Posted on 11/28/2020 6:51:22 PM PST by Red Badger
The billion-year wait for the perfect sparkler is over after an Australian-led scientific team discovered how to make diamonds in minutes.
The process is thought to take an age, huge amounts of pressure and super-hot temperatures, hundreds of kilometres beneath the earth’s crust.
But researchers at the Australian National University and RMIT have figured out how to make carbon crystallise into diamonds in a laboratory at room temperature.
“It’s all down to how we apply the pressure—we allow the carbon to experience something called ‘shear’—which is like a twisting or sliding force,” physicist Jodie Bradby told AAP.
“We think this allows the carbon atoms to move into place forming both lonsdaleite and regular diamonds, like those found on engagement rings.
“We’re not doing this in anything super amazing or explosive. We just squeeze the material together at extreme pressure.
“It all happens in minutes.”
The team has previously created lonsdaleite—which is 58 per cent harder than regular diamonds—at high temperatures.
They’re hoping their nature-defying breakthrough allows them to develop the ultra-hard diamond for industrial use in cutting tools like those found on mine sites.
“Any process at room temperature is way easier and cheaper to engineer than a process you have to run at several hundred or a thousand degrees,” Bradby said.
“Unfortunately I don’t think it’s going to mean cheaper diamonds for engagement rings.
“But our lonsdaleite diamonds might become a miner’s best friend if we can save them having to change costly drill bits as often.”
The team’s research findings on the room temperature diamonds were published in the journal Small.
‘Big deal..diamonds...I dont care if they find a cure for COVID19 in Australia...I’m not going there’
Really...it’s a pretty cool place...for those planning ahead it would be near the top of my list..
Pretty creepy.
They’re going to need a bigger warehouse.
Pets too?....................😜
They aren’t interested in tooling industrial diamonds................
Toto too!
“Only carbon can make a diamond.
Other gems are from other elements and minerals...........”
You do realize you are disputing hundreds of years of research and study in alchemy.
My HS chemistry teacher would be proud!....................🤓
Doesn't matter, the price will come down. (My first computer cost $2k!)
But De Beers is gonna be De Pressed!
But it's not "gem quality"? Oy vey.
Expect the lead researcher to mysteriously die from a mundane accident and all the research notes to go missing.
So, Diamonds are organic?
And gluten free?
Gem quality diamonds can already be made in a lab. You can bet De Beers will never allow that to happen though. They'll pay off government officials to make sure it's illegal, or if necessary they'll do worse to make sure their monopoly is protected.
De Beers is basically the Bill and Hillary Clinton of diamonds. You cross them at your own peril.
And those you can’t see.
Plus its amazing marketing to woman, tying how much a man loves you to the size of a supposedly rare rock.
Lab grown diamonds (and other stones) have been available for decades.
Most women however want natural ones.
I like natural ones too. Oh you meant diamonds.
Big difference between industrial diamonds and the sparklers on an engagement ring.
It is now stated one must spend two months salary for a ring. BS. My wife and I exchanged gold bans, and have been happy without diamonds.
Sell your diamonds now.
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