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It's raining diamonds on Neptune & Uranus
Alec Muzzy writes "The U of C of Berkeley has reported that on Neptune the intense heat and pressure of the atmosphere likely creates diamonds out of methane which then fall like hail on the gas giant.
" Interesting reasons why - but isn't it a Arthur C. Clarke book that postulates, back in the 80s, that the center of of the gas giants are enormous diamonds - like the size of the earth?
Dave, as a posthuman 'gofer' for the godlike creators of the monolith, was exploring several planets to investigate the possibility of intelligent life. In the process he discovered that Jupiter was inhabited (but his masters thought life there would never amount to anything) and that at the center of Jupiter was a diamond the size of the Earth.
Diamond scarcity is a myth promoted by the retailers of diamonds.
I know it is mentioned in 2010 because I have the book right here in front of me. And I know it was in 2010 FIRST because 2010 was published before 2061. I'm sure it's mentioned in 2061, but I've never read it, so I don't care. Nyah nyah nyah. :-)
I had a professor once who said you could walk on certain shores of africa and diamonds were as common as seashells.
... So much for "two months salary" lasting forever. I think it would take every monetary resource on earth to harvest the diamonds up there. :)
umm...dood? CH4. Methane. The C stands for "carbon". There's no such thing as a methane diamond.
Actually in the book, Europa was already inhabited... but without a source of energy (a mini-Sun) intelligent life would never stand a chance.
BTW, it is quite possible that Europa's oceans are inhabited by primitive life forms. There is volcanic activity in Europa, and bacterial life can develop and thrive in the heat vents.
Methane is made of carbon! sheesh!
let me clarify.... the diamonds we value on earth are PURE carbon, no hydrogen atoms at all. They are perfect carbon crystals.
please stop being a thicko... when 3 people tell you you are wrong and you don't actually know what your talking about it usually means you are wrong. Diamond by definition is pure carbon, the hydrogen in methane isn't inseperable from the carbon. burn methane in oxygen and you get CO2 and 2H2O. compress methane inside neptune and you get (allegedly) diamond crystals and H2 (or maybe H+ and free electrons). If you think you have better theories than the ones we currently use to describe the universe, contact Steve Hawkings. johno
Hey, everyone. When I was in sixth grade I read this short story about a colony on a planet that had frequent hail storms. When these storms happened everyone had to flee inside. The reason is that the hail was not ice, but razer sharp shards of diamond. After every storm the street sweepers would come along and clean things up. Has anyone else read this story? Know the author or title? It was so odd to see this article and remember that story I read so long ago. If anyone knows if it thanks. Matthew Miller namille2@vt.edu
Cause if you make something lighter, it would flow farther away from the sun (more mass=more attraction, less mass=less attraction). Uranus would drift out into space and we would get closer to the sun. But Im willing to take the risk.
You mean, if I fart in a jar and place the contents under pressure, I could create my own diamonds?.....Cool...
And all this time I thought those were chunks of corn coming out of my anus.....
We never landed on the moon. The 1969 "landing" was faking from an Air Force base in San Bernadino, California. Besides, the Germans got to the moon before we did and the Illuminati's base on the Dark Side attests to that.
You can't walk those shores, you will get shot dead. Even though Namibia is no longer offcially under control of white south-african fascists.
1. get a large, thick-walled cylindrical tube made of something very strong (titanium perhaps?) with detachable end-caps that are also very strong
2. get your hands on some C4 explosives (i guess this would be the hard part)
3. throw a handful of carbon powder into the cylinder
4. pack the cylinder with c4
5. weld or fasten the end caps, do it well, leave a hole for the fuse
6. step away from the cylinder...
7. detonate the explosives
8. assuming you didn't use too much c4 and the cylinder is still intact (ie you weren't killed by flying shrapnel), open it up
9. collect the thousands of resulting microscopic diamonds
10. glue them together with white glue (the clear-setting kind) to make one big diamond
BONUS TIP: add one drop of #4blue food coloring to the glue beforehand to make a blue diamond, just like the Hope diamond!
...and Neptune. How long will it take for them to obtain a choke-hold on the intergalactic diamond market?
--former geology student
Although maybe you could hold coal close to where the pressure is extremely intense and watch the coal turn to diamonds.
And watch your hand turn into bloody pulp?
i thought 2001 and 2010 were absoutely fantastic, while 2061 was absoutely frickin horrible! The first half of 3001 was good but then ending was worse than 2061! And it also answered all the questions about the monoloth and dave bowman, kinda boring. The thing that's so great about 2001 is how it leaves you questioning, so read 2001 and 2010, but DON'T read 2061 and 3001!
Now, we ought to find a planet that rains donuts. --Homer
Methane is organic, IE a HYDROCARBON... They're regular diamonds.
The earth's core has resonance characteristics like there is a crystal inside (or something aligned to the poles with a shape) that may be made of iron. This proto object may be solid enough to lag behind typical events like eruptions and earthquakes. It probably isn't solid enough to kick up the whole ring of fire, but something is there. This year there was an announcement about making diamonds like the kind you buy, not the diamond dust for sanding. I believe that the technology exists to repair diamonds, but you would need a really valuable diamond because it would be easier to make another. Organic diamonds are shaped like 1d8 and then are cut into mathematically calculated shapes that reflect light. Use string to hold the planets in place and then roll that black diamond out into a ringworld.
what are they made of? There is room for new gems that have purity of different materials. There can be transparent aluminum because aluminum rust is transparent. Compressed materials LOOK different. You can have aerogel supporting things made of new forms of pure titanium that look different after being compressed.
The url below provides an excellent overview of the De Beers cartel and the world diamond industry. In short, so many countries benefit from the artificially inflated price of diamonds, that smashing the cartel would be difficult. One interesting statistic: one mine alone in Australia mines 30 million carats of diamonds every year. Rare? Common as muck! http://www.american.edu/projects/mandala/TED/diamo nd.htm
for some reason I think it was named 2063 instead of 2061... seem to remember it not following the others by multiples of a decade (and yes I did read it)
see above.
...that the moon's surface is composed primarily of green cheese. Of course, now that we've been there, we know it is made primarily of flour, green gelatin, and olestra.
If it wasn't for DeBeers (sp?) we wouldn't have the high prices we have now. They have been hoarding and buying up diamonads to decrease the supply to the consumer and drive up prices for years.
I guess a diamond will be forever, if DeBeers buys it.
Rumors persist that Russia maintains huge caches of cut diamonds that have not been released onto the market, most likely in exchange for some sort of payment from DeBeers.
Even if the Russians did flood the market just to spite DeBeers, it would be detrimental for them as well, as the increased supply would lower prices considerably.
Not to insult the happy brides of the world, but if supply and demand really ruled the market for diamonds, their rings would probably lose 90% of their value.
Methane is CH4. One carbon in the middle surrounded by four hydrogens, arranged in a tetrahedron. Diamond is tetrahedronal structure -- one C in middle surrounded by 4 other C's in tetrahedron, each C in turn surrounded by four other C's, each of which is surrounded by 4 other C's, each of which is surrounded by 4 other C's ..... etc, etc, etc, this is the formation of a tetrahedronal "fabric" matrix. Under extreme heat and pressure, the CH4 dissociates, leaving one C nucleus plus 4 H nuclei (protons) swimming in electron soup. When temp and pressure subside at the proper pace, the protons find enough electrons to pair up as H2 molecules and the carbons either settle into a nice tetrahedronal matrix if you're lucky, forming diamond crystal, or if you're unlucky, a pile of graphite flakes which you can then use to lube your key locks or brake and gear shifter cables on your mountain bike.
Considering the pressure and temperature necessary to create diamonds in this way, as well as the expense of interstellar travel and the fact that the diamonds formed in the experiment were in the form of diamond dust, I don't expect to see any diamond-harvesting missions to the outer planets any time soon. It would probably be cheaper and easier to manufacture diamonds here on Earth.
This is still useful information, though, as it may explain Neptune's strong internal energy source.
--- Brian
This story presents a perfect opportunity to point out to people that Diamonds are not particularly rare. There is a myth of scarcity fabricated by the DeBeers cartel, to keep the price of diamonds up. Obviously we don't find diamonds out in the driveway, so they are not a common rock, but the DeBeers cartel has cornered the market on raw diamonds as mined from the earth, and they lock away most of the annual output of these rocks.
Diamonds are the same kind of valuable item as Beanie Babies, for much the same reason. Don't ever rely on them as an investment vehicle. There are other precious minerals which are far more secure, whose value is not dependent on the arbitrary actions of a single corporate interest.
The on-topic gist of this message I am typing is to make clear to everyone that no, we shouldn't shoot off into space to grab all the diamonds in space. All we need to do is bust a monopoly and there will be plenty of diamonds for all who want them.
Wish I'd thought of it first though.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Harvesting diamonds - easy. Just crash something large and heavy into it, then scoot around picking up the pieces that are flung off into space.
Given NASA's recent activities, I'd imagine they're quite skilled at crashing things into distant planets.
So we're half way there, at least.
Question is : what can we crash into it to make a big enough diamond splash?
Hey - maybe there is a use for AOL disks after all!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Yeah, and also you'll need to make an alloy that is stronger than diamonds and can withstand the intense pressure that can CREATE diamonds from GAS. You're gonna have a helluva time.
Besides what we are finding as probes go deeper into space is that the pressure becomes so intense that they just implode anyway, so when we can travel to the core of neptune or uranus and back again, it will mean leaps and bounds for space exploration.
-[ World domination - rains.net ]-
Now if we can create a ship that can haul back a diamond the size of the earth, or even take a chunk out of it, it'll be a miracle. But thats beside the point.
Sure, if we could get the diamonds out of there it would be great, but uh, they are in an area of _INTENSE_PRESSURE_, thats why they are diamonds, after all, and thats going to make it a real pain in the butt to get them out, since you can't just send in a gigantic retractable claw, (it would get squeezed into nothing) Although maybe you could hold coal close to where the pressure is extremely intense and watch the coal turn to diamonds.
-[ World domination - rains.net ]-
Well getting them out of that gravity well might
be a bit of a challenge. Somehow I don't think
this will make any impact on the price of dimonds
in the next 200 years. Remember those planets are very far away.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Yeah, he's still around and living in Sri Lanka..throw his name into Google and poke around, not all of the sites listed are contemporary, true, but there're no announcements of his death and some material dating to early in this year.
Peace,
"Fundamentalist forces are undermining the integrity of liberal and democratic political structures."
Didn't I just read in the news somewhere that diamonds really don't have any intrinsic value. The value we place in them is artificially created by keeping a tight grip on supply and demand? Well they sure are perty!
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
Hm... I would be very surprised if even moon rocks didn't cost a hell of a lot more per gram than industrially synthesized diamonds. Now imagine the cost of extracting diamonds from the core of one of the gas giants, at a distance of several light-hours from the sun. These little rocks would cost you considerably more per gram than Ross Perot/Bill Gates/Steve Forbes-liver pate.
Namely, "The Diamond as Big as The Ritz", his sole (and perhaps unwitting contribution to SF.) In it, a family lives in decadent seclusion in a wildly furnished mansion in Idaho, squarely settled on a gigantic diamond the size of a small hill. The plot is standard Fitzgerald: nice young man of the Gilded Age is horrified by the actions of his "betters", but the idea of the hill-sized diamond is worked out expertly, except the geological freak that produced it. Now, maybe it was an asteroid?
teleny, friend of cats.
(It's late at night - sorry for the bad pun).
2001, or 2010 I think. Can't remember which now, it's a while since I read the books.
Yes, Arthur C. Clarke did propose the idea of diamond-core gas giants, but I think he got it from some research similar to this. The idea was first mentioned in either 2001, or 2010, and became a plot point in 2063, when a mountain-sized chunk of diamond winds up embedded in the surface of Europa.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin
I may be wrong, but I thought the movie was first? Didn't Kubrick (it was his movie, right?) ask Clarke for a different sci fi movie idea and 2001 was the result?
I haven't read the book 2001 or 2010, but I read the other two. I thought the end of 3001 was pretty lame. I'm also annoyed by all the retrospective view of history crap in most sci fi. I'm pretty annoyed at everything today, though.
Surfing the net and other cliches...
Surfing the net and other cliches...
(Who Meta-Meta-Moderates the Meta-Moderators?)
This would be the worst thing imaginable to DeBeers. The only reason diamonds are valuable is because they are "scarce", and the only reason they are "scarce" is because of DeBeers.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
This has been theorized since the early '90's when the Voyager 2 passed by Neptune. Arther C Clark used this concept in his book 2061.
Not news.
Creating diamonds with pressurized methane is not a new idea either? Industrial quality diamonds may be produced with a pressure tank full of methane and a plasma torch. This has been known now for some time now.
The diamonds we value here on Earth are often cut and heated to remove impurities.
I believe this method of producing diamonds is sometimes used to create cheap industrial quality diamonds for drills. The diamonds produced usually are not large enough to be of much interest for jewlery though.
This is where Debeers is probably getting diamonds from already. They have something worked out with the alien cloaking ships to deliver them to earth safely. They sure have enough cash to finance this! Sean
Asimov, Sagan, and even Heinlein, are dead.
Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury are still living. Elderly, admittedly, but quite alive.
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
I could be wrong (it's been a few years since my
last physics class) but changing the mass of a planet wouldn't have anything to do with it's orbit -- otherwise we'd be in trouble anyway with all the meteors and such hitting us, and to a larger extent the moon (which has smaller mass and therefore would be theoretically more effected) -- not to mention mars and mercury
Like I said, I could be wrong, but since no one else had taken you up on it yet...
Sorry, thanks for playing. Do we have some parting gifts for our contestant, Don Pardo?
The force due to gravity is proportional to the products of the masses. So the force declines in proportion to the mass lost. But, because of F=ma, the accelleration due to gravity remains constant and thus so does the orbit.
Not that we can ever remove an appreciable amount of matter from Uranus anyway.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I hope the guy is right on some of his other ideas, too. Hey Rob - Can we do an "Ask Arthur C. Clarke anything" thingie, please?
(The man IS still alive, isn't he? He must be what, ancient by now?)
"You've got diamonds on Uranus". Is this some sort of space equivalent of 'the sun shines out of his arse?'
But seriously, folks...
This is definitely one of the 'cool but useless' stories of the year. Maybe if we get some nifty propulsion systems online we'll see see a Clarkian 'diamonds covering everything' scenario, but it's far more likely that this will happen because of nanotech and not diamond mining.
The report only mentioned black diamond, so I wouldn't get your hopes up for the engagement ring from Neptune. The best question is, what is the most efficient use of diamond, if we can get it like this?
:-)
:-)
Personally I like Clarke's idea. Build the space elevator.
Of course, we could never get all that diamond in Jupiter, short of actually lighting the planet up and then scouring around for it, much as was done in the book. There's simply no easy way to pull it out of that immense gravity well. Hell, it mostly is the gravity well itself, being at the core.
In other words, let's detonate Jupiter. It could be fun.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
- Uranus would become lighter an be attracted by the sun resulting in a tighter orbit, and finally eventually crash on the sun.
- Our planet on the other hand would become more and more heavy and flying out of orbit into deep space
Do we want that?I'm sure we won't
(There's a fundamental error in my abopve assumptions - who finds it?)
ms
- Uranus would become lighter an be attracted by the sun resulting in a tighter orbit, and finally eventually crash on the sun.
- Our planet on the other hand would become more and more heavy and flying out of orbit into deep space
Do we want that?I'm sure we won't
(There's a fundamental error in my above assumptions - who finds it?)
ms
It's in 2010 that he suggests that the core of the gasgiants would be a diamond. :)
At the same time he suggests that 'cloud'-beings lived in the atmosphere hunting other 'cloud'-beings, ofcourse, they were deemed not intelligent and then the whole planet was set on fire to create a small sun. This sun would later heat up Europa (the moon, not the continent) so that native life could develop there.
An interesting side note is, that in 2001 A.C. Clarke suggested that Europa was filled with water but the lack of atmosphere made the water freeze instantly, which is now 'confirmed' in various studies.
I'm too stupid to preview.
Right now, DeBeer's is working out a way to get exclusive mining rights to Neptune And Uranus.
.^ .^
Microsoft has nothing on DeBeer's in the monopoly department.
^.
( @ )
^.
What I find scary is how long ago did they have the article on how there could be life on Europa. True, it was thought to be true awhile ago, but they just found out about possible tides, meaning a liquid ocean. A liquid ocean could most definately mean life of some sort.
'A sufficently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic' -Clarke
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
There's one everlasting truth you need to realize:
:-) Regardless, this raining diamonds thing is interesting - and dangerous. Diamonds are pretty hard - if one's got a sharp edge, it could do some nasty damage. Heck, even smacking you a good one would do it. I'd much rather have it rain faster processors and PC100 RAM.
If there is some weird, cool theory out there, Clarke probably thought of it ages ago. That's his thing in life.
Why, a lump of coal, of course! :)
Judging by the diagram with the story, the pressure sure is *INTENSE* by the time the diamonds stop falling, and shanoyu is right that trying to get machines to the surface would be near impossible.
:( "You're ruining the planets geo-system! We've only got *nine* planets."
But that's not the only mining technique we're familiar with, is it? Surely if we produced a significant enough explosion on the surface diamond chunks could be blown into orbit? I reckon you wouldn't even a proper bomb, just drop a lump of enriched uranium, and it will explode under those pressures & temperatures.
I can just imagine the stink the greenies would kick up
Oddly enough, I got 2061 from the library just last week (and 2010 the week before, Jupiter's diamond core is mentioned first in 2010, but not explained in any real detail). The article in Nature is "The ice layer in Uranus and Neptune--diamonds in the sky?" it's on pp. 435-36 of Vol. 292 No. 5822 from July 30, 1981, and was written by Marvin Ross of the University of California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboritory.
This is interesting, but will not make spacetravel more cost effective. We can make Diamond's now.. we make industrial grade ones allthe time, but they place a market in them to keep from putting the diamond cartel (which uses slave labor to get the natural diamonds) out of buisness. I've personally always though that it was morally reprehensible for the indutrial diamond makers not to flood the market with cheep machine made diamoned and put the sleeze bags who run the diamond cartel out of buisness.
Jeff
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Diamonds are a terrible "investment" right now. If you buy a diamond and then immediately try to sell it, you'll do well to get a third of what you paid.
It is in 2061 that Clarke makes use of the idea that Jupiter could have a diamond core. I don't think that the idea was original to him, IIRC he mentions where he got it from in his 'author's notes' for the book.
He used the possibility of Europa having liquid water under its ice cap in 2010. That info came from the Voyager flybys of Jupiter.
You guys all seen to be forgetting that these diamonds are made of METHANE... The ones we value are CARBON....
01101100 01101001 01101110 01110101 01111000 01110010 01110101 01101100 01100101 01110011
> as they wouldn't be rare anymore
Diamonds aren't rare. The prices are just markedup up between 200% and 500%.
Research the price of diamonds for the past 200 years, and look up the word cartel.
2 months of salary for an over-priced rock?! NOT !
Now precious metals like Gold or Silver, mmmm.
Cheers
So when do the alchemists who invented this pocedure for creating diamonds out of cow farts plan to IPO? I want in. Why bother going to Jupiter when all you need is a red laser and a pressure cell?
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been
To badly paraphrase Ferris Bueller:
"If you stuck a lump of coal in Uranus, in two weeks, you'd have a diamond."
(Ok, so its redundant...)
But really, the only reason diamonds are such a valuable commodity on Terra is simply for the reason that they are not common or easily brought into circulation. Now, if for some odd reason, it rained diamonds here, their value as a monetary staple would be nonexistant.
Of course, we could easily develop technologies based on diamonds because of the drive that an inexpensive resource has on the market. I feel that's one of the reasons for the silicon(sand) market. Sure, you can make Real Cool Things(tm) out of rare earth metals but it won't become a technology that's widely accepted.
But if it did rain diamonds, the question would be, what would engagement rings be made of?
-Vel
Sometime in the distant future, all of your golds silvers and platinums will be mined on other planets. These should be pretty common elements all across the galaxy.
I kinda compare it to "The New World". The first explorers from Europe were after what in the new world? Certainly not a new vacation spot.
But, it is a good thing... new exploration has always been a result of pioneering greed.
If pressurized methane results in diamonds, then cows should be rich. {j/k}
But more seriously, folks... this goes hand-in-hand with the possible commercialization of space (G2S Corporation, anyone?). If they could be extracted inexpensively (as if...), imagine what it'd do to the DeBeers cartel.
Well, more seriously... ok. Maybe I'm just in a silly mood today. {shrug}
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Arthur C. Clarke, in "2061: Oddyssey Three", refrenced an article from the journal "Nature". I don't have the book on me, or I'd give the article and page number. In brief, it said that the immense pressure inside Jupiter should crystalize carbon into diamond at the center of the planet.
Clarke used it in the book to predict the use of diamond in great quantity for industrial and space-explortaion purposes. In the book, of course, it was the Monolith & Co. who turned Jupiter into a star, thus expelling much of the diamond out into space. I doubt that we will be able to get large quantites of diamond from planetary cores for a while. =)
The report only mentioned black diamond, so I wouldn't get your hopes up for the engagement ring from Neptune. The best question is, what is the most efficient use of diamond, if we can get it like this?
What came before the Big Bang? Hum, it must have outside of time...
How much carbon is on these outer giants, anyway? I was under the impression there wasn't much, I mean it isn't high concentrations of methane, is it? With the speeds that these would be forming, they would probably be very "dirty" or unpure. Also, These high pressures are occuring when methane is still a gas? I dunno....
-- Moondog
I just did a Google on the original stuff Clarke refers to (trying to be "informative" for once), and got a lot of results that contained the string
Diamond: Uranus. Release stress...
so I stopped searching.
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
That's the title of the Clarke book in which an earth-sized diamond is discovered in Jupiter (Or was it Europa? I forget...).
The end of the book is rather interesting, where Clarke gives a description of a building completely coated in diamond.
My memory is sketchy on it, but I recommend reading all 4 of the Odyssey books (2001, 2010, 2064, and 3001), the movie 2001 didn't do the book justice... and it was a damn good movie.
By the time it becomes economical to reach uranus, or any of the outer planets, we will have the technology to produce diamonds from dirt (or anything else that contains carbon.) Nanotech would provide the means to easily reach the outer planets, and also provide the means to make diamond cheaply. So its really just a "gee wiz" scientific curiousity and doesn't have any bearing on the value of diamond or that we have found a large supply of the gem that could actually be useful. Anyway, just my 2 cents.
In the experiment, they used a laser to heat the Methane to about 3600 degrees F. Does it get that hot in the atmosphere of either neptune or uranus?
I realise that pressure creates heat (by friction) but is it *that* much?
--
rJames.org - illustration
I think they'd be just as likely to send fighters, to stop other people's diamond harvesting ships.
I've just skimmed the first 3 dozen or so posts, and I'm just wondering if it's been so long since 2010 that you've all forgotten it? Most of you are claiming that 2061 was the first mention of this! Clarke proposed the giant diamond in 2010, not in 2061. 2061 was such a weak story that I had to be reminded about the diamond mountain found on Europa...I remembered the 2010 reference immediately. 2061 simply continued the plotline.
CT
Constitutionally Correct
It's the same old capitalism (or what's the word for it?) thing: Nothing can ever be worth any money as long as there is enough of it. Exactly that is what money was invented for. In most cases,
:-) "Because it's something
:-)
everything *is* available in enough pieces. You just need to move it, need to *trade*, which is what will make you need something like money.
Well, ever wondered why in StarTrek something
"Latinum" exists?
that cannot be replicated" Sury, folks..
Couldn't be just that they couldn't imagine that
even in something so (mostly) friendly and perfect
as the StarTrek universe a place could exist
where there's no need for rare minerals, gold,
latinum, whatever, used _as a replacement for
money_?
I like this topic. Please rate me "Funny".
So... When is the next flite to Neptune? More power to Slashdot!
An interesting application for such a large quantity of diamonds would be their use as a construction material for several kinds of objects (like skeletons for particularly durable reserearch stations, ship hulls, or a space-to-planet cable that could serve as the basis for an inexpensive and highly efficent launching system). If buckyballs were present in any large quantities and could be isolatewd, then things might get really interesting.....
The truth is out there - we'll let it back in after it sobers up a bit. -The Cube
Instead of using a giant claw or what not, why not direct a giant asteroid to crash on neptune? Hopefully we might me able to get something flying out of there. Anyway, if there really was diamonds on neptune, we should have seen some of those on asteriod belts somewhere right?
Ewww... there's some icky thing moving in my keyboard.
If anyone did send diamond harvesting spaceships, it wouldn't be the US Government. It would be DeBeers.
I've never heard this name. I think proper names for Berkeley are:
:)
University of California, Berkeley
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley
UC Berkeley
UC
(these ones are almost exclusively used for sports)
(the) University of California (Golden Bears)
California
Cal
Stanfurd students call us Kal. I think they envy the fact that we can actually recieve C's and D's in classes.