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Diamond Rain In Saturn
Taco Cowboy writes "Back in 1999, it was postulated that diamonds may rain from the sky in the atmospheres of our solar system's gas giants. Now, research has shown that diamond rains on Saturn are more than probable. '"We don't want to give people the impression that we have a Titanic-sized diamondberg floating around," said researcher Mona Delitsky, of California Specialty Engineering, "We're thinking they're more like something you can hold in your hand." Recent data compiled by planetary scientists ... has been combined with newly published pressure temperature diagrams of Jupiter and Saturn. These diagrams, known as adiabats, allow researchers to decipher at what interior level that diamond would become stable. They also allow for calculations at lower levels – regions where both temperature and pressure are so concentrated that diamond becomes a liquid. Imagine diamond rain or rivulets of pure gemstone.' 'At even greater depths, the scientists say the diamond will eventually melt to form liquid diamond, which may then form a stable ocean layer.'
Those diamonds have been there for eons.
Sorry, someone has to say it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDl0qPfkSRw
James, how the hell do we get those diamonds down again?
What is that supposed to be when diamond is defined as a crystalline form of carbon and a crystalline material is by definition a solid?
Is there a cartel on Saturn? Because, you know, that's the only thing that really makes them special. This is something the goldbugs have right. Diamonds? You can make them out of carbon, via chemistry. Gold? You need nuclear processes that are currently uneconomical. Barring some spectacular breakthrough in nuclear technology, the supply of gold remains limited.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Gimme
At least this should help fund space programs and work on asteroid capture. A bit sad that it will be used to adjust Saturn's orbit into the Sun but hey...progress right?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Damn hippies !!
On Uranus it rains Cocoa Puffs.
"temperature and pressure are so concentrated that diamond becomes a liquid"
Correction:
"temperature and pressure are so concentrated that carbon becomes a liquid"
It's not considered a diamond if it's a liquid. Diamonds are crystalline.
Yet society has convinced people to pay a fortune for them. Sigh.
Aren't they essentially saying there might be oceans of carbon, but using diamond to make better headlines?
Will be funded by Zales.
Then god created Saturn, and he liked it, so he put a ring on it.
Nothing prompts exploration like greed.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Typical. Another example of how Slashdot's been going downhill for years: Now they're just giving weather reports. Who the hell goes to Saturn, anyway?
I mean, I've got friends upstate who vacation in Iowa for who knows what reason, so that's sort of the same thing, but they don't bother checking the weather before they go anymore.
This is awesome. The more we learn about the universe, the more we discover there's some really cool (and weird) shit out there.
Raining diamonds. I can only imagine what other wacky stuff is out there we'll never know about.
Like some moon with seas made of the finest quality single-malt scotch. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Some stay dry, and others feel the pain.
I'm more concerned about the impact of xtonic rays on earth.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Oceans of liquid carbon? Despite the immense gravity and high temperatures, I can't help but wonder if epochs of time have resulted in forms of life we would find bizarre.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Every rapper in California is gonna want to make their next video there.
If you change the crystal structure to make diamonds flow, they are not diamonds - it is soot. This is equivalent of saying I'm swimming in ICE (crystalline) when I am really swimming in WATER (liquid). dUMB!
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Does this mean that in Star Control 2, Saturn should be reclassified as a diamond world? (No exotics, just carbon)
Millions of Women attacked the Kennedy Space Center and demanded access to Rockets...
"Lucid in the sky with diamonds" or "Lucy in disguise with diamonds"?
It sucks to be wrong when you're being a jerk, doesn't it.
Rule 1: don't be a jerk when you might be wrong.
Rule 2: you can always be wrong.
It's not like we're going to start sending ships to Saturn to get them and bring them back. What makes a diamond valuable is its rarity on Earth.
Suddenly having access to a literal ocean of them might impact that value.
...it's a hard rain gonna fall.
And some guy goes hunting for a piece of it in 2061
That got blown out to Europa when they (the monoliths) blew up the planet
A "cultured" diamond will sell for considerably less than a mined diamond of the same quality.
I was quite interested in purchasing a synthetic diamond a few years ago, and kept an eye on what the major US players (D.NEA, Gemesis, and Apollo Diamond) were doing.
While the prices of fancy colors (blue, yellow) were much less than colored natural diamonds, I found that (at that time, at least), the prices of colorless synthetic diamonds were about the same or even higher than natural diamonds.
Synthetic colorless diamonds were apparently harder to produce, since color is caused by impurities. The sizes were also relatively limited, e.g., it was hard to find anything higher than 0.5 ct.
Things may have changed since then, though.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Sounds like you got dumped. Probably better that you don't breed anyways.
Rule 1: don't be a jerk when you might be wrong.
Rule 2: you can always be wrong.
Rule 3: raymorris is never wrong (note rule 2 says YOU can be wrong, not me).
Hmm, come to think of it, I WAS wrong when I said Clinton didn't barricade open air monuments.
My point, that such shenanigans are a new form of BS by democrats, was correct, though. Perhaps we need rule #4:
Rule 4: If it appears that raymorris is wrong, look at the bigger picture. He's always right about the big picture.
Not sure if I should read in the voice of Sheldon or a snot-nosed sexist prick...
Political correctness has no place in science, and neither does 'dumbing down'.
Neither does rampant misogyny.
It's interesting that you point all the fault of the paper at one "brainless female," when the paper had 11 authors, 7 of which were male, including her post-doctoral adviser, Dr. Ronald Oremland, who is a noted expert on the metabolization of toxic elements. Dr. Wolfe-Simon was the lead author on the paper, but it could not (or at least should not) have gone forward with those 10 other names without each of them approving. And if any of them were so much smarter and better than someone "only employed for reasons of political correctness, then why did all of them sign onto the "rebuttal" paper in response to criticisms of the original paper? Why does only she get the blame for this and none of them, and where do you get the notion that all of these people worked under her (much less were forced to do so for political reasons)?
One would also suspect, given her list of published papers on biochemistry, that she knows a wee bit more about chemistry than some AC blowhard on Slashdot, despite having been very wrong about GFAJ-1. The ability of arsenic to substitute imperfectly for phosphorus is in fact the very reason it's toxic. It's not impossible that there would be some biological use for arsenic, though it seems highly unlikely given the relative abundance of the two elements and the havoc that arsenic causes because of its similarity. The follow-up research in the wake of this is proving fascinating. At the very least, she's kicked off a whole new interest in arsenic biochemistry.
So, while you pat yourself on the back on your true "scientific understanding," it's clear that you haven't done ANY real research on this subject matter and are just relying on snap judgments -- not surprising considering the sheer hatred you seem to be able to call up for an entire gender. Speaking of which...
It turns out that the liquid state of carbon is mostly an unknown due to the temperatures and pressures required, but there's been a recent consensus that it acts very differently at "low" and high pressures. Computer simulations and experiments have suggested that under high pressures, carbon orders itself into an irregular but still recognizably diamond-like structure with four neighbors for each atom. In fact, high pressures make the formation of solid diamond when the liquid cools more likely as a result. At low pressures, it's more like graphene or strings of carbon, with bonding to neighbors in 2's & 3's instead of 4's. At even higher pressures it develops into a metallic structure. So the term "liquid diamond" actually has significant meaning and isn't just media buzzwords.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
How do you get Liquid diamond? When diamonds SUBLIMATE??? They turn from solid directly into a gas, there is no liquid phase, so how do you propose they exist in a liquid state?
Nicely put. You actually tricked me into reading over half of your drivel before you brought out the misogyny trolling. Well-done. Actually convinced me to take the time and effort to put a troll moderation on it.
I think the next step up from "probable" is "proven" isn't it? So why not say "proven"?
If it's not "proven," then it's still just "probable" - just with higher probability than previously known.
What's the big deal, Amazon delivers, you don't need to mount an expedition to Saturn.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I wish, for once, scientists would quit making things up as they go along. We have NO DEFINITIVE PROOF of any such thing. Though I do like to dream, there is a very hard line between dreams and reality. This goes back to scientists saying the Earth is millions of years old when they have no ABSOLUTE PROOF of that claim. If you look at the actual time lines of our written record, it is far easier to believe that the earth may be around 500,000 yrs old. Carbon Dating gives alot of FALSE POSITIVES.
Well, that makes the moon acre people obsolete. Why would anyone buy an acre of moon grit, when they could buy an acre of liquid diamonds for just 50% more? The idea is up for grabs. Go for it. You're welcome, internet.
What about chocolate rain?
this is old news. "...the core of Jupiter, forever beyond human reach, was a diamond as big as the Earth." De Beers stakeholders, please take note. ...and one year ago to the day, news broke of a planetary core twice the size of Earth showing all the signs of being made of diamond: google 55 Cancri e. It's a rocky world, close to its primary, and given its calculated density it may well be the remnant of a gas giant whose atmosphere has long since burned away, leaving a core that is likely fully one third crystalline carbon.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
The graphics I was able to see for this story shows the temperature pressure plot from 0.001 Megabars ( or 100 times atmospheric pressure) at 0 deg. K up 10,000 deg K at 100 megabars. The pressure curves are for planet interiors, for the earth, it maxes at 1 Mb, and 6,000 deg. K. It shows a zone of of stability for diamond and graphite up to the melting point of carbon at about 4500 deg. K and 0.1 Mb at which all three phases, carbon melt, graphite and diamond are stable. Above that the melting point generally rises in the region of the planet pressure curves and the phase of the solid is diamond. Whether to call the melt diamond has to do as to if some of the crystallographic properties of diamond are visible in the melt. At low pressures a carbon melt might be no different from one at the high temperatures. It looks like the phase boundary into the high range of P and T has been described. It clearly says that what would result from the freezing of the melt above the point described above would be diamond. Since the pressure curves for Jupiter and Saturn carry their interiors across the carbon melt and diamond boundary, carbon melt freezing into diamond could tale place. This does not happen for the earth and other gas giants.