
It rains solid diamonds on Uranus and Neptune - cs702
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/08/25/it-rains-solid-diamonds-on-uranus-and-neptune
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ridgeguy
The 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.

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tomcam
Paywalled. More easily accessible at [http://www.dailyitem.com/news/it-rains-
solid-diamonds-on-ura...](http://www.dailyitem.com/news/it-rains-solid-
diamonds-on-uranus-and-
neptune/article_399b67ec-89c3-11e7-9c4e-a70a13ac604f.html)

~~~
blubb-fish
huh - where is the pay wall? maybe it's neutralized by ublock origin.

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int_handler
Can 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.

~~~
Razengan
I'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. :)

~~~
Analemma_
I 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
There is a similar reason for why English swear words sound Germanic:
[http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/06/swear-words-
etymo...](http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/06/swear-words-etymology-
and-the-history-of-english/)

~~~
lvkleist
Such an interesting article. Churchill was known to take advantage of this in
his speeches, for example in (parts of) the famous "We shall fight them on the
beaches": [https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/97665/did-the-
we...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/97665/did-the-we-shall-
fight-on-the-beaches-speech-mainly-use-words-from-old-english)

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.
- Winston Churchill

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cooper12
Can 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?

~~~
cortesoft
Depending 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
The term for this is price elasticity:
[http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/priceelasticity.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/priceelasticity.asp)

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IgorPartola
Book 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.

~~~
brudgers
Seeing the story about water on Luna reminded me of _The Moon is a Harsh
Mistress_. And now the public library copy is on my desk.

~~~
khedoros1
I'm reading some more recent short stories right now that take place in
several moon colonies. They talk a lot about the scarcity of water.

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hn_throwaway_99
I 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.

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twoodfin
Reminds me of a plot point in Arthur C. Clarke's _2061: Odyssey Three_.

 _Lucy in the sky with diamonds..._

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tinfins
There'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
One 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
Thank 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...](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/168074/does-anyone-
remember-the-name-of-an-old-short-story-set-on-a-planet-with-diamond)

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mirimir
In _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.

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k__
Hasn't this been debunked?

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givinguflac
New shit has come to light, man.

~~~
k__
Noice!

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jacquesm
SpaceX' master plan revealed. Poor DeBeers.

~~~
Animats
CVD 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-
step...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/02/28/de-beers-steps-hunt-
fake-diamonds-detector-box/)

~~~
cm2012
Synthetic diamonds are not available to consumers much cheaper than real ones.

~~~
Animats
Look on Alibaba. Cubic zirconia by the metric ton. CVD and HPHT synthetic
diamonds, polished, in bulk. (Be careful that you don't get cubic zirconia
when you order diamonds, though.)

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slim
Uranus is fine in my mother tongue /p

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kazinator
If diamonds are coming _out_ of Uranus, though, you gotta relax more.

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rubicon33
Please stop posting pay walled links, or at least put in the title that they
are pay walled.

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lda
Open in private browsing window.

~~~
nashashmi
Things you don't say out loud

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Mz
I once said in a college paper that what gets listed as _scarce resources_
will change as we venture into space.

#thisisawesome

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averagewall
It'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
Eh, my point is this bears out the principle behind my idea, not that we can
readily mine these specific diamonds.

