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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
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
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.
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
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
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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