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Harder-Than-Diamond Natural Carbon Crystals Found
HikingStick tips a piece from the science desk at MSNBC.com about a new, naturally occurring form of carbon found in a meteorite fragment. "Researchers were polishing a slice of the carbon-rich Havero meteorite that fell to Earth in Finland in 1971. When they then studied the polished surface they discovered carbon-loaded spots that were raised well above the rest of the surface — suggesting that these areas were harder than the diamonds used in the polishing paste... [G]raphite layers were shocked and heated enough to create bonds between the layers — which is exactly how humans manufacture diamonds... [The research] team took the next step and put the diamond-resistant crystals under the scrutiny of some very rigorous mineralogical analyzing instruments to learn how its atoms are lined up. That allowed them to confirm that they had, indeed, found a new 'phase' or polymorph of crystalline carbon as well as a type of diamond that had been predicted to exist decades ago, but had never been found in nature until now."
... is why human-made diamonds, made the same way as that carbon-rich rock was discovered, are not harder than natural diamonds - at least, the summary seems to imply this. If it's graphite in both cases, then shouldn't both be harder than diamonds?
That allowed them to confirm that they had, indeed, found a new 'phase' or polymorph of crystalline carbon as well as a type of diamond that had been predicted to exist decades ago, but had never been found in nature until now.
"Polymorphs of crystalline carbon are forever."
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
And so a remnance of my empire once vast and impenetrable falls from the sky. Damn you Flash Gordon. Eventually I will get off this rock.
All rites reversed 2010
Now it goes all the way to 11.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
...do you think that the meteorite was made by magicians?
Space is natural too.
I wouldn't bother. It turns out that it's less expensive than a diamond, so women won't be as happy with it.
The article mentions hexagonal diamond (lonsdaleite) as an artificial form of diamond, which it is with a very interesting low energy formation method, but it was first found in nature in the Canyon Diablo Meteorite in 1967. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonsdaleite Pure lonsdaleite should be harder than regular diamond. I wish the article has said a little more about the crystal structure the researchers had found. That the energy required to make lonsdalite is low has interesting implications since the quantity needed to replace structural steel needs only about 1/280 of the energy needed to make the steel. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2008/01/anaximenes-way.html
Your rich and vivid imagination is going to get your ass kicked.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
A much better name for this stuff would be "carbonite", obviously.
I am officially gone from
One can also make diamonds harder by isolating and using heavier isotopes. A diamond of purified carbon-13 is harder than a mix of 12,13,14. Man-made diamonds can actually be harder than naturally occurring ones.
I wouldn't bother. It turns out that it's less expensive than a diamond, so women won't be as happy with it.
Give DeBeers a few years and then see.
How long til I can get me a ring of this shit?
Why do you call it shit? It comes from a meteorite, not from Uranus!
Women are only that way because men are ever scheming to hit-and-run their womb space. Women need an un-fake-able signal of a man's seriousness, so the signal must take the form of something very (to the suitor) expensive.
That we use diamonds for this purpose is a benefit to the man, because DeBeers has made sure that there is no resale market. If there was a resale market that offered even 50% value, then the man would first need an un-fake-able signal of the woman's seriousness before passing the rock across the table.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
So you are saying that De Beers is only as big as everyone else combined? Crack a history book. Until the last decade, their business practices have been deplorable, and they are still huge.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Fullerite is formed from fullerene or buckyballs and is about twice as hard as diamond: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fullerene#Fullerite_.28solid_state.29
I wasn't defending De Beers. They have engaged in 'business practices' that are akin to that of organized crime. I was simply pointing out that they are not a monopoly. Reading comprehension is important and you need more practice.
For those that are interested in considering scientific paper without the media filter:
Ferroir, Tristan, Leonid Dubrovinsky, Ahmed El Goresy, Alexandre Simionovici, Tomoki Nakamura, and Philippe Gillet. 2010. Carbon polymorphism in shocked meteorites: Evidence for new natural ultrahard phases. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 290, no. 1-2: 150-154. doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2009.12.015. http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0012821X09007389.
I sure wish that secondary sources properly cited primary sources, even if they are only interviewing the main scientist involved. Giving the journal name and date as Discovery News did is a good step, though.
-Drache Kubisuro
found here
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V61-4Y4XCTH-3&_user=10&_coverDate=02%2F15%2F2010&_rdoc=18&_fmt=high&_orig=browse&_srch=doc-info(%23toc%235801%232010%23997099998%231609118%23FLA%23display%23Volume)&_cdi=5801&_sort=d&_docanchor=&_ct=26&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=ae24ceb289eae1dcc9bc6870f3192dc2
And this is the abstract A slice of the Haverö meteorite which belongs to the ureilite class known to contain graphite and diamond was cut and then polished as a thin section using a diamond paste. We identified two carbonaceous areas which were standing out by more than 10 m in relief over the surface of the silicate matrix suggesting that the carbonaceous phases were not easily polishable by a diamond paste and would therefore imply larger polishing hardness. These areas were investigated by reflected light microscopy, high-resolution Field Emission SEM (FESEM), energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis, Raman spectroscopy, and were subsequently extracted for in situ synchrotron microbeam X-ray fluorescence (XRF), imaging and X-ray diffraction (XRD). We report here the natural occurrences of one new ultrahard rhombohedral carbon polymorph of the R3m space group which structure is very close to diamond but with a partial occupancy of some of the carbon sites. We also report the natural occurrence of the theoretically predicted 21R diamond polytype with lattice parameters very close to what has been modelized. These findings are of great interests for better understanding the world of carbon polymorphs and diamond polytypes giving new natural materials to investigate. These natural samples demonstrate that the carbon system is even more complex than what is currently thought based on ab initio static lattice calculations and high-pressure experiments since this new ultrahard polymorph has never been predicted nor synthesized.
If the headline was about a musician granting an interview, and the sub-header was "Famous performer never interviewed before", you wouldn't be scoffing "What? You mean no famous performer has ever been interviewed? Well I have a thousand back issues of Rolling Stone that would disagree!"
What they're saying is that they have discovered a crystalline carbon, and it is something never seen in nature before. The sentence is accurate.
Yes the truncated verbal style often used in headlines may have made it less clear than it could have been by the simple expedient of adding "This".
Nevertheless, this is a perfect example of why I find pedantry to be so useless outside of technical fields where precise meanings not only exist but are required. Because more often than not, pedantry is just a way to fail to understand what is being said.
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