Uranus and Neptune May Have "Oceans of Diamonds" 347
Third Position writes "Oceans of liquid diamond topped with solid 'icebergs' of the precious gems could be on Uranus and Neptune. The first-ever detailed research into the melting point of diamond found it behaves like water during melting and freezing — with its solid form floating on the liquid. A large diamond ocean on one or both of the planets could provide an explanation for an oddity they both share: unlike Earth, they do not have magnetic poles that match up with their geographical poles." The article doesn't mention what the pressures might be like in these outer-planets environments, but the researchers found that liquefying diamond requires 40 million times Earth's atmospheric pressure at sea level.
Well, that's one way to get the space race moving. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to let everyone know that Mars is full of gold just under the crust, and every planet around Proxima Centauri is rich with uranium.
Get that space program moving.
For the dull knives in the drawer (Score:5, Insightful)
I only point this out because you would be surprised at how many human beings don't know this, but for it to float to the top, that means its frozen state is less dense, hence expands, when freezes. Almost nothing else does this.
Good riddance (Score:5, Insightful)
pressure off by a magnitude (Score:5, Insightful)
40 million atmospheres is the kind of pressure that you'd measure under 400 million meters (400,000km) of material at a density of 1 g/cm^3 at a constant 1 g. Uranus and Neptune's gravity field is near 1g give or take and the density is not much more than 1g/cm^3 so the pressure in the core can not be 40 million atmospheres as there isn't ~400,000 km of material sitting above the core. Given that Uranus has a radius of ~25,000 km, density of ~1.27 g/cm^3, surface gravity of 8.7 m/s^2 and that the gravity field drops off roughly linearly with depth, the pressure is probably about a tenth of what TFA says diamond started to melt. Either someone dropped a zero where it didn't belong or Diamond isn't fluid in these planets' cores.
Actually "Oceans of melted coal" (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder why the headline isn't
Uranus and Neptune May Have "Oceans of melted coal"
"diamond" is by definition a solid crystalline form of carbon. If you melt it, it is by definition not diamond anymore.
Re:For the dull knives in the drawer (Score:2, Insightful)
Water does that.
Only because water (h2o) is a polar molecule. When we're talking diamonds and other similar materials we're talking raw elements (carbon in the case of diamond) which don't have the opportunity to be polar, and thus will always contract as cooled.
Re:Well, that's one way to get the space race movi (Score:5, Insightful)
Though if it would be possible to mine this form of coal in industrial quantities, it could suddenly become useful as a mineral... (yes, I know diamonds are useful already - but those are usually small amounts of manufactured ones). There's even one book by Stephenson more or less about it. And hey, you have whole moon out there full of hydrocarbons, in quantities many times greater than deposits on Earth.
Is it impractical now? Hell yeah. Will it always be? I don't know. But I'm sure many people would laugh at you only few thousand years ago for suggesting that dark rocks can be used as a source of energy. A thousands years ago for suggesting the same with whale oil on industrial scale. 200 years ago with that black oily substance seeping from the ground here and there. Rocks from which people get mysteriously sick used for power generation and most powerful explosives? Tapping the power of a volcano? Splitting water to get to the Moon? That's insane!
Re:motivation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Actually "Oceans of melted coal" (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously "liquid carbon" is the proper name, but I guess why they are calling it "liquid diamond" is because they are exploring the pressure/temperature region of the phase diagram where it solidifies into diamond (ergo diamond floating in liquid carbon).
http://dao.mit.edu/8.231/carbon_phase_diagram.jpg [mit.edu]
I don't get whey they are saying liquid Carbon may exist on Uranus though - the phase diagram indicates a minumum temperature for the liquid phase of 4.5 x 10^3 K, and even the core of Uranus is nowhere near that hot. Neptune, maybe.
Re:pressure off by a magnitude (Score:3, Insightful)
1 atm = about 100 kilopascals
according to http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/PavelKhazron.shtml [hypertextbook.com], At the centre, the pressure is about 380GPa (380,000,000,000pascal)
so pressure at earth's center is about 3.8 million atmospheres. Quite a bit shy of 40. But that's assuming the same radius and density, which are probably quite a bit off. But not by that much I don't think.
Re:can't you just make a diamond in the lab? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes.
Even natural diamonds aren't the slightest bit rare on Earth. It's just the diamond cartels that make it rare.
Re:Much as I'd love to make a great pun about uran (Score:3, Insightful)
The atmosphere of Uranus is 83% hydrogen. If we can't turn that into fuel for a fusion reactor then we won't be operating in the atmosphere of that planet. So the planet has plenty of fuel, and fusion power is (as always) 50 years away.
Re:can't you just make a diamond in the lab? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is likely cheaper to create the technology to create perfect synthetic diamonds than to create the technology needed to fish them out of a gas giant ocean pressurized to 40 million pounds per square inch.
Re:Finally (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Actually "Oceans of melted coal" (Score:3, Insightful)
Carbon's phase diagram shows quite clearly that Graphite becomes the less stable form as temperature and pressure increase to a sufficient degree. So bringing Graphite to these conditions would indeed convert to diamond as you freeze it out of the liquid phase.
Re:vindication for bluegrass (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well, that's one way to get the space race movi (Score:4, Insightful)
Artificial Scarcity (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:can't you just make a diamond in the lab? (Score:1, Insightful)
However, they are not quite the same as of today's technology and can often be differentiated from natural diamonds because of minute differences in their characteristics.
Are people really so shallow that they worry some random person on the street will pull out a magnifying glass and/or shine a UV lamp to "out" the synthetic-diamond-wearer?
It looks the same in natural light, right? That's all anyone should care about.
Re:Well, that's one way to get the space race movi (Score:5, Insightful)
Yellow synthetic diamonds (nitrogen impurity) are easy to make, comparatively, and form the basis of a lot of the industrial uses. However, vapour deposition techniques are quite capable of making blue (with boron) or colourless synthetic diamonds that are visually indistinguishable from a pure volcanic diamond.
In fact the only way to distinguish them is to do a chemical analysis (eg with UV light) and compare the result against the impurities listed in volcanic diamonds from all the known mines.
Re:Well, that's one way to get the space race movi (Score:3, Insightful)
Mycroft
Re:Finally (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you live in the DeBeers reality distortion bubble.
The biggest diamond on earth can be made industrially for a few cents.
But, Earth's magnetical poles do not... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Finally (Score:3, Insightful)
Semi-precious diamonds (Score:3, Insightful)
From Wikipedia:
The traditional classification in the West, which goes back to the Ancient Greeks, begins with a distinction between precious and semi-precious stones; similar distinctions are made in other cultures. The precious stones are diamond, ruby, emerald and sapphire, with all other gemstones being semi-precious.[2] This distinction is unscientific and reflects the rarity of the respective stones in ancient times
That means if diamonds were to be classified today, they would be downgraded from "precious" to "semi-precious". Diamonds are not rare in the least. In fact, all planets are likely to have diamonds. All planets with geological activity, present or in the past, are likely to have diamonds on or near their surface.
I wish people would understand that the diamond market is completely artificially manipulated. Only industrial diamonds are mostly influenced by basic market supply and demand - but not completely. Diamonds which are used as precious stones have their supply tightly controlled so as to create artificial scarcity. Control on diamonds are so tightly controlled, in some countries (Africa), picking up a diamond without government permission (e.g. DeBeers) may result in execution on the spot. Think about that. If diamonds were so scarce, why would then need to specifically make legal provisions to allow for an extremely rare event of discovering a natural, rough diamond on the ground? Unless of course, they're not rare at all and diamonds really are commonly found simply laying on the ground. And people face execution because an unfeathered supply of diamonds to the market would crash their value over night.
There are few things in the modern times which have caused more pain, misery, death, and mass slavery than Diamonds and DeBeers. But to be clear, DeBeers is not alone here.
Few diamonds in the world, contrary to the conflict free marketing, are truly "blood-free", as as much as 60% of the "conflict free" diamonds are actually smuggled from "conflict zones". In other words, over half of every diamond you see in stores is there because of someone's murder, slavery (including children), and illegal imprisonment, torture, so on and so on.
So remember nothing says I love you like blood, summary executions, and slavery. Its not just a moto, its fact.