I have a boyfriend. :)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Dragging the calculation into my grandad's generation's units, and hopefully getting it right this time ;-)
161 000 000 kg mined, as of 2009 (source.)
Density: 19300kg/m^3
So volume: 8340m^3.
Cube root of that: 20m.
...align with its geographical poles. We were all taught this in 3rd grade. Our magnetic poles wander around the planet all the time. This is called magnetic declination, and is something everyone who has studied basic navigation is well aware of.
...align with its geographical poles. We were all taught this in 3rd grade. Our magnetic poles wander around the planet all the time, and are pretty far off from the geographical poles. This is called magnetic declination, and is something everyone who has studied basic navigation is well aware of.
There... somebody had to say it. I know all you Start Trek loving geeks out there were thinking it. Now go back to your "who'd you rather" debate.
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
Survive pressures and temperatures? Where is your vision, you're not thinking like a maniacal spacelord! Did you or did you not take maniacal space-lordery at Uni? Who needs to survive the pressures when you can blow the whole planet up and pick up the interesting pieces. Don't worry, if you limit the explosion most of it reform in it's own gravity well. Or in the case of a gas/liquid giant, find the interesting stuff via RADAR/SONAR type systems and push it out the other side via LASERs :) Ooooo, giant nets! Giant space nets lowered from orbit! THAT'S IT! Or, how about a giant claw lowered from geosynchronous orbit like the Hughes Glomar Explorer. You'll get much of it to the surface....
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
On a similar note, IIRC we can now convert other elements to gold - it's just not economical.
And you thought why the Moon is so empty and barren? Long time ago it was made of precious cheese, but a greedy bastard named Jules Verne shot a shell full of people there. BTW, the cheese that French guy carried back to Earth got spoiled, but everyone in France pretended they didn't notice it.
But let me guess, the diamond river is running beneath the holy-land of a civilization of blue creatures, who will need to be eliminated using Blackwater mercenaries?
In a Slashdot post I did a quick back-of-the-napkin example for giant diamonds on Mars, showing that it wouldn't be profitable even with very optimistic estimates for the value of the diamonds and the costs of transportation (using robots to grab them and bring them back). I can't find it now :(
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Can you point me to where there is a source of cheaper, more ethically produced computers? And you forget the citation to show where these are being supressed by the makers of the unethical computers? Thanks.
A lot of the advertising that I've seen actually seems to say that they look better, which is silly. I'm guessing a lot of the people out there don't know what conflict diamonds are, or don't care. When your audience doesn't know enough to make an informed decision, it's easier for the marketing department to just make stuff up.
Why do you need a computer? Presumably your company will supply you with one if you need it. You don't need to go and buy one yourself.
Google the heat transfer rate of diamond. You will find no better material for a heat sink.
Who cares? I want a planet with oceans of liquid chocolate, topped with icebergs of delicious candy.
Mmmmm, Candy Planet.
Quite true. In fact, if gold were more reasonably priced, I could get that "grill" I've always wanted. Couple that with super cheap Uranus diamonds, and I could be quite thoroughly "blinged" out.
Note: Quotation marks added for increased emphasis, due to my terminally Caucasian status.
Just another ignorant American.
From Wikipedia:
The traditional classification in the West, which goes back to the Ancient Greeks, begins with a distinction between precious and semi-precious stones; similar distinctions are made in other cultures. The precious stones are diamond, ruby, emerald and sapphire, with all other gemstones being semi-precious.[2] This distinction is unscientific and reflects the rarity of the respective stones in ancient times
That means if diamonds were to be classified today, they would be downgraded from "precious" to "semi-precious". Diamonds are not rare in the least. In fact, all planets are likely to have diamonds. All planets with geological activity, present or in the past, are likely to have diamonds on or near their surface.
I wish people would understand that the diamond market is completely artificially manipulated. Only industrial diamonds are mostly influenced by basic market supply and demand - but not completely. Diamonds which are used as precious stones have their supply tightly controlled so as to create artificial scarcity. Control on diamonds are so tightly controlled, in some countries (Africa), picking up a diamond without government permission (e.g. DeBeers) may result in execution on the spot. Think about that. If diamonds were so scarce, why would then need to specifically make legal provisions to allow for an extremely rare event of discovering a natural, rough diamond on the ground? Unless of course, they're not rare at all and diamonds really are commonly found simply laying on the ground. And people face execution because an unfeathered supply of diamonds to the market would crash their value over night.
There are few things in the modern times which have caused more pain, misery, death, and mass slavery than Diamonds and DeBeers. But to be clear, DeBeers is not alone here.
Few diamonds in the world, contrary to the conflict free marketing, are truly "blood-free", as as much as 60% of the "conflict free" diamonds are actually smuggled from "conflict zones". In other words, over half of every diamond you see in stores is there because of someone's murder, slavery (including children), and illegal imprisonment, torture, so on and so on.
So remember nothing says I love you like blood, summary executions, and slavery. Its not just a moto, its fact.
You might want to watch the man made diamonds done on the discovery channel ("How it's made" I think was the show). They grew diamonds. Then cut them into gemstones. This was a clear gemstone diamond. not one for industrial use.
It can be done. De Beers and the like just do not want it done.
Nah, see, you're letting your rational thoughts get in the way here. If you or anyone else wants this discovery to be a boone to the space industry its simple:
1) Elect a female President
2) Convince the entire country to elect female senators and assemblymen.
3) Tell the new political body that there are oceans of diamonds on Neptune (Uranus will just make them wrinkle their nose).
4) ???
5) Profit!
As always, the most effective means of overcoming barriers of common sense imposed by rationality involves letting women make the decisions when sparklies are involved. =D
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Just what we needed, a car analogy
/ducks
>With fiat currency...
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
De Beers adjusted pricing such that decent quality "natural" diamonds matched Gemesis manufacturing costs about the same time Gemesis started cranking them out. I still can't figure out why Gemesis gave in to presumed pressure from De Beers to laser inscribe them as synthetic though. Part of their charm was that they were impossible to tell from the natural ones but for the fact that they looked too good.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I'm waiting for Gundanium.
http://www.diamondnexuslabs.com/?gclid=CIPXuJHGwp8CFdRM5QodL2yK3g
http://www.stauer.com/search.asp?catID=15&ad=STRSEMWBIWGOGJLY
This is my sig.
And that's why going back to a gold standard is stupid.
161000000kg / 6.7 billion = 24 grams per person (or USD850 per person at current high prices).
161000000kg of gold is worth USD5.7 trillion at current prices (USD35359/kg).
The current global economy must be way more than USD6 trillion. If it's 10x more, gold would be 10x more expensive.
So if we use gold as currency, gold would artificially become too/more expensive to use as a material (currently it is used in many common products with no problems).
Gold is too useful as a material to be wasted as a currency.
That and the diamond industry will go after you until you are dead if you sell these diamonds on the market.
Sorry about that, forgot where I was posting. Sure hope all you Wesley fanboys don't find out where I live.....
That sinking feeling deep in your gut when you KNOW you screwed up bad summed up with: {head desk} {head desk}
I still can't figure out why Gemesis gave in to presumed pressure from De Beers to laser inscribe them as synthetic though.
DeBeers had already dropped prices to match. I would wager that DeBeers threatened to drop prices even more. That's generally fatal to a startup competitor.
"always conflict free" until your sweetie finds out it didn't cost 3 months' salary. Then you're fucked. Or not, as the case may be.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Fiat's not a car, it's an Italian crapmobile.
hmmmm, what's that make Chrysler, then?...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
One flaw in the article, a minor one mind you. " unlike Earth, they do not have magnetic poles that match up with their geographical poles."
Earths pole are not congruent, they do not match.
How the F*K is the above comment a flamebait? Not agreeing is different than flaming
No, the economy is not "based" on the value of gold. The economy is "based" on human labor and trade.
Oil prices have important effects, since a gallon of oil replaces 50 man days of mechanical labor.
Gold is a luxury item with no inherent value.
Obviously you never took a course in economy, much less a degree in economics.
Fiat's not a car, it's an Italian crapmobile.
And obviously you're a flamebait moron who adds no value to a conversation. For starters FIAT has made and makes some pretty good value cars, in terms of price and quality/use. Second, they represent more than one brand, including Ferrari
Can most people honestly tell the difference between a diamond and high quality crystal? Why bother with diamonds (synthetic or not) at all if we're just going for sparkly stuff? It's strange to think about, but cheap plastic jewelry we consider garbage today, would have been fascinating and probably fetched a very good sum of money two thousand years ago. But we don't really seem to care if it's sparkly.. just if it sparkles and costs a lot.
How does Discovery let writing this bad on their web page?
"Oceans of liquid diamond, filled with solid diamond icebergs, could be floating on Neptune and Uranus, according to a recent article in the journal Nature Physics."
Dear Aspiring Journalists and Scientists,
Take more than English 101. Use a the grammar check... even MS Word would have helped here.
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