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."

Re:Diamonds at the core of gas giants?

[mblase]

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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Re:Nanodiamonds

[Intron]

You can make great sandpaper.

Re:Diamonds at the core of gas giants?

[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]

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.

Re:Diamonds at the core of gas giants?

[Anonymous Coward]

While it may have been briefly mentioned in 2010, it was indeed a major plot point in 2061. After the part on Haley's comet, the main thrust of the book is that a ship has crashed landed on Europa (which was forbidden in 2010.) During the rescue attempt, a diamond mountain is discovered (and one of the characters short sells diamonds before anyone finds out.) The diamond mountain was basically ejected from Jupiter's core when it became a sun.

I can't believe I remember this.

Re:Nanodiamonds

[NotQuiteReal]

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.

Contrary to popular belief

[Hubbell]

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

Re:DeBeers should be happy

[myth_of_sisyphus]

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.

Why bother

[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.