The Race to Insanity and Beyond!

[Jack Simth]

Or a diamond! An Anti-diamond! Made of anti-carbon! Just anti-perfect for that anti-special anti-someone .....

[El_Phil]

Quartz. That's sparkly as well, indeed that was one of the few things I learned doing Geology. Sparkly = probably got some quartz in it.

The diamond/anti-diamond reactor, possibly the most expensive way of generating power ever. Aside from burning water maybe.

[Jack Simth]

Actually, burning water into hydrogen ash is actually being worked on as a viable method of storing energy.

Burning water into helium and loose oxygen is being worked on for generating energy.

[El_Phil]

Burning water into helium and loose oxygen sounds very tricky. For starters where does the helium come from. You could fuse together two hydrogen atoms to get helium, but that isn't really burning, that's nuclear fusion.

As for the first part I'll hold my hands up and say I have no idea what that means. As I understand it you could call water 'hydrogen ash' as it is fully oxidised (burnt) hydrogen. So how do you burn something that is already burnt? And how do you store energy by doing so

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Most expensive? Naah. Diamonds are IIRC actually one of the most ubiquitous precious stones there are, it's just the fact they used to be so rare (and of course their sparkly shiny look when cut, and the fact that it's the most dense naturally occuring material known to date) which is why they're expensive.

Then again, my source (old space strategy game called Fragile Allegiance) may not be entirely accurate in this time period, so I might be completely off the mark here.....

[El_Phil]

Diamonds aren't dense, not especially.. They are the hardest naturally occuring substance and only beaten by a few very odd man made compounds.

The expense depends on size, disproportionatly so. Industrial diamonds (fraction of a carat sized) are indeed dirt cheap and fairly common. As you get bigger you get rarer and hugely more expensive.

A typical mine will 'lose' 80-90% of the total carat value in processing, but that only accounts for less than 1% of the money value. That's how 'worthless' small carat stones are.

On the other hand if it weren't for jewelry the large diamonds would be equally worthless, they have no inherent value, just the rarity and sparklyness of them. Which is part of the reason man made jewelry diamond haven't caught on, a man made large diamond is like a knock off designer clothing. It's a statement of wealth and status, so buying a cheap one defeats the point (unless you haven't got the money, but want people to think you have )

[NullAshton]

Actually, I think the most dense naturally occuring material known to date is uranium.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

So I meant hardest..... Big deal

Eh, well so my source was wrong. Well..... we know what to do when our sources are wrong, don't we Louie?[/Brando voice]

[Jack Simth]

El_Phil said:
Burning water into helium and loose oxygen sounds very tricky. For starters where does the helium come from. You could fuse together two hydrogen atoms to get helium, but that isn't really burning, that's nuclear fusion.

Nuclear fusion is just a special kind of burning..... also, it's four hydrogen atoms -> one helium atom.

El_Phil said:
As for the first part I'll hold my hands up and say I have no idea what that means. As I understand it you could call water 'hydrogen ash' as it is fully oxidised (burnt) hydrogen. So how do you burn something that is already burnt? And how do you store energy by doing so

You use electricity to un-burn it. You use electrical energy to separate the water into hydrogen gas and oxygen gas, changing electral energy into potential chemical energy (2(h2O) -> 2(h2) + o2); as long as nothing sets it off, and you keep the two gas types thus produced around (and separated, hopefully), the stored energy is very stable. With the application of a small amount of energy (and mixing the two types of gas back up), you can convert that potential chemical energy into another form of energy - electricity, say. Sure, there's energy lost to an unuseable form at every stage.... but you can store it just about forever.

[El_Phil]

Yeah I did get my nuclear fusion wrong, it's been a while. I still wouldn't call it burning though.

Ditto the first past, seperating hydrogen and oxygen and storing the gases that isn't burning or even oxidisation. When you recombine them, that's oxidation. (By the definitions I know anyway) That's what threw me, the way you phrased the first statement. Still all cleared up now.