> In a study published this week in the journal Nature Astrophysics, researchers say they were able to produce this "diamond rain" using fancy plastic and high-powered lasers.
CVD diamond synthesis has become so effective that it's embarrassing.[1][2] The diamond gem industry made a terrible mistake. They promoted "flawless" diamonds as the most valuable. Now they're up against a process borrowed from the semiconductor industry, which makes flawless crystals in bulk.
DeBeers keeps trying to maintain the distinction between natural and synthesized diamonds, but it's coming unglued. They keep coming out with more and more elaborate machines for detecting synthetic diamonds.[3]
IF graded natural diamonds are rarely more expensive than any colored VVS diamond (the coloration automatically grants a VVS since it's understood that the coloration in a diamond comes from inclusions.)
Two more weeks until GIA certification. The diamond course is the final one!
Moissanite is though, and it has a higher refractive index and higher dispersion than diamond, so in the metrics that theoretically make diamond attractive as a gemstone, it's superior.
Look on Alibaba. Cubic zirconia by the metric ton. CVD and HPHT synthetic diamonds, polished, in bulk. (Be careful that you don't get cubic zirconia when you order diamonds, though.)
Aren't we still a ways off from when this technology can scale and become economically viable? Still, I'm sort of tempted to get one of these things off Alibaba and have it looked at.
Book recommendation: The Man Who Sold the Moon by Robert Heinlein. One of the things handled in the plot is the fictional assertion that the moon is covered in diamonds.
Can someone explain a concept to me? I never understood how gold rushes were profitable. If you suddenly found a mass quantity of a "rare" material, wouldn't it no longer be valuable since its value depended on its scarcity?
It takes a bit of time for that information about abundance to propagate through the economy, and for prices to update to reflect it. During that lag time people are able to get rich.
Gold rushes tend to be more guaranteedly (I just made up that word, if it isn't one :) profitable to the people who promote them as being profitable - than to those who rush in trying to find the gold. Look up "picks and shovels".
Can we officially rename Uranus to Caelus? Uranus (more accurately, Ouranos) is a Greek god. Besides Earth, all the other planets are named after Roman gods, thus Uranus should be named Caelus to be consistent.
I've always preferred "Terra" or "Gaia" to "Earth."
It could be a preference from video games, or maybe it’s because the common usage and being a synonym for ground and dirt has made the word seem ”low-brow” and the alternatives classy, exotic or poetic, and if their popularity was reversed we would think "Earth" was a classier word, but still.
“Terrans” will always sound better than “Earthlings” however. :)
I think this is just one instance of a near-universal perception among English speakers that Greek/Latin words ("Terra") sound more sophisticated than Anglo-Saxon ones ("earth").
It's hard to hypothesize about whether this could be reversed in an alternate universe because this tendency goes back many centuries: for a loooong time Latin was the language of the scholarly and political elite, whereas Anglo-Saxon Old English was used by commoners.
Earth comes "from Middle English erthe, from Old English eorþe (“earth; Earth”), from Proto-Germanic erþō (“earth”), from Proto-Indo-European h₁er- (“earth”)."
Also (from the page for lowercase "earth"): "Probably unrelated, and of unknown etymology, is Old Armenian երկիր (erkir, “earth”)). Likewise, the phonologically similar Proto-Semitic *ʾarṣ́- (whence Arabic أَرْض (ʾarḍ), Hebrew אֶרֶץ (ʾereṣ)) is probably not related."
It's not named after the sky. It's named after the God of the Sky, which doesn't bother me any more than other planetary bodies being named after deities of couriers, beauty, war, thunder, agriculture, ocean, the underworld, and so on.
The main reasons to rename Uranus is 1) consistency and 2) the puns. Either name it Caelus to be consistent with the naming convention used for the other planets or name it Ouranos to be closer to its Greek spelling and pronunciation.
I prefer (1) because the current situation is similar to having a codebase where all class names are PascalCase but there's this one class name in Upper_Snake_Case.
Is it really worth the waste of time it would be to debate this at the IAU and the confusion it would cause? Dwarf planets don't follow any set mythology (e.g., Makemake follows Easter Island mythology). Most people aren't experts of Greek and Roman mythology. The English language is full of inconsistencies.
That's a reason to keep the name - it's a rich seam that never seems to run dry. Also, if we did want to change the name, we all know what the anointed successor is...
There's an old sci-fi short story about a planet with diamond rains. I wish I could remember the name - Google is failing me right now. I think I read it in one of those yearly compilation books.
One great place to identify stories is the Science Fiction and Fantasy StackExchange site. They have a tag specifically for story identification, and they're very good at finding stories, common and obscure alike. I'd suggest you check it out if you'd like to find out exactly what it was.
Without giving anything away, you might be interested in Outcasts — a 2011 British television science-fiction drama serial. Unfortunately it was cancelled after one season.
In The Killing Star, by Charles R. Pellegrino and George Zebrowski, there's a section where a submarine-like vessel explores the depths of Neptune. They find diamonds there.
I think this is a pretty gross misuse of the word "rain" for clickbait. The diamonds form close to the planets' solid cores, not anywhere near what we see as the planets' surfaces.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 157 ms ] threadWFM in an incognito tab on iphone chrome when normal tab faded into their "subscribe now!" message
> In a study published this week in the journal Nature Astrophysics, researchers say they were able to produce this "diamond rain" using fancy plastic and high-powered lasers.
Lucy in the sky with diamonds...
DeBeers keeps trying to maintain the distinction between natural and synthesized diamonds, but it's coming unglued. They keep coming out with more and more elaborate machines for detecting synthetic diamonds.[3]
[1] http://www.cvd-diamond.com/products_en.htm [2] https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/cvd-diamond.html [3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/02/28/de-beers-step...
Next up: CVD diamonds with controlled random flaws.
The words of salespeople should really ring hollow.
Two more weeks until GIA certification. The diamond course is the final one!
https://www.wired.com/2003/09/diamond/
#thisisawesome
Often times, as a resource becomes more readily available, a ton of new uses spring up that were not economically feasible when the cost was higher.
It could be a preference from video games, or maybe it’s because the common usage and being a synonym for ground and dirt has made the word seem ”low-brow” and the alternatives classy, exotic or poetic, and if their popularity was reversed we would think "Earth" was a classier word, but still.
“Terrans” will always sound better than “Earthlings” however. :)
It's hard to hypothesize about whether this could be reversed in an alternate universe because this tendency goes back many centuries: for a loooong time Latin was the language of the scholarly and political elite, whereas Anglo-Saxon Old English was used by commoners.
Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all. - Winston Churchill
French was too for hundreds of years even up until now and maybe for the EU again after Brexit.
It is a common word in many languages and it has many forms like Ard or Erd or Jord.
The other word for earth that is also very common is zameen, but that means land.
Earth comes "from Middle English erthe, from Old English eorþe (“earth; Earth”), from Proto-Germanic erþō (“earth”), from Proto-Indo-European h₁er- (“earth”)."
Also (from the page for lowercase "earth"): "Probably unrelated, and of unknown etymology, is Old Armenian երկիր (erkir, “earth”)). Likewise, the phonologically similar Proto-Semitic *ʾarṣ́- (whence Arabic أَرْض (ʾarḍ), Hebrew אֶרֶץ (ʾereṣ)) is probably not related."
The main reasons to rename Uranus is 1) consistency and 2) the puns. Either name it Caelus to be consistent with the naming convention used for the other planets or name it Ouranos to be closer to its Greek spelling and pronunciation.
I prefer (1) because the current situation is similar to having a codebase where all class names are PascalCase but there's this one class name in Upper_Snake_Case.
That's a reason to keep the name - it's a rich seam that never seems to run dry. Also, if we did want to change the name, we all know what the anointed successor is...
It is the woman, primal mother.
Her gateway is the root of heaven and earth.
It is like a veil barely seen.
Use it; it will never fail.
~Lao Tzu
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/168074/does-anyone...
Where "lab-grown stones" means gem quality diamonds, they're produced by microwave-activated plasma chemical vapor deposition.
Some small-diameter diamond abrasives and nano diamonds are produced with explosives. Nothing bigger than a few microns in diameter, AFAIK.