OT: diamonds are forever :)

[Paul1980au]

You know asteroid mining would give us access to new resources - which will run out one day here on earth. So i guess a push towards required spaecflight technology isnt such a bad idea for us humasn to start doing now.

[Arkcon]

I saw that story before, and what I don't get is how they know it's all diamond. I thought, thermodynamically, the most stable crystaline form of carbon was graphite. So what shape is this core in, a round sphere of bort, a mass of black graphite with diamond in it, or what?

[henk brouwer]

Originally posted by Arkcon:
I saw that story before, and what I don't get is how they know it's all diamond. I thought, thermodynamically, the most stable crystaline form of carbon was graphite. So what shape is this core in, a round sphere of bort, a mass of black graphite with diamond in it, or what?

The most stable form of carbon ON EARTH is graphite. The space diamont however is a collapsed star, it's mass is probably comparable to our sun, but it has collapsed to a size smaller then our moon. That means that the gravity and pressure at it's surface must be tremendous, and under such conditions diamont is a more stable form of carbon, (I think if you dumped graphite on the surface it would immediately be crushed into diamont by the intense gravity)

Hmm what about a new class of system objects in SEIV? space diamonts :-). probably not colonizable because of the intense gravity, but they would have a very high orbital mining output...

[ February 17, 2004, 09:48: Message edited by: henk brouwer ]

[dogscoff]

So how could you mine that ultra-dense space diamond then? Presumably the gravity would crush any spacecraft and its occupants into soup long before they landed.

Maybe you could throw a few nukes or asteroids at it, and hope to bLast a few framents off that you could then scoop up from a distance..?

[henk brouwer]

Originally posted by dogscoff:
So how could you mine that ultra-dense space diamond then? Presumably the gravity would crush any spacecraft and its occupants into soup long before they landed.

or into little diamonds.. we are carbon based life forms after all

Originally posted by dogscoff:

Maybe you could throw a few nukes or asteroids at it, and hope to bLast a few framents off that you could then scoop up from a distance..?

That might be the way to go, though you would need quite some force to break the diamont.. it's not like you can take your pickaxe and chop some pieces off... diamont is hard..

At least we could still look at it..

[ February 18, 2004, 10:32: Message edited by: henk brouwer ]

[Karibu]

Actually, you don't necessary need very much power to break a diamond. It is so hard that it is almost fragile. If you hit at the right point with sufficient force, the diamond will break. Like old saying goes: "Those who are unable to bend, will break" is valid with diamonds also.