August 3, 2010 • 19 mins
Although diamonds are incredibly expensive, they're only lumps of concentrated carbon (one of the most common elements on earth). So how do these diamonds form -- and how big can they grow? Tune in and learn why the largest diamonds may be in space.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff from the science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey, Alison, did you hear about the
statistician who's stuck his head in a stove and his
feet in a bucket of ice? Oh? What happened? On average?
(00:21):
He felt just fine? Oh, so, welcome to this stuff
in the science lad This is Alice Madam like the
science that at how staff works dot com. And this
is Robert Lamb, science writer at how stuff works dot com.
And we bring to you that joke compliments of Terry
in Grass Valley, California. That's my wife's aunt. Actually he's
listening jokes from your wife's sam. What I solicited everybody,
(00:44):
and she's a listener to the podcast. Thanks and Terry.
Let's let's let's get right to the topic here. We're
talking about diamond and whether they're a scientist's best friend, right,
and now you already have a diamond, right because of
course married, and I well, let's let's just stop that
assumption right there. You know, of course you know that
you don't have to get a diamond on you're married,
(01:05):
And yes, I am in fact married, but I mean,
you know there are other ways. But I do see
a diamond on your hand right now, so I know
you have a diamond. Yeah, well it could be a
it could be really good fake, right, it could be
that's yes, yes, certainly. Uh. And we're about to get
and get into that like basic let's let's go and
hit exactly what. We're gonna hit some really cool diamonds
in this particular podcast. We're not going to just dimond. Yeah,
(01:27):
some real spacey diamonds and diamonds that like live in
the jungle. It's gonna be great. But to really understand
why these are awesome, we do have to hit the
basics dimond formation. So a diamond, as awesome as it
may look in the store or on a finger or whatever,
is just carbon in its most concentrated form. All Right.
(01:48):
You do remember how Superman could like squeeze like a
lump of coal and make it into a diamond. That's
that's that's it, that's basically that's the basics of it,
all right. Carbon is one of the most common homes
in the world. You guys know this. Yep. It's in
the air all around us um, and it's in our bodies,
like we're eight carbon um, you know, So it's everywhere
(02:11):
but we just superman, or more more commonly, the Earth
has not squeezed us into a shiny, beautiful crystal. Diamonds
form about a hundred miles below the Earth's surface in
the molten rock of the Earth's mantle. Right, then this
is where you find the right amounts of pressure and
heat to transform the carbon. For in order for a
(02:31):
diamond to be created, carbon has to be placed under
at least four hundred and thirty five thousand, one d
thirteen pounds per square inch of pressure at a temperature
of at least seven hundred and fifty two degrees Fahrenheits.
So those are that's the recipe if you're planning to
cook one up at home, right, And so if conditions
drop below either of these two points, graphite, diamond, graphite,
(02:51):
nobody wants a graphite ring. Not so much. Thoset diamonds
always see today were four millions, if not billions of
years ago. Yeah, they're carried up to this surface through
powerful magma eruptions. And they can also form when meteorites
crash into things. Because it's interesting. Yeah, and you have
all that metal and heat and it's like metal heat,
(03:12):
you know, pressure, and you get that. You can also
get to get this in a laboratory, and that's because
everybody's heard of cubics orconium and this is just a
laboratory gym and these have been in the markets it's
like ninety six and laboratories just basically simulate the heat
and pressure from the Earth's mantle to create natural diamonds. So,
you know what, I heard that there's a trend in weddings,
(03:33):
you know, because we do the TLC weddings a lot
of articles for that, and um, I was I heard
that there is if you can't afford a ring, then
maybe you get a cubics orconium like placeholder kind of
thing when you propose, and then when you can afford it,
you work up to the diamond. Well that's a very
honest way of doing it. So I mean, I'm of
the mind that I think, you know, cubics looks pretty good. Now,
(03:56):
did you get your wife a diamond ring? They were
they were diamond are already in the family. Okay, an
air loom. Yeah, that's cool. I just wondered. So, yeah,
that's how we did it. And now this is pretty interesting.
Um over at the Ignoble Prizes, they in the past
few years, they've they've given honors to scientists from the
(04:19):
University of Mexico, the National Autonomous University of Mexico interesting
for creating diamonds out of eight proof tequila. Well it's
not really diamonds with diamond films, right right, Yeah, But
so what they did here was there they're evaporating the
tequila and they're heating the vapor above fourtune hundred degrees
fair kneight before to positive it on silicon or steinless
(04:42):
steel trays. And so the films that they wind up
with were between a hundred to four hundred nanometers in
diameter and free of impurities. They're hard, they're heat resistant,
and this is the key thing. They have a number
of commercial applications UM such as cutting tools, optical electronic devices. UM.
I got in researching this that ran across like some
(05:03):
sort of weird experiment where like cut cutting into a
mouse now's brain with a like a special like surgical
kind of tool that's made from diamond. You can't see me,
but I'm cocking my head look proberly like what it
was really weird. I was like, I ended up not
using it, but yeah, I'm bringing it up. But but
still another big thing. Oil rigs used diamonds in the
in the drill bits as well. So uh and and
(05:25):
also it has all since it is a real good
thermal conductor, it's going to be really useful in semiconductors
and computers of the future and all. So the interesting
thing about this University of Mexico research that I thought was, well,
how would they come up with the idea of using
tequila and diamonds. How do those two things really good together?
And so they noticed that tequila eighty proof tequila had
(05:47):
the ideal proportion of ethanol to water to create these
diamond films. Or they were drinking a little tequila and
they're like, I, pat, you can make a diamond out.
Is that what you guys doing the lab? Drink tequila
after your work is done? Tell us we want to know.
So those are the basics of how diamonds are made.
How they can be made here on Earth, but they
can also be made elsewhere, um in the in the
(06:10):
galaxy with the giant cosmic diamonds. Yeah, now here on Earth.
Do you know what the largest diamond is, like the
largest like cut kind of diamond that has like a
name and is said the Hope Diamond. No, apparently it
is the Golden Jubilee and that is a five forty
six carrot deal. It looks kind of like kind of
fits in the palm of your hand and it is
currently owned by the King of Thailand and it was
(06:32):
presented him for his fiftieth anniversary of his coronation in
But that's nothing, I mean, that's I mean, it's it's great.
If you do you have to rival Golden Bee. Oh,
not rival, but surpass and ways the camera measured, yes,
to completely trample. It's like, that's just a trinket compared
to this um and this is BPM. So that's a
(06:56):
really great name for a diamond. Well, it's a super
I mean, it's a white dwarf, is what it is.
And it's also known as Lucy as in Lucy and
the Sky with diamonds. That's nice. Yeah, And it's a
fifty lot years away and about four thousand kilometers across.
And here's here's how much it weighs. It weighs five million,
trillion trillion pounds. And those both of those trillions were
(07:17):
supposed to be there. That was not a flub I
did wonder if you made an era, and it would
if it were measured in carrots. Well, well, real quick,
the whole white thing is because it's like super dense.
So that's why that's point weigh so much, even though
it's relatively small for that way. But then if you
were to put that in in carrots, this would be
a ten billion, trillion trillion carrot diamonds. Again with a
(07:38):
trillion trillions talking some mad carrots. I love I love
it when people throw in the extra like I think
Corny McCarthy's always talking like like looking up in like
a million million stars, or like anytime you can throw
like an extra million in there, it sounds awesome. Yeah,
and it's actually it's actually a number. So this is
a pull sighting, pulsating white dwarf. It's a burnout are
(08:00):
of the c c Z variety if that means anything
to you, and most people won't, but that's its technical classification.
And it's primarily carbon and oxygen with a thin layer
of hydrogen and helium. And it's massive enough to have
undergone partial crystallization. In fact, we're talking upwards of nine
of it has crystallized. According to some astronomical studies. So
(08:23):
the questionnaires, how can we tell that it's a diamond?
You know? How did how how did they know? Well, yeah,
they didn't, like just look in the catalog or see
it on somebody's finger. It's the white dwarf undergoes pulsations,
all right, and scientists are able to study these pulse
pulsations in a similar way that we study size seismographic
measurements of terrestrial earthquakes, and that gives us an idea
(08:45):
of what's happening in the interior. Right, So they think
the carbon interior of this particular white dwarf has solidified
to form the galaxy's largest diamond. Right, that's what That's
what the theories are saying. Nobody's certainly nobody's traveled there,
and we don't you know, we don't know for sure.
But well wait until after they hear this podcast. We
might have some jewel thieves like high talent it. Yeah,
they're there, They've got a ways to go and have
(09:07):
to really hot rod something. But um, but yeah, this
is like it's just kind of staggers that you can't
help but think of like a little person like riding
it through the cosmos. You know, I mean, that's enormous,
five million, trillion trillion pounds of diamond um. You know,
it hasn't been cut yet or you know, it certainly
hasn't been been set in anything, but that's enormous and
(09:29):
and they're saying it's probably like one of the biggest
in the at least the observable universe. Then there have
been other ideas that like Jupiter might have like a
giant diamond in its core um, and that's kind of
you know, some of the gas giants in our solar system,
and that's kind of up in the air um um.
It's not as exciting as that other diamonds. It's not
as exciting, and nobody, nobody really knows for certain about
(09:50):
it yet. Well, that's because most of the chemical research
involving diamonds in our solar system so far has really
dealt with micro diamonds, right. Um, the micro diamonds found
in asteroids and you know them meteors and meteorites so
vs are created in the high heat and pressure of
the collisions which create these little tiny micro diamonds or
rocky fragments. Yeah, but luckily there are there is something
(10:13):
within her there might be something within our solar system
that is just as fantastic as a enormous um you know,
star diamond. And that is the idea of get this right.
I imagine this in your head if you can. It
sounds like like an Asia album cover or something. An
ocean of liquid diamond filled with with solid diamond icebergs alright,
(10:35):
floating under like the Neptone Neptonian sky. Yeah, looking that crazy,
And yet there's a there's some interesting studies that say
this might actually be what the case is, right, and
it's not just so Neptune too, it's don't They also
postulate that it might be on r innust Yes, possibly
on ur inas as well. Uh. Two thousand ten study
out of Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, published in
(10:57):
Nature Physics, and basically it comes to into this, um,
we've melted diamonds in the lab. It sounds kind of crazy,
But why would you melt a diamond? Well, it's science
for proof you can do it. But buts and brides
who would be highly upset at that prospect. Yeah, if
you bring a diamond melter to a wedding, that's just
so poor taste. But all right. So, but a diamond
(11:19):
is it is incredibly hard material and it's very difficult
to melt. And but it's also difficult to melt in
that if you melt a diamond, it's hard to keep
it a diamond, you know, like you'll end up with
just with graphite or something, you know, So they have
to go through a certain rigmarole just to just to
make sure that it melts in the right way. Right,
(11:40):
So what happens is researchers blasted um a diamonds like
a small diamond, you know, nothing, nothing with the name
for a curse. So researchers blasted the small diamond lasers
at ultra high pressures like those found on gas giants,
like like Neptune in Eurus right right, and yeah, this
the signist lukeuid fight at the Dinet liquified the diamond
(12:01):
at pressures forty million times greater than what you'd find
standing sea level on Earth. Woll, that's some serious pressure.
And they were slowly reduced. Then they slowly reduced the
temperature and pressure. And when the pressure dropped to about
eleven million times the atmospheric pressure at sea level here
on Earth, and the temperature dropped to about fifty degrees.
(12:22):
Guess what happened. Chunks of diamond yea began to appear
in a little islands of diamond liquid diamond. I mean,
it's just really hard for me to even imagine like
this in my head. You know. The best image I
have right now, I'm trying to sum it up some fabulous,
you know, kind of pirate treasure, you know, gold medallion's,
you know, treasure chests open. But I keep on thinking
(12:43):
of the goonies. Did you ever see that when they
get to the end, you know, and there's like the
chips with all like the treasure all around and all
the fabulous jewels and stuff. That's the best I can
come up with here As far as the visual of
a diamond ocean, Yeah, it's just completely I mean other worldly,
you know. Um So now I've talked about the goodies,
(13:06):
let's get back to diamond. But the other thing is
that the chunks of diamondn't sink. They floated in this
diamond ocean. Uh and uh. And they think that this
could actually help explain someone like the cool the weird
stuff going on with the magnetic field there. Um, the
magnetic and geographic polls on Uranus and Neptune don't really
match up um. In fact, they can be up to
(13:29):
like sixty degrees off um off the of the north
south axis. So to put that in perspective, um, if
Earth's magnetic field with that far off, it would place
the magnetic north pole in Texas instead of off a
Canadian island. And what would researchers think might be possible
is that a swirling ocean of liquid diamond could be
responsible for the discrepancy. Yeah. Well see if you think
(13:50):
about it, up to ten percent of Uranus and Neptune
is estimated to be made from carbon, So a huge
ocean of liquid diamond in the right place could deflect
or um or askew the magnetic field out of alignment
with the rotation on the planet. Discovering News have a
story about that, Yeah they did. And it's also important
to keep in mind we're talking about gas planets here
and and but there is a lot of liquid in
(14:12):
them as well. It's not like just gas. And and
then there's you know, the possibility of like something solid
at the center, not a diamond necessarily, but you know something,
you know, something solid. So yeah, I was just really
blown away by that. Finding about that it's pretty cool. Yeah,
but now it's time to bring it back down to
earth for our last little diamond story in this diamonds
(14:33):
morgue board we're going through here, and uh, and this
creature is pretty amazing. It's an inch long iridescent we evil,
a little not not a weasel, but a weavil, like
an insect named if you want to take a shot
at this one, sure well, lamp or Siphus augustus. Yeah,
and it's native to Brazil and you can you can,
you can look at pictures of it online and it
(14:54):
does look amazing. It's like sparkly and green, like it's
just it seems to sort of shine with its own energy. Um.
But otherwise it's kind of like yeah, it's like yeah,
like wevill bling going on in the Amazon rainforest. So
a bunch of University of Utah chemists were pretty fascinated
with this particular beetle and they found out that the
(15:15):
beetle glows ere it doesn't green because it has a
crystal structure and its scales that's like the crystal structure
of diamonds, right. Um. And the cool thing is they
think that this is an ideal structure, like an ideal
architecture for what's called phoconic crystals. They used to manipulate
visual light in ultra fast optical computers in the future.
(15:36):
So you know what we're talking about with the tequila diavonds,
like being able to use those little little like the
diamond films, the diamond films and computing like they're talking about.
Like basically they went out into the jungles and they
were like, whoa nature as always is you know, a
lot of years ahead of this on this one, and
they already have like some really cool stuff that we
could use and now really cool stuff we could utilize
in design. We couldn't actually harvest um you know or
(16:00):
descent weevils and you know, and and use their scales
because these are made out of kaitan like your fingernail,
all right, so they wouldn't hold up enough for long
term use. You'd have to just you go through weavil
after we evil just checking your email, I guess in
the future, right, that's the But the idea is to
is to is to copy it, you know, bio mimicry,
(16:21):
yeah and all together now yeah, yeah, and it's It's
an interesting when you look at these pictures, the the
weevil looks green, but it's sparkling green color is actually
produced by the crystal structures of its scales, not not
any kind of pigment or anything. Each Each scale measures
like two hundred microns and uh long and about a
hundred microns wide end up. Put that in a little perspective,
(16:42):
like a human here is about a hundred microns thick.
So these are these are tiny little things. It's not
like the thing. It doesn't look like it's studded with
green diamonds and green light, which has a wavelength of
about five hundred to five fifty nanometers. It can't penetrate
the scales crystal structure, so it acts like a mirror
and reflects the green lie it didn't makes it appear
to you know, anybody looking at it uh to be
(17:04):
just iridescently green. I would like to see one of these.
I think I might have to go and look it
up for me. Are finished with podcasts? Yeah, the photos
are amazing, but I mean it's one of those things
i'd like to see. Yeah, physically and like so you
can sort of like move your head around it and
sort of get a you know, three sixty on it
and watch the light moving, because it just sounds like
it would look magical. We should get one for the office. Yeah, yeah,
they probably spring for that infestation of them. Um, throw
(17:27):
one in the laptops. Maybe they'd run faster. So so
that's just another that's another example of diamonds in the
universe or diamond like structures in the universe, and and
one that you're probably not going to pay you know,
out the nose for if you were, you know, if
you were to try with the Amazon jungle, I'm betting
one of these bugs would be would be cheaper than
you're more you know, high market diamonds. Yeah, so it
(17:50):
seems like diamonds aren't only a girl's best friend. They
may be assignedist best friend, or at least they may
provide some impetus for some interesting research. And that's whether
you're drilling for oil or cutting into a mouse's brain. So,
if you've thoughts on diamonds and want to share with us,
we'd love to hear from you. Send us an email
Science Stuff at how stuff first dot com or check
out the homepage. We have articles on diamonds. In fact,
there's a good one about diamonds. Yeah. And we also
(18:13):
have when I think our diamond article solos in a
blood diamonds quote a bit and conflict diamonds and and
I don't even I can't even begin to tell you
what all they have on that TLC SEC Check out
TLC Weddings if you're interested in a different perspective like
wedding you know angle. But we also have lots of
science e stuff and and a lot of stuff on
(18:33):
I've mentioned you've mentioned in passing about it that diamonds
us in in drilling for oil, but we have a
several really good articles dealing with that. Yes, you can
find us on Facebook too if you want to send
us crazy pictures of diamonds. The diamonds I don't even know.
We've gotten some good pictures lately. I want to encourage
this picture sending. Yes, so you can find us at
stuff from the Science Lab, or you can always send
(18:55):
us a tweet. Lab Stuff is our handle on Twitter.
And have you got a good science joke or a
really bad science joke? Hit us, hit with us, you
know in any of those addresses. Uh, let us know
who you are and where you're from. And we'll try
and throw it at the stop of the podcast. All right,
that's all we got. Shine on Crazy Diamond For more
(19:20):
on this and thousands of other topics. Is that how
stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check
out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com
home page.
Welcome to stuff from the science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey, Alison, did you hear about the
statistician who's stuck his head in a stove and his
feet in a bucket of ice? Oh? What happened? On average?
(00:21):
He felt just fine? Oh, so, welcome to this stuff
in the science lad This is Alice Madam like the
science that at how staff works dot com. And this
is Robert Lamb, science writer at how stuff works dot com.
And we bring to you that joke compliments of Terry
in Grass Valley, California. That's my wife's aunt. Actually he's
listening jokes from your wife's sam. What I solicited everybody,
(00:44):
and she's a listener to the podcast. Thanks and Terry.
Let's let's let's get right to the topic here. We're
talking about diamond and whether they're a scientist's best friend, right,
and now you already have a diamond, right because of
course married, and I well, let's let's just stop that
assumption right there. You know, of course you know that
you don't have to get a diamond on you're married,
(01:05):
And yes, I am in fact married, but I mean,
you know there are other ways. But I do see
a diamond on your hand right now, so I know
you have a diamond. Yeah, well it could be a
it could be really good fake, right, it could be
that's yes, yes, certainly. Uh. And we're about to get
and get into that like basic let's let's go and
hit exactly what. We're gonna hit some really cool diamonds
in this particular podcast. We're not going to just dimond. Yeah,
(01:27):
some real spacey diamonds and diamonds that like live in
the jungle. It's gonna be great. But to really understand
why these are awesome, we do have to hit the
basics dimond formation. So a diamond, as awesome as it
may look in the store or on a finger or whatever,
is just carbon in its most concentrated form. All Right.
(01:48):
You do remember how Superman could like squeeze like a
lump of coal and make it into a diamond. That's
that's that's it, that's basically that's the basics of it,
all right. Carbon is one of the most common homes
in the world. You guys know this. Yep. It's in
the air all around us um, and it's in our bodies,
like we're eight carbon um, you know, So it's everywhere
(02:11):
but we just superman, or more more commonly, the Earth
has not squeezed us into a shiny, beautiful crystal. Diamonds
form about a hundred miles below the Earth's surface in
the molten rock of the Earth's mantle. Right, then this
is where you find the right amounts of pressure and
heat to transform the carbon. For in order for a
(02:31):
diamond to be created, carbon has to be placed under
at least four hundred and thirty five thousand, one d
thirteen pounds per square inch of pressure at a temperature
of at least seven hundred and fifty two degrees Fahrenheits.
So those are that's the recipe if you're planning to
cook one up at home, right, And so if conditions
drop below either of these two points, graphite, diamond, graphite,
(02:51):
nobody wants a graphite ring. Not so much. Thoset diamonds
always see today were four millions, if not billions of
years ago. Yeah, they're carried up to this surface through
powerful magma eruptions. And they can also form when meteorites
crash into things. Because it's interesting. Yeah, and you have
all that metal and heat and it's like metal heat,
(03:12):
you know, pressure, and you get that. You can also
get to get this in a laboratory, and that's because
everybody's heard of cubics orconium and this is just a
laboratory gym and these have been in the markets it's
like ninety six and laboratories just basically simulate the heat
and pressure from the Earth's mantle to create natural diamonds. So,
you know what, I heard that there's a trend in weddings,
(03:33):
you know, because we do the TLC weddings a lot
of articles for that, and um, I was I heard
that there is if you can't afford a ring, then
maybe you get a cubics orconium like placeholder kind of
thing when you propose, and then when you can afford it,
you work up to the diamond. Well that's a very
honest way of doing it. So I mean, I'm of
the mind that I think, you know, cubics looks pretty good. Now,
(03:56):
did you get your wife a diamond ring? They were
they were diamond are already in the family. Okay, an
air loom. Yeah, that's cool. I just wondered. So, yeah,
that's how we did it. And now this is pretty interesting.
Um over at the Ignoble Prizes, they in the past
few years, they've they've given honors to scientists from the
(04:19):
University of Mexico, the National Autonomous University of Mexico interesting
for creating diamonds out of eight proof tequila. Well it's
not really diamonds with diamond films, right right, Yeah, But
so what they did here was there they're evaporating the
tequila and they're heating the vapor above fourtune hundred degrees
fair kneight before to positive it on silicon or steinless
(04:42):
steel trays. And so the films that they wind up
with were between a hundred to four hundred nanometers in
diameter and free of impurities. They're hard, they're heat resistant,
and this is the key thing. They have a number
of commercial applications UM such as cutting tools, optical electronic devices. UM.
I got in researching this that ran across like some
(05:03):
sort of weird experiment where like cut cutting into a
mouse now's brain with a like a special like surgical
kind of tool that's made from diamond. You can't see me,
but I'm cocking my head look proberly like what it
was really weird. I was like, I ended up not
using it, but yeah, I'm bringing it up. But but
still another big thing. Oil rigs used diamonds in the
in the drill bits as well. So uh and and
(05:25):
also it has all since it is a real good
thermal conductor, it's going to be really useful in semiconductors
and computers of the future and all. So the interesting
thing about this University of Mexico research that I thought was, well,
how would they come up with the idea of using
tequila and diamonds. How do those two things really good together?
And so they noticed that tequila eighty proof tequila had
(05:47):
the ideal proportion of ethanol to water to create these
diamond films. Or they were drinking a little tequila and
they're like, I, pat, you can make a diamond out.
Is that what you guys doing the lab? Drink tequila
after your work is done? Tell us we want to know.
So those are the basics of how diamonds are made.
How they can be made here on Earth, but they
can also be made elsewhere, um in the in the
(06:10):
galaxy with the giant cosmic diamonds. Yeah, now here on Earth.
Do you know what the largest diamond is, like the
largest like cut kind of diamond that has like a
name and is said the Hope Diamond. No, apparently it
is the Golden Jubilee and that is a five forty
six carrot deal. It looks kind of like kind of
fits in the palm of your hand and it is
currently owned by the King of Thailand and it was
(06:32):
presented him for his fiftieth anniversary of his coronation in
But that's nothing, I mean, that's I mean, it's it's great.
If you do you have to rival Golden Bee. Oh,
not rival, but surpass and ways the camera measured, yes,
to completely trample. It's like, that's just a trinket compared
to this um and this is BPM. So that's a
(06:56):
really great name for a diamond. Well, it's a super
I mean, it's a white dwarf, is what it is.
And it's also known as Lucy as in Lucy and
the Sky with diamonds. That's nice. Yeah, And it's a
fifty lot years away and about four thousand kilometers across.
And here's here's how much it weighs. It weighs five million,
trillion trillion pounds. And those both of those trillions were
(07:17):
supposed to be there. That was not a flub I
did wonder if you made an era, and it would
if it were measured in carrots. Well, well, real quick,
the whole white thing is because it's like super dense.
So that's why that's point weigh so much, even though
it's relatively small for that way. But then if you
were to put that in in carrots, this would be
a ten billion, trillion trillion carrot diamonds. Again with a
(07:38):
trillion trillions talking some mad carrots. I love I love
it when people throw in the extra like I think
Corny McCarthy's always talking like like looking up in like
a million million stars, or like anytime you can throw
like an extra million in there, it sounds awesome. Yeah,
and it's actually it's actually a number. So this is
a pull sighting, pulsating white dwarf. It's a burnout are
(08:00):
of the c c Z variety if that means anything
to you, and most people won't, but that's its technical classification.
And it's primarily carbon and oxygen with a thin layer
of hydrogen and helium. And it's massive enough to have
undergone partial crystallization. In fact, we're talking upwards of nine
of it has crystallized. According to some astronomical studies. So
(08:23):
the questionnaires, how can we tell that it's a diamond?
You know? How did how how did they know? Well, yeah,
they didn't, like just look in the catalog or see
it on somebody's finger. It's the white dwarf undergoes pulsations,
all right, and scientists are able to study these pulse
pulsations in a similar way that we study size seismographic
measurements of terrestrial earthquakes, and that gives us an idea
(08:45):
of what's happening in the interior. Right, So they think
the carbon interior of this particular white dwarf has solidified
to form the galaxy's largest diamond. Right, that's what That's
what the theories are saying. Nobody's certainly nobody's traveled there,
and we don't you know, we don't know for sure.
But well wait until after they hear this podcast. We
might have some jewel thieves like high talent it. Yeah,
they're there, They've got a ways to go and have
(09:07):
to really hot rod something. But um, but yeah, this
is like it's just kind of staggers that you can't
help but think of like a little person like riding
it through the cosmos. You know, I mean, that's enormous,
five million, trillion trillion pounds of diamond um. You know,
it hasn't been cut yet or you know, it certainly
hasn't been been set in anything, but that's enormous and
(09:29):
and they're saying it's probably like one of the biggest
in the at least the observable universe. Then there have
been other ideas that like Jupiter might have like a
giant diamond in its core um, and that's kind of
you know, some of the gas giants in our solar system,
and that's kind of up in the air um um.
It's not as exciting as that other diamonds. It's not
as exciting, and nobody, nobody really knows for certain about
(09:50):
it yet. Well, that's because most of the chemical research
involving diamonds in our solar system so far has really
dealt with micro diamonds, right. Um, the micro diamonds found
in asteroids and you know them meteors and meteorites so
vs are created in the high heat and pressure of
the collisions which create these little tiny micro diamonds or
rocky fragments. Yeah, but luckily there are there is something
(10:13):
within her there might be something within our solar system
that is just as fantastic as a enormous um you know,
star diamond. And that is the idea of get this right.
I imagine this in your head if you can. It
sounds like like an Asia album cover or something. An
ocean of liquid diamond filled with with solid diamond icebergs alright,
(10:35):
floating under like the Neptone Neptonian sky. Yeah, looking that crazy,
And yet there's a there's some interesting studies that say
this might actually be what the case is, right, and
it's not just so Neptune too, it's don't They also
postulate that it might be on r innust Yes, possibly
on ur inas as well. Uh. Two thousand ten study
out of Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, published in
(10:57):
Nature Physics, and basically it comes to into this, um,
we've melted diamonds in the lab. It sounds kind of crazy,
But why would you melt a diamond? Well, it's science
for proof you can do it. But buts and brides
who would be highly upset at that prospect. Yeah, if
you bring a diamond melter to a wedding, that's just
so poor taste. But all right. So, but a diamond
(11:19):
is it is incredibly hard material and it's very difficult
to melt. And but it's also difficult to melt in
that if you melt a diamond, it's hard to keep
it a diamond, you know, like you'll end up with
just with graphite or something, you know, So they have
to go through a certain rigmarole just to just to
make sure that it melts in the right way. Right,
(11:40):
So what happens is researchers blasted um a diamonds like
a small diamond, you know, nothing, nothing with the name
for a curse. So researchers blasted the small diamond lasers
at ultra high pressures like those found on gas giants,
like like Neptune in Eurus right right, and yeah, this
the signist lukeuid fight at the Dinet liquified the diamond
(12:01):
at pressures forty million times greater than what you'd find
standing sea level on Earth. Woll, that's some serious pressure.
And they were slowly reduced. Then they slowly reduced the
temperature and pressure. And when the pressure dropped to about
eleven million times the atmospheric pressure at sea level here
on Earth, and the temperature dropped to about fifty degrees.
(12:22):
Guess what happened. Chunks of diamond yea began to appear
in a little islands of diamond liquid diamond. I mean,
it's just really hard for me to even imagine like
this in my head. You know. The best image I
have right now, I'm trying to sum it up some fabulous,
you know, kind of pirate treasure, you know, gold medallion's,
you know, treasure chests open. But I keep on thinking
(12:43):
of the goonies. Did you ever see that when they
get to the end, you know, and there's like the
chips with all like the treasure all around and all
the fabulous jewels and stuff. That's the best I can
come up with here As far as the visual of
a diamond ocean, Yeah, it's just completely I mean other worldly,
you know. Um So now I've talked about the goodies,
(13:06):
let's get back to diamond. But the other thing is
that the chunks of diamondn't sink. They floated in this
diamond ocean. Uh and uh. And they think that this
could actually help explain someone like the cool the weird
stuff going on with the magnetic field there. Um, the
magnetic and geographic polls on Uranus and Neptune don't really
match up um. In fact, they can be up to
(13:29):
like sixty degrees off um off the of the north
south axis. So to put that in perspective, um, if
Earth's magnetic field with that far off, it would place
the magnetic north pole in Texas instead of off a
Canadian island. And what would researchers think might be possible
is that a swirling ocean of liquid diamond could be
responsible for the discrepancy. Yeah. Well see if you think
(13:50):
about it, up to ten percent of Uranus and Neptune
is estimated to be made from carbon, So a huge
ocean of liquid diamond in the right place could deflect
or um or askew the magnetic field out of alignment
with the rotation on the planet. Discovering News have a
story about that, Yeah they did. And it's also important
to keep in mind we're talking about gas planets here
and and but there is a lot of liquid in
(14:12):
them as well. It's not like just gas. And and
then there's you know, the possibility of like something solid
at the center, not a diamond necessarily, but you know something,
you know, something solid. So yeah, I was just really
blown away by that. Finding about that it's pretty cool. Yeah,
but now it's time to bring it back down to
earth for our last little diamond story in this diamonds
(14:33):
morgue board we're going through here, and uh, and this
creature is pretty amazing. It's an inch long iridescent we evil,
a little not not a weasel, but a weavil, like
an insect named if you want to take a shot
at this one, sure well, lamp or Siphus augustus. Yeah,
and it's native to Brazil and you can you can,
you can look at pictures of it online and it
(14:54):
does look amazing. It's like sparkly and green, like it's
just it seems to sort of shine with its own energy. Um.
But otherwise it's kind of like yeah, it's like yeah,
like wevill bling going on in the Amazon rainforest. So
a bunch of University of Utah chemists were pretty fascinated
with this particular beetle and they found out that the
(15:15):
beetle glows ere it doesn't green because it has a
crystal structure and its scales that's like the crystal structure
of diamonds, right. Um. And the cool thing is they
think that this is an ideal structure, like an ideal
architecture for what's called phoconic crystals. They used to manipulate
visual light in ultra fast optical computers in the future.
(15:36):
So you know what we're talking about with the tequila diavonds,
like being able to use those little little like the
diamond films, the diamond films and computing like they're talking about.
Like basically they went out into the jungles and they
were like, whoa nature as always is you know, a
lot of years ahead of this on this one, and
they already have like some really cool stuff that we
could use and now really cool stuff we could utilize
in design. We couldn't actually harvest um you know or
(16:00):
descent weevils and you know, and and use their scales
because these are made out of kaitan like your fingernail,
all right, so they wouldn't hold up enough for long
term use. You'd have to just you go through weavil
after we evil just checking your email, I guess in
the future, right, that's the But the idea is to
is to is to copy it, you know, bio mimicry,
(16:21):
yeah and all together now yeah, yeah, and it's It's
an interesting when you look at these pictures, the the
weevil looks green, but it's sparkling green color is actually
produced by the crystal structures of its scales, not not
any kind of pigment or anything. Each Each scale measures
like two hundred microns and uh long and about a
hundred microns wide end up. Put that in a little perspective,
(16:42):
like a human here is about a hundred microns thick.
So these are these are tiny little things. It's not
like the thing. It doesn't look like it's studded with
green diamonds and green light, which has a wavelength of
about five hundred to five fifty nanometers. It can't penetrate
the scales crystal structure, so it acts like a mirror
and reflects the green lie it didn't makes it appear
to you know, anybody looking at it uh to be
(17:04):
just iridescently green. I would like to see one of these.
I think I might have to go and look it
up for me. Are finished with podcasts? Yeah, the photos
are amazing, but I mean it's one of those things
i'd like to see. Yeah, physically and like so you
can sort of like move your head around it and
sort of get a you know, three sixty on it
and watch the light moving, because it just sounds like
it would look magical. We should get one for the office. Yeah, yeah,
they probably spring for that infestation of them. Um, throw
(17:27):
one in the laptops. Maybe they'd run faster. So so
that's just another that's another example of diamonds in the
universe or diamond like structures in the universe, and and
one that you're probably not going to pay you know,
out the nose for if you were, you know, if
you were to try with the Amazon jungle, I'm betting
one of these bugs would be would be cheaper than
you're more you know, high market diamonds. Yeah, so it
(17:50):
seems like diamonds aren't only a girl's best friend. They
may be assignedist best friend, or at least they may
provide some impetus for some interesting research. And that's whether
you're drilling for oil or cutting into a mouse's brain. So,
if you've thoughts on diamonds and want to share with us,
we'd love to hear from you. Send us an email
Science Stuff at how stuff first dot com or check
out the homepage. We have articles on diamonds. In fact,
there's a good one about diamonds. Yeah. And we also
(18:13):
have when I think our diamond article solos in a
blood diamonds quote a bit and conflict diamonds and and
I don't even I can't even begin to tell you
what all they have on that TLC SEC Check out
TLC Weddings if you're interested in a different perspective like
wedding you know angle. But we also have lots of
science e stuff and and a lot of stuff on
(18:33):
I've mentioned you've mentioned in passing about it that diamonds
us in in drilling for oil, but we have a
several really good articles dealing with that. Yes, you can
find us on Facebook too if you want to send
us crazy pictures of diamonds. The diamonds I don't even know.
We've gotten some good pictures lately. I want to encourage
this picture sending. Yes, so you can find us at
stuff from the Science Lab, or you can always send
(18:55):
us a tweet. Lab Stuff is our handle on Twitter.
And have you got a good science joke or a
really bad science joke? Hit us, hit with us, you
know in any of those addresses. Uh, let us know
who you are and where you're from. And we'll try
and throw it at the stop of the podcast. All right,
that's all we got. Shine on Crazy Diamond For more
(19:20):
on this and thousands of other topics. Is that how
stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check
out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com
home page.
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