a "rain" of diamonds.
Researchers from Stanford have shown how the frigid, high-pressure atmospheres of the planets Uranus and Neptune can create a "rain" of diamonds. The team from the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory says it used an optical laser from the Matter In Extreme Conditions instrument to demonstrate how, deep within the gas giants, …
Well, yes of course it can, but 'to create nanometre-wide "diamonds"'? When I last looked, there wasn't much hydrogen in a diamond.
Be careful, GCSE and A level chemistry tends to focus on the macromolecular bulk and ignore what happens at the edges of the crystal. You always do have impurities to fill up the otherwise unconnected bonds. The composition varies but hydrogen is one of the most common options. If you're talking about nanometre scale diamonds then the edges start to represent a much greater fraction of the diamond as a whole.
Siberian mammoths, mastodons and wolliecrhinos were found with broken spines, femurs indicating bowling ball sized hail, waist deep to keep them from falling over. These animals had temperate zone dandelions at their feet, undigested in their stomachs, flash frozen before decay. North American extinction included giant bison, giant sloth, sabertooth tiger, dire wolf and more.
There is a layer of nano-diamonds in the Holocene deposits indicating Comet strike.
I assume you have a link for this?
I assume from this hopeless expectation that you've not come across this fool before, then.
I'd thought there might have been a connection between their recent absence from here and someone with a tenuous grasp of science and facts being preoccupied with a new job in Washington, but it seems not.
Care to describe the physics involved when nature produces a bowling ball sized hail stone?
All I know is that it involved a tornado in the US, a bowling alley and a time-shifting black hole. I'm no expert, of course, I just read a lot of SF. :)
I understand that they can be slightly bigger than a bowling bowl on (unlucky but luckily very rare) occasions. Not sure of the accuracy of this site but it looks reasonable at first glance: https://www.livescience.com/32694-how-big-was-the-biggest-hailstone-ever.html
That article is a bit hyperbolic. That hailstone is almost the width of a bowling ball, but it is hardly spherical. A bowling ball's volume is 5447 cm^3, meaning it would weigh about 11 pounds if it was made of ice. That's a far cry from that hailstone, or the record of ~1.5 pounds.
I remember reading an article in Wired many years ago about a guy who had come up wit a process for producing jewelry-grade (as opposed to simply industrial-grade) diamonds.
The first feedback that he got was that he'd be dead within a short time - as one of the big diamond houses would have him killed, as what he could produce was too much of a threat to their market.
The last I heard about/understoon about the production if diamonds is that there are two general methods: Attempting to replicate high pressure and temperature and chemical deposition of some form.
While it's hard to know the true story behind De Beers and the diamond trade, it is a very interesting read about advertising and in particular what advertising agencies have to do when market saturation is reached and they have to change attitudes as well as just market. On the other hand, prior to the exceedingly successful campaign from De Beers, diamonds were not considered such a rarity or a must-have (engagement and wedding rings) unless large or very pure.
Because 'large' diamonds can be produced in all sorts of stupid colours for the vain, and smaller ones for industrial use can be produced on a relatively large scale with a uniform structure (not all diamonds are equal). Without such plants we would not have affordable diamond cutting tools.
They make small industrial ones to coat tools.
They make large flawless large ones (including small windows) for specialist applications. Superior heat conducting material that's an electrical insulat. Unlike other allotropes of carbon, it's an electrical insulator if pure. Beryllium Oxide is next best. Mica and certain elastomers have been used, but very inferior to Beryllium Oxide.
Diamonds used in Jewellery vary in impurities / flaws.
De Beer's Element Six has a factory in Shannon, Ireland.
But yes, no existing precious metal or gem company wants a cheap new source of the NATURAL products.
Sapphires as gems are worth most in jewellery if natural. Like diamond, there is synthetic sapphire for industrial use (originally mechanical watch face covers and also jewels in movement).
I don't know if record player stylii are synthetic or natural sapphire (50 hrs) and diamond (about 500 hrs) vs single play steel needles. Autochangers in 1930s first used sapphire as obviously a bamboo, thorn or steel needle would be useless. UK single play 78 only turntables still used steeel needles on some models till 1949. Microgroove 33 1/3 1948 and 45 rpm 1949 could only use sapphire or diamond stylus.
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