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NIF Compresses Diamonds With 50 Million Atmospheres of Pressure
sciencehabit (1205606) writes The world's largest laser [the National Ignition Facility], a machine that appeared as the warp core in 'Star Trek into Darkness', has attained a powerful result: It's squeezed diamond, the least compressible substance known, 50 million times harder than Earth's atmosphere presses down on us. ... As the researchers report online today in Nature, the x-ray assault nearly quadrupled the diamond's density. "That's a record," Smith [one of the researchers] says. "No one's compressed diamond to that extent before." The blast pulverized the diamond into dust, but before the mineral's destruction the scientists successfully measured its density ... For a billionth of a second, the diamond, which is normally 3.25 times denser than water, became ... 12.03 times denser than water. ... Scientists have speculated that diamond worlds may exist elsewhere. If a solar system arises with more carbon than oxygen, then carbon should soak up the oxygen by forming carbon monoxide, leaving excess carbon to create carbon planets—which, under pressure, become diamond worlds. Thus, Smith says, the new experiment will probe the nature of such planets.
They are performing similar experiments with iron in an attempt to understand the properties of super-Earth cores.
I see that mistake so often. It should be "star system" because only our star system is called "Solar system" because our star is called Sol.
In automotive terms, they dropped a Hummer from the SpaceX reusable rocket at the peak of a test-launch and for an infinitesimaly[sic] small period of time before the impact, it got almost the same MPG of a Pinto, before shattering into a pile of scrap metal.
Basically they used lasers to stuff 99 people into a VW bug for about a nanosecond. Then the entire thing exploded violently into sand-grain-sized chunks of metal and meat.
Can someone explain this with a car analogy?
Star Trek Into Darkness:Star Trek The Wrath of Khan :: Ford Pinto : Ford Mustang (1969 Boss version)
No idea about the laser.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
It is far easier and cheaper to just burn them, literally, by heating with a torch then dropping into liquid oxygen.
Why bother with the liquid oxygen? You can shovel them into a coal burning furnace. Diamonds usually completely burn up in house fires. It doesn't take any more heat/oxygen to burn a diamond than it does to burn coal.
Disappointing that the Star Trek tie-in was mentioned but the link was omitted...
National Ignition Facility provides backdrop for "Star Trek: Into Darkness"
Can't sustain fusion, so let's use the nice shiny laser to zap things and pretend its science :-)
I owned a Pinto. The mileage of that POS was in the same ballpark as the Hummer.
Either it was very old by the time you got it, or something was really wrong with it. Pinto's were advertised to get 34 MPG, and many did better than that. The worst mileage I've ever heard of a stock Pinto getting was 22 MPG, but that was pulling a trailer with the AC on.
The Hummer H1 was 9 MPG city and 12 highway. The H2 was around 14 combined, and the H3 was 14 city, 18 highway. So no, not really in the same ball park at all.
Many years ago I had a friend who was a gemologist. He told me once that it's not at all hard to tell that a stone's synthetic once you have it under the microscope. Synthetic gemstones (Not diamonds; they're done differently.) are built up little by little on a rod, then cut, shaped and polished. No matter how well done they are, you can see the layers. Either the technique has gotten much better over the last several decades or the jeweler didn't know what to look for.
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Apparently, they're doing experiments like this at the LHC too: http://www.theonion.com/video/...