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It rains solid diamonds on Uranus and Neptune
- tomcam 9y agoPaywalled. More easily accessible at http://www.dailyitem.com/news/it-rains-solid-diamonds-on-uranus-and-neptune/article_399b67ec-89c3-11e7-9c4e-a70a13ac604f.html http://www.dailyitem.com/news/it-rains-solid-diamonds-on-ura...
- jjjsdf87777 9y agoLight paywall. WFM in an incognito tab on iphone chrome when normal tab faded into their "subscribe now!" message
- blubb-fish 9y agohuh - where is the pay wall? maybe it's neutralized by ublock origin.
- k__ 9y agoHasn't this been debunked?
- kobeya 9y agoFrom TFA: > 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.
- givinguflac 9y agoNew shit has come to light, man.
- k__ 9y agoNoice!
- twoodfin 9y agoReminds me of a plot point in Arthur C. Clarke's 2061: Odyssey Three. Lucy in the sky with diamonds...
- jacquesm 9y agoSpaceX' master plan revealed. Poor DeBeers.
- Animats 9y agoCVD 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] [1] http://www.cvd-diamond.com/products_en.htm http://www.cvd-diamond.com/products_en.htm [2] https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/cvd-diamond.html https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/cvd-diamond.html [3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/02/28/de-beers-steps-hunt-fake-diamonds-detector-box/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/02/28/de-beers-step...
- gertef 9y ago"The best diamonds are diamonds with slight natural flaws; that's what makes each one unique, like your love" -- my diamond dealer. Next up: CVD diamonds with controlled random flaws.
- to_bpr 9y agoIf that were true then IF graded natural diamonds wouldn't be multiple times more expensive than the VVS grades. The words of salespeople should really ring hollow.
- lightedman 9y agoIF 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!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- IgorPartola 9y agoBook 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.
- Mz 9y agoI once said in a college paper that what gets listed as scarce resources will change as we venture into space. #thisisawesome
- averagewall 9y agoIt'll still be scarce because it's still under diamond producing pressure! No submarine is going to be able to dive down and get them.
- Mz 9y agoEh, my point is this bears out the principle behind my idea, not that we can readily mine these specific diamonds.
- kazinator 9y agoIf diamonds are coming out of Uranus, though, you gotta relax more.
- SEJeff 9y agoYou sir, win the internet for today. Everyone else go home!
- champagnepapi 9y agoLol
- cooper12 9y agoCan 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?
- tree_of_item 9y agoIt 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.
- vram22 9y agoGold 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".
- obastani 9y agoA "gold rush" probably didn't make gold abundant -- it was just enough to make a few people rich.
- JBReefer 9y agoGenerally people that sell inputs like shovels, jeans, and land. Prospectors generally lose money.
- cortesoft 9y agoDepending on the resource, there may be latent demand that can be met when a cheaper source of a resource is discovered. Demand curves are not linear. 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.
- manmal 9y agoThe term for this is price elasticity: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/priceelasticity.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/priceelasticity.asp
- int_handler 9y agoCan 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.
- jliptzin 9y agoThat's not the only reason to rename Uranus
- Razengan 9y agoI'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. :)
- gnarbarian 9y agoTerra also means ground, for example: terra firma.
- Analemma_ 9y agoI 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.
- int_handler 9y agoThere is a similar reason for why English swear words sound Germanic: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/06/swear-words-etymology-and-the-history-of-english/ http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/06/swear-words-etymo...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tinfins 9y agoThere'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.
- AlphaWeaver 9y agoOne 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.
- tinfins 9y agoThank you, posted it. No luck so far, but someone linked me to another person asking the same question with a better description of the story. https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/168074/does-anyone-remember-the-name-of-an-old-short-story-set-on-a-planet-with-diamond https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/168074/does-anyone...
- omnibrain 9y agoIIRC there is a Heinlein Story about travel to the moon an diamonds found there.
- remarkEon 9y agoIs this a thing in Ringworld? Been a long while since I read that one but I seem to recall diamond rain in that one.
- tinfins 9y agoI don't remember that in Ringworld, but that was the first real sci-fi book I read! Still one of my favorites.
- Casseres 9y agoWithout giving anything away, you might be interested in Outcasts — a 2011 British television science-fiction drama serial. Unfortunately it was cancelled after one season.
- rubicon33 9y agoPlease stop posting pay walled links, or at least put in the title that they are pay walled.
- ridgeguy 9y agoThe WP article says that "Most lab-grown stones are produced via a blasting process..." This is not true. 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.
- mirimir 9y agoIn 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.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y agoI 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.
- slim 9y agoUranus is fine in my mother tongue /p