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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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes.
Even natural diamonds aren't the slightest bit rare on Earth. It's just the diamond cartels that make it rare.
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
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.
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...
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
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 =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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
But then you'd miss out on all the fun of mining it out of the Earth...
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/
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Oceans of Diamonds"??? De Beers has that already. Have you ever heard of "Artificial Scarcity"?
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.
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/
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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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
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}
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.
http://xkcd.com/681/
We fetch your mail, we route your packets, we guard you while you surf. Don't fuck with us.
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
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.
I put $100 on “You”ve got that ‘information’ from the DeBeers website.” ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
...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.
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.