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Scientists discover nearby ‘diamond planet’
- awm 14y agoThe interesting thing about a 'diamond' planet is that it would be a waste of time. Diamond's value is superficial - it can't actually be used for anything (except cutting), so mining this planet would essentially cause diamonds to become worthless. Whats more interesting is a planet made up of rare metals - that would still cause the prices to drop (this assumes the mining can easily generate lots of metal easily, transport costs aside), but can immediately be turned around into something useful.
- taejo 14y agoAnd the diamonds we do need for cutting can be synthesised on Earth pretty cheaply.
- TNO 14y agoIt has uses beyond cutting: <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/butler-diamonds.html> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/butler-diamonds.html>
- scarmig 14y agoRare earth metals are, despite the name, not actually all that rare. They're fairly abundant in the Earth's crust and mantle. The reason they're more expensive than, say, iron, isn't that they're rare but they're rather difficult to purify from each other. They share the same outer shell electrons (s and d), and what separates them from each other is their f-shell electrons. Those, however, are buried inside the other shells. So their differences are largely driven by differences in atomic radius, differences which are small in chemical effect. Which is all to say that the cost of producing them wouldn't change too much in that scneario, even if you had access to a trillion tons of ore for free.
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- dsr_ 14y agoIt ends with a speculation that mining other planets doesn't sound so crazy any more. Idiots. Diamond is not intrinsically valuable; carbon is not rare, and industrial diamond is fairly cheap. Humans (and in particular one cartel) set a high value on gemstone diamonds. It's going to be cheaper to turn waste carbon into diamond here on Earth than it is to boost any sort of mining platform out to another planet or our own asteroid belt, and this will continue to be true for many many years.
- cobrausn 14y agoUntil DeBeers makes sure that 'Certified Space Diamonds' are what you really want if you want to impress your significant other.
- sbirchall 14y agoWho's to say the value of Diamond has yet been truly appreciated? If I'm understanding things correctly this diamond would have formed under conditions we simply cannot recreate in a manufacturing process, given the magnitude of time and energy involved. It is not inconceivable that the properties of these carbon crystals could be VERY appealing. For an example I recall a statistic that claimed the entire _data throughput_ of the UK could be encoded on a crystal of carbon barely the size of a grain of sand. Space elevators and orbital rings spring to mind as well, and who's even saying that we want to get this stuff back to dirty old earth when we're jetting around the cosmos in our hyper diamond meta skeletons on stellar farm errands!?
- Simucal 14y agoThe entire data throughput of the UK over what amount of time?
- stephengillie 14y agoWe have tons of carbon on earth. We inhale and exhale it all the time. It's one of the top 4 atoms in the universe, along with hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Turning matter from diamond to carbon-fiber, or anything else, takes much energy. This is why diamond is so hard to cut - the carbon atoms have very strong magnetic bonds, and separating them takes a lot more force than separating iron atoms when cutting steel.
- hippich 14y agoSomething like this (except, not diamonds maybe, but some rare metal-rich planet) and girls/casino/blackjack will drive space exploration :)
- ktizo 14y agoGirls could well drive space exploration, but not necessarily in the way you might think. Sperm is easy to store.
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- Tipzntrix 14y agoI think the true word that should be in quotes is 'nearby'.
- mertd 14y agoI like how "traveling to the planet and back will take you a lifetime, if you could travel as fast as light" translates to "nearby" when dealing with the scales of the universe.
- tocomment 14y agoHow can they possibly know what the planet is made of? Does anyone know?
- btipling 14y agoVia a Spectrometer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrometer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrometer You can do it yourself. Do you know why the sky is blue? Because blue light waves are scattered by molecules in our atmosphere. The light emanating from distant stars also interact with the molecules in the star and nearby planets etc.
- tocomment 14y agoI thought we couldn't see the light directly, only the wobble in the star? Also wouldn't the light only show us what's on the surface? Or perhaps only the atmosphere? They seem to know there's diamond inside the planet.
- ksmiley 14y agoPerhaps they performed spectroscopy on the star, found a lot of carbon, and reasoned that the star's planet would also be carbon-heavy.
- ktizo 14y agoWe see the wobble in the star via the frequency of it's light changing. My understanding is that the assumption of diamond is made by making many measurements of the absorption spectra of the star to try and get an idea of what kind of matter is floating around it as dust and gas and from that trying to work out what the balance of chemistry in that system is likely to be. You can also look at the star's spectra during a transit of the planet and use that to work out information about the atmosphere and surface. At the end of the day, they do not know what is inside the planet, this is just their best guess based on what they can measure.
- Daniel_Newby 14y agoPresumably they inferred its mass from its orbital motion, and its size from how much light it blocks off as it crosses in front of its star. Density is smply mass divided by volume. Then they compare it to the density of known materials and find that only graphite and diamond are a good match.
- sukuriant 14y agoA planet made out of diamond and graphite. Why do I feel like this would be a terrible place to visit as a human, even with a breathing suit. If the crystal caves are any indication of what this planet would be like, it would be incredibly inhospitable --- though possibly quite pretty.
- whyhellothere 14y agoHow does extremetech.com keep on getting to the front page of HN? (this is an honest question, while I am trying to make a point, I would actually like to hear other peoples opinions) Something always seems off about the quality of their articles compared to the other (above average) content that usually makes its way to the front page.
- benologist 14y agoTheir parent company Ziff Davis has 5 or 6 different accounts they use to spam HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4555756 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4555756
- russell 14y ago9x10^28 carats. That's a pretty big ring.