NASA Looking For "Diamonds In The Sky"

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Scientist Charles Bauschlicher and his research team have found a new way to look for 'diamonds in the sky'. It may not be romantic, but diamonds shine especially brightly in the 3.4 to 3.5 micron and 6 to 10 micron infrared ranges, which should make NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope the perfect tool to see them with. Though less common and more monopolized on earth, diamonds are surprisingly common in outer space and the nanometer-sized bits comprise 3% of all the carbon found in meteorites. That means that if meteorite composition is representative of interstellar dust, that dust would contain about 10 quadrillion (1 * 10^16) nanodiamonds per gram."

DeBeers should be happy

[KublaiKhan (522918)]

A whole new marketing campaign suggests itself: "Give her the gift of the stars"

Or something like that, anyway.

Re:DeBeers should be happy

[Todd Fisher (680265)]

A whole new marketing campaign suggests itself: "Give her the gift of the stars"

Because any woman worth marrying knows that if meteorite composition is representative of interstellar dust, that dust would contain about 10 quadrillion (1 * 10^16) nanodiamonds per gram.

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[Floritard (1058660)]

"Nanodiamonds. Invisible to the naked eye, because love is about trust."

Re:DeBeers should be happy

[Wandering Wombat (531833)]

I gave her a Klein bottle of superheated hydrogen, and she just burst into flames... I mean, burst into tears. Tears.

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[dafrazzman (1246706)]

Some people buy stars or diamonds in space, but I'm smart enough to know that that sort of thing is a really impractical gift. I already bought a ranch on the moon for my future wife. Best. Gift. Ever.

Re:DeBeers should be happy

[by Anonymous Coward]

They pretty much are on Earth already. There's nothing special about diamonds, really. DeBeers has spent decades convincing everyone how great they are because they've locked up the supply chain from end to end. Search on "blood diamonds" some time.

Re:DeBeers should be happy

[flappinbooger (574405)]

Yeah, but they're shiny.

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[sumdumass (711423)]

They aren't shiny silly, they are sparkly.

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[flappinbooger (574405)]

Mmmmm, sparkly! (reaches for wallet)

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[kurzweilfreak (829276)]

So is a bass boat. Get her that for your wedding anniversary and see how well that goes over.

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[myth_of_sisyphus (818378)]

DeBeers created the greatest marketing campaign in history. (recently voted on by marketing people.) Even children know that a man gives a woman a diamond before marriage. Which wasn't always the case. And they created the idea that second-hand diamonds are somehow inferior. A "diamond is forever" after all.

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[wdebruij (239038)]

Or read this great example of investigative reporting from 1982:
Have you ever tried to sell a diamond [theatlantic.com].
It's all still true today (although you might have to swap some
country names here and there).

Even if you don't care about diamonds per se, the "gem" diamond business
is interesting for its unique economy and as an example of the power of
PR firms.

I will never by a "natural gem" in my life. Nothing says I love you like
pure zirkonium. Not that any woman would know the difference, anyway.

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[antic (29198)]

You can bet that even if masses of diamonds from some extraterrestrial source flooded the market here, and the usual culprits weren't getting their usual share/control, that they'd bump up the marketing suggesting that those weren't the same, weren't as special, weren't as rare, etc. Witness the diamond testing systems that look for flaws to ascertain whether a gem is artificial. Crazy.

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[SomeoneGotMyNick (200685)]

I guess I'm lucky......

1. I have a wife.....
2. She prefers CZ over real diamonds any day

Screw you, DeBeers........

Diamonds at the core of gas giants?

[CRCulver (715279)]

In his novel 2061: Odyssey Three [amazon.com] Arthur C. Clarke described the core of Jupiter as nearly solid diamond, formed by the enormous pressure of the gas giant's atmosphere. Is there any probability that this is true, or was it only a science-fiction author's imagination?

Re:Diamonds at the core of gas giants?

[mblase (200735)]

I'm pretty sure this was first mentioned in the book version of "2010: Odyssey Two", IIRC.

And he was basing it on serious scientific speculation, but no one has any way of knowing for sure.

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[TeknoHog (164938)]

I'm pretty sure this was first mentioned in the book version of "2010: Odyssey Two", IIRC.

I second (pun intended) this. IIRC, Jupiter was converted into a sun, so there must have been discussion on its chemical composition. OTOH, 2061 was about Halley's comet.

Re:Diamonds at the core of gas giants?

[delibes (303485)]

Maybe - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BPM_37093 [wikipedia.org] But you're unlikely to get your hand on it. Still it's nice to imagine isn't it?

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[by Anonymous Coward]

Difficult to know for sure, there's certainly some chance there'd be significant diamond or silicon carbide layers, but it's probably mostly metallic hydrogen with an iron-and-radioactives "core" core (probably much like earth's only bigger, despite the other vast differences). Due to the reactivity of carbon and hydrogen, most carbon present is probably as hydrocarbons in the atmosphere.

Re:Diamonds at the core of gas giants?

[reverseengineer (580922)]

Arthur C. Clarke noted that the idea that Jupiter's core was a gigantic diamond was inspired by an article [nature.com] in Nature which speculated that a solid layer observed in the compositions of Uranus and Neptune was composed of carbon liberated by intense pressure from methane.

Laboratory experiments [sciencemag.org] mimicking the temperatures and pressures found deep within those planets suggest diamond production is indeed possible, but would be more likely to be an agglomerate mass of diamond microcrystals than the yottacarat diamond solitaire envisioned by Clarke. Uranus and Neptune would probably make for better diamond production than Jupiter and Saturn due to a higher abundance of methane and thus carbon.

That being said, recent research suggests [newscientist.com] that Uranus and Neptune are not sufficiently carbon-rich to have produced an appreciable amount of diamond after all.

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[FinestLittleSpace (719663)]

I'm not entirely sure that would be cheap! And then if you, in a magical world far in the future, create a viable constant mining business/supply chain from Uranus, you're dealing with the fact that you're creating increased supply so the price/value of diamond by definition goes down, unless demand outstrips supply.

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[ls -la (937805)]

If it were made of carbon, it would likely be diamond; however that is quite unlikely. It's most likely iron with some nickel mixed in like our core. And it probably is solid because of the pressure.

Maybe that explains...

[Zondar (32904)]

why my wife came home today with an application for the space program... and my name was already filled out at the top.

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[arth1 (260657)]

Aha. That's a Clue.

I know who did it: Lucy, in the sky, with diamonds.

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[smitty_one_each (243267)]

The LSD Church: fear!

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[elrous0 (869638)]

I just hope Weyland-Yutani honors my claim.

Asimov would be pleased

[themushroom (197365)]

Sci-fi story stereotype: mining asteroids or planets, as part of the backstory to give a character a job.
So now that person actually has a reason to be doing that. :)

Re:Asimov would be pleased

[CRCulver (715279)]

Larry Niven already described a sociey of asteroid belt miners in great depth in his Known Space stories of the 1960s and 1970s. Similarly, Michael Flynn had asteroid mining as one of the big commercial ventures that popped up when private corporations finally got up into orbit. Even without diamonds, there's enough precious metals up there that the notion of space miners has fired the imagination of many science-fiction writers.

Re:Asimov would be pleased

[SleepingWaterBear (1152169)]

Actually, diamonds probably aren't worth the trouble of asteroid mining. Crushed diamond powder is cheap and plentiful right here on earth. It's only the larger chunks of diamond that are valued much, and even those aren't in short supply. The price of diamonds is only as high as it is because a cartel of the major producers work in collusion to keep the prices up. I suppose diamonds from asteroid mining might force them to lower their prices a bit, but it's unlikely that mining asteroids for diamonds could successfully compete with earth based diamond mining.
Quite possibly if we do end up with asteroid miners, they'll be throwing away cheap carbon compounds like diamonds, in favor of useful ores like iron or nickel.

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[Jeff DeMaagd (2015)]

Quite possibly if we do end up with asteroid miners, they'll be throwing away cheap carbon compounds like diamonds, in favor of useful ores like iron or nickel.

Iron and nickel are extremely cheap and plentiful on earth. If it's mined for return to earth as a paying mining project, it won't be iron and nickel. As it is, only Helium-3 is worth going to space to mine, and I'm not sure I even believe that's viable. First, it assumes that fusion power is viable, it may be but it may take a long time to become

But can it find...

[Starteck81 (917280)]

...Lucy in the sky with diamonds? [youtube.com]

Wow...

[by Anonymous Coward]

In other news DeBeers has announced plans to launch millions of poverty stricken Africans into space. They'll be equipped with 60 minutes of oxygen and lunch box sized capsules capable of reentering Earths atmosphere.

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[elrous0 (869638)]

Starvin' Marvin in space, you say?

Diamonds, Sky

[kailoran (887304)]

Are they looking for Lucy too?

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[FudRucker (866063)]

when they find one they will find the other...

Lucy in the sky with diamonds...

Diamond are *not* uncommon on Earth

[by Anonymous Coward]

That is the great lie the diamond industry wants you to believe. Ask any geologist. Diamonds are very common.

More useful measurement?

[Tired and Emotional (750842)]

So what does that work out to in carets per cubic parsec?

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[reverseengineer (580922)]

Taking the density of diamond to be 3.5 grams per cubic centimeter, and these diamonds to each have a volume of about 1 cubic nanometer, the average interstellar nanodiamond has a carat weight of 1.75*10^-20 carats (One carat is 200 milligrams). The interstellar molecular clouds where we would expect to find these diamonds have a density [princeton.edu] of about 2 x 10^-22 grams per cubic centimeter; one cubic centimeter is about 3.4*10^-56 cubic parsecs, so there are about 5.9*10^33 grams of matter in a cubic parsec.

Us

...and??

[Quadraginta (902985)]

So more than one allotrope of one of the most common elements in the Universe, carbon, is present in interplanetary and interstellar space.

Well, duh. It would be shocking if there weren't any carbon in the form of diamond out there. That fact would take some serious explaining.

And, er, so what? Obviously no one will ever mine diamonds in outer space, inasmuch as the cost to transport miners to them and the mined diamonds back utterly dwarfs the value of the diamonds, or even the cost to manufacture them.

That could be pretty rough... finding diamonds

[davidsyes (765062)]

in the rough...

Contrary to popular belief

[Hubbell (850646)]

Diamonds are not scarce by any means on earth, it's simply a front put up by the DeBeers company.

Twinkle twinkle little star...

[prajjwal (965508)]

NASA found out just now.. I knew that from my nursery rhymes :D

Why bother

[by Anonymous Coward]

We have come a long way in synthetic diamond production. It would be way cheaper to refine that technology thanit would be to try scouring space for what is literally diamond dust.

It means that you can get a diamond engagement..

[Channard (693317)]

.. ring for a dollar. She can show her friends it and tell them it's diamond, and you're only out of pocket by the cost of half a beer.

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[Mantaar (1139339)]

by the cost of half a beer.

Pun intended?

Re:Nanodiamonds

[Intron (870560)]

You can make great sandpaper.

Re:Nanodiamonds

[NotQuiteReal (608241)]

Yes, diamond powder is great for grinding and polishing hard things, like silicon wafers.

Industrial diamond is manufactured cheaply. You can even find it on eBay for a couple of bucks a carat.

The trick is getting a consistent grit/mesh/size so that you know how polished you can make your wafers.

I worked with a guy in the 80's who had a side business making diamond grinding compounds for customers in the bay area - he would pre-load his secret mixture into grease-guns he bought at Sears. They were single use, he told me. I don't remember why, something about screwing up the seals, or maybe a used grease gun put contaminates in the grinding goop... anyhow he made really good money at it for some reason, there must have been more to it than meets the eye. He was a retired nuclear physicist, so he knew what he was doing, when it came to small particles.

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[streptocopter (1052066)]

I worked with a guy in the 80's who had a side business making diamond grinding compounds for customers in the bay area - he would pre-load his secret mixture into grease-guns he bought at Sears. They were single use, he told me. I don't remember why, something about screwing up the seals, or maybe a used grease gun put contaminates in the grinding goop... anyhow he made really good money at it for some reason, there must have been more to it than meets the eye. He was a retired nuclear physicist, so he knew what he was doing, when it came to small particles.

Dude! I know this guy, you and I have so totally worked in the same meth lab!

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[budgenator (254554)]

Might be useful as a coating; of course the other thing is have we looked on Earth for them? They might be more common terrestrially than we though too.

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[Walt Dismal (534799)]

Seems to me that if diamond dust is that prevalent, then many spacecraft and satellites must experience a high rate of surface erosion. And in the long run lenses on satellites doing optical surveillance would get pitted. And solar panels get frosted. Does anyone know if this happens? And more important, on my next trip to Beta Gamma Orion IV, if the greys don't have shields, will the dome get scratched? And does my Galactic State Farm policy cover this?