Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday, so we
are heading into the vault for an older stuff to
Blow your Mind. This one originally aired January twenty third,
twenty twenty four, and it's part three of our series
on the diamond Let's go.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
is Robert.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
part three in our series on Diamonds. Now, if you
haven't heard parts one and two, you might want to
regress through time listen to those first. But there's a
no strict continuity to preserve in this series, so if
you'd rather just listen to this one first, that's fine too.
Brief recap of the previous episode it's in part one.
(01:02):
We talked mainly about the idea that first got me
interested in covering diamonds, which is the question of whether diamonds,
especially in the form of crushed up diamond powder, are poisonous.
This has long been a belief present in multiple cultures
that shattered diamonds or diamond powder are lethal if swallowed,
(01:24):
and we talked about some weird and fascinating stories of
attempted diamond poisonings from history. We looked at the question
of whether diamonds are actually poisonous or not. The answer
we landed on was probably not, and at least one
major author from modern times on the subject downplayed this
as a myth with no evidence behind it. But we've
(01:45):
also never found really strong evidence that diamond powder is safe,
so personally, I'm still saying probably better not.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
To ingest it.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
In part two of the series, we talked about how
diamonds form and how they're brought to the surface. We
talked about some of the physics properties of diamonds, such
as the fact that they are the hardest naturally occurring
material on Earth, and how the property of hardness differs
from other properties like toughness, leading to the strange fact
that you generally can't scratch or cut a diamond with
(02:16):
anything other than another diamond, yet you can shatter a
diamond with a regular steel hammer. We also talked about
some wonderful legends of diamonds, including the legendary Valley of
jewels associated with the stories of figures like Sinbad and
Alexander the Great, as well as some of the significance
of diamonds in Hindu iconography. And today we're back to
(02:40):
talk about diamonds once again.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
All right, Well, what's our first stop on the diamond
express here, Joe.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Well, I got interested in a specific question about diamonds
from the starting point of a scene, a movie scene
you talked about in part two, I think, which is
a scene in Superman three where Christopher as Superman picks
up a piece of coal. I think he's actually like
standing at a coal mine. He picks up a piece
(03:06):
of coal and then crushes it into a diamond in
his fist.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Completely cut, just already beautiful, ready to go.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
Yeah, and huge, by the way.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
But this connects to something that, strangely is a one
of these well known facts that may well not be
a fact, and that well known nonfactual fact is that
diamonds are generally formed in the ground out of coal.
I have encountered a number of sources arguing that this is,
(03:36):
for the most part not the case, that diamonds are
generally not formed from coal, though this may be less
of a settled question than it first appears.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
We might examine that question in more depth if we
happen to come back in another episode and talk about
diamonds some more. But this got me thinking about comparisons
between diamonds and coal. There are reasons that it would
make sense to assume diamonds are just a sort of
continuation of the coal forming process. So diamonds are made
(04:06):
of pure carbon, and coal is made of carbon. Coal
forms deep underground, diamonds form deep underground. It just seems
natural to think that you start with ancient plant matter
or organic matter of some kind, probably decaying plant matter,
and some kind of ancient swamp. It gets buried, It
first turns into peat, and then turns into coal, and
(04:27):
then given enough time and pressure, it turns into a diamond. Now,
for the most part, it seems like this probably isn't
the case. Most diamonds seem to be older than most
coal and formed deeper down in the Earth's mantle then
you would normally find deposits of coal. But there are
these obvious physical similarities that they are both chunks of
(04:49):
carbon that come out of the earth. But a difference
to point out is that while diamonds are pretty close
to pure elemental carbon, well over ninety nine percent carbon
by mass, coal has a lot of different stuff in it.
The main constituent of coal is usually carbon, but its
purity is more variable in the range of like forty
to ninety percent carbon, with other major elements like hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen,
(05:15):
and sulfur making up the rest of the mass. But anyways,
since you know the main thing people do with coal
is burn it, it raised the question can you burn
a diamond?
Speaker 1 (05:28):
I mean, as we've discussed, it would seem to just
run counter to, if nothing else, the idea of the diamond.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
Right, it's indestructible. Right.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
The Greek and Latin word used for the diamond is adamas,
meaning unbreakable, indestructible. Well, I found this question addressed directly
in several sources. One that I want to cite is
an excellent blog post from twenty fourteen by a West
Texas A and M professor of physics named Christopher S.
Baird and so to start with a direct answer to
(05:58):
the question and then explained from there. Yes, diamonds are
indeed a carbon fuel source, and they can in fact
be burned, but they don't burn as easily as coal.
So let's expand on that a bit. Fire or combustion,
as we've talked about on the show before, is a
(06:18):
rapid reaction in which the molecules of a fuel source
in the presence of heat, rapidly combined with oxygen, producing
additional heat and light in the process. So in order
to have fire, it's commonly said that you need three ingredients.
We know the equation now right, it's fuel, oxygen, and heat,
(06:39):
and you can prevent or extinguish a fire by robbing
it of any of these necessary ingredients. Now that fuel
can be a number of different things. We know, for example,
that pure hydrogen gas is flammable. It burns. But Baird
mentions in his blog posts that the most common form
of combustion that we encounter in the world world is
(07:01):
carbon combustion. So most of the fuel sources we burn
in day to day life are carbon based fuel sources.
That means carbon is the fuel in the fire equation.
So you get a carbon based substance, you get it
hot enough in the presence of oxygen, and the carbon
atoms will start to break their bonds with one another,
(07:23):
and with atoms of other elements in the material to
instead form bonds with oxygen from the air, and this
combination of carbon and oxygen is the reason that the
main byproducts of burning carbon based fuels are carbon oxygen
molecules like carbon dioxide CO two and carbon monoxide coo.
(07:44):
So one different way to think of building a fire, say,
is making carbon dioxide. That is what the biggest part
of what this reaction is doing.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
Now.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
In fuel sources that have other substances in addition to carbon,
there are additional byproducts. For example, fossil fuels that also
have hydrogen content will also produce the byproduct of water
vapor as the hydrogen reacts with oxygen to form H
two oz. But to come back specifically to carbon burning,
to carbon combustion, the way it works is that again
(08:19):
you have to get a carbon fuel source up to
a certain temperature for the reaction with oxygen to start.
That's the ignition temperature. But fortunately you don't have to
keep applying external heat because combustion is what's known as
an exothermic process. The chemical reaction releases its own heat,
generally more heat than you put in to begin with,
(08:40):
and this heat that's released causes more carbon bonds to
break and allows more carbon to combine with oxygen, and
so on and so on until one of the ingredients
in the fire equation is depleted or removed. But this
self sustaining exothermic property is the main reason carbon combustion
is so useful to humans. It's a net energy source
(09:02):
for us. You invest a little bit of energy up front,
and then the fuel and the atmosphere do the rest,
letting you take out more energy than you put in.
But this brings us back to this question. Since a
diamond is made of almost pure carbon, wouldn't it seem
to be an almost perfect fuel source. And at the
same time, it still seems counterintuitive to think that a
(09:25):
gemstone could burn up in a fire. I think because
we think of a diamond as a type of rock,
and in our regular experience, rocks do not burn.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's totally the case, like
the idea of the diamond as indestructible. But also when
you you know, at least dip your toes in some
of the science about like high heat, high pressure formation,
it doesn't seem like the kind of thing you'd be
able to throw into a furnace, even if we're having
to imagine some sort of like sort of sci fi
furnace to drive your diamond powered train across the surface
(09:56):
of a distant planet.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Right, But despite these intuitions, diamonds are carbon based products,
and they do burn. And this, in fact brings us
back to a historical figure that we mentioned in the
previous episode, the eighteenth century French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who
we talked previously about how he is credited with proving
that diamonds are made of nearly pure carbon. Apparently a
(10:21):
major piece of evidence that Lavoisier produced in order to
support that conclusion was an experiment showing that diamond could
be burned and that the byproduct of its combustion was
almost entirely carbon dioxide. Now, on the fact that diamonds
can burn, often, when I learned something like this, I
(10:42):
like to see if I can see it with my
own eyes. Not that I don't believe it in this case,
it seems like a well established fact, but just kind
of to have increased confidence in knowing what it looks
like and so forth. So I went looking for some
trustworthy video of a diamond burning, and I did, indeed,
find several. A good one was a video put out
by the Royal Institution for their twenty twelve Christmas Lectures,
(11:05):
in which they demonstrate the burning of graphite, which is
also made of carbon, but far less compressed than a diamond,
and also the burning of a diamond and rob I've
attached some pictures for you to look at here in
the outline, though of course we'll describe them for you
at home.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
This year.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Is a diamond burning shortly after it has been ignited
in a glass chamber with a supply of flowing oxygen.
And one thing I would note about it in the
early parts of the burning process is that I can't
see what looks like a traditional visible flame, you know,
sort of the upward rising flame like you would see
(11:43):
coming off of a campfire. Instead, I see what looks
like the diamond glowing like a coal glowing on a
charcoal grill after the flames die down. Except with those
coals they usually glow a kind of dull orange. Here
this is glowing ten times than any piece of coal
I've ever seen, and with a whiter shade of light
(12:04):
than I'm used to seeing in charcoal, more of a
yellow white glow than an orange.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Yeah. Like, if anything, this reminds me of special effects
I've seen in movies and video games, like when I
don't know, Marvel's captain Marvel is about to go supernova
and her flesh starts glowing with this kind of like
flameless intensity, that sort of thing. But of course, this
is not a Marvel movie, this is not a video game.
This is real life.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, and so there's this glowing imminence coming off of it. However,
I did notice that later in the experiment they show
there is what looks like a more traditional flame, mostly
blue in color, coming off of the diamond, And I'm
not sure why that was visible only toward the end
of the burning experiment. Maybe it was just an issue
(12:50):
of like lighting or camera angle, or maybe it had
to do with changing conditions in the chamber as the
diamond burns. Maybe I don't know, something about temperature, oxygen
flow or something like that. But experiments like this confirm
that you absolutely can burn diamonds, So that raises the
question should we capitalize on this fuel source. Rob, you
(13:13):
suggested the idea of like diamond punk technology earlier, you know,
like run a diamond burning steam powered locomotive or diamond
fired electric power plants for a few reasons, a couple
of which may be obvious, one little less obvious. I
think that would not work out. Obvious point number one,
diamonds are expensive and rare compared to other carbon fuel sources,
(13:36):
of course, would not make economic sense to burn them
as fuel. Point number two, which I think is less obvious.
Though diamonds do burn, they don't burn as easily as
fuels like coal and wood. According to Baird, the reason
for this is the strength of the bonds between the
carbon atoms found in the diamond cubic. So you remember
(13:58):
last time we talked about the the crystal structure of
the diamond in which each so it's like a three
dimensional structure that is linked in all directions, where each
carbon atom is attached to four other carbon atoms with
strong covalent bonds, meaning each of the carbon atoms is
sharing pairs of electrons with its neighbor. And these are
(14:20):
extremely strong bonds and the dense structure of atoms that
is created within the diamond. These are the reasons why
the diamond is so physically hard and nearly impossible to cut.
These strong bonds and tight structure mean that it takes
a lot of energy to break carbon atoms free from
the diamond crystal. Now, in the case of physical pressure, friction,
(14:43):
and impact, this explains the diamond's resilience, and in the
case of combustion, it means that a diamond has a
much higher ignition temperature than other carbon based fuels. And
I've seen different numbers for the temperature at which diamond burns.
I guess, as with other fuels, this would depend on
environmental conditions as well, like the concentration of oxygen and
(15:06):
the surrounding air and things like that. But the number
that Baird gives is that a diamond burns in regular
air at about nine hundred degrees celsius, which is about
sixteen fifty fahrenheit. And for a point of comparison, Baird
says that the ignition temperature of normal wood in atmosphere
is only about three hundred degrees celsius. So there is
(15:29):
a major difference in the amount of heat you need
to put in at the beginning to get a diamond
fire started, though the heat necessary would be reduced in
an oxygen rich environment. And then the other thing is
a diamond fire needs a rich environment of oxygen to
continue burning, so you got to give it plenty of
(15:51):
oxygen in order to keep powering that reaction of the
oxygen in the air with the carbon. However, though it
is much harder to burn in coal or wood, Bird
does say you can burn or scorch a diamond with
a regular flame, especially if it's really hot and has
plenty of oxygen. He mentions that jewelers sometimes have to
(16:12):
be careful if they're using a blowtorch to mold metal
around a diamond, since the diamond could technically burn. Though
it seems like from other things I was reading, without
supplemental oxygen, a diamond typically won't burst into flames and
disappear into smoke. It will instead, like show signs of
(16:32):
damage directly on the surface, which could have increased opacity,
making the diamond look sort of cloudy on the burned surface. Rabi,
I found an image of this that I attached for
you to look at. Here there are parts that are
of this. This is a faceted cut diamond, and it
has parts that appear to be burn marks where it
looks kind of cloudy and opaque, whereas the rest of
(16:54):
it is very sparkly and clear.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Okay, now there's another thing that Baird does not mention,
but I was also wondering about with the difference in
the burning in how easy it is to burn something
like coal versus something like diamonds, which would be the
porosity of the material, because if you have a less dense,
more porous material, it seems that it is easier for
(17:20):
oxygen to get in and surround the carbon atoms and
more easily react with them. Whereas a diamond is very dense,
very tight structure, you're essentially going to have all of
the reaction with oxygen happening right at the surface layer.
Another question this raises I assume this would be the case,
is that a diamond powder would burn much more easily
(17:43):
than a solid diamond. This is true though of most
flammable things. You know, most of anything that you could
set on fire in a solid form will combust much
more rapidly and easily in a powdered form. And as
a final point thinking about burning diamonds, though, the interesting
thing is that so they are a carbon based fuel source,
and this does mean that even if diamonds were cheap
(18:06):
burning them as fuel, if we wanted to create that
diamond punk world with the diamond fired steamships and the locomotives.
This would be yet another energy source that would result
in adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, which of course
is not exactly something we need to be adding to
the menu of energy options in the world today. Though,
I was trying to see if I could come up
(18:27):
with an estimate on this, and I did not get anywhere.
I suspect even if we burned all the free diamonds
in the world, it would probably release very little carbon
compared to what's already being emitted from daily fossil fuel use.
But like I said, I could not come up with
solid numbers on that. If any excellent nerds in the
audience want to draw up an estimate, we invite your efforts.
(18:50):
What would be the carbon footprint of a brief attempt
by Planet Earth to go diamond punk?
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah, I'd be interested to hear that. Also, one of
their yestmates about how long it take to burn up
all the diamonds, like imagine the scenario. I was just
trying to come with wine with even a very far
vetter scenario, and which is what makes sense. Let's imagine
Outer Limits. Ask super advanced alien society just decides they
(19:17):
want to teach humanity a lesson, so they gift us
this device. And this device is a furnace attached to
a doomsday weapon, and it's pretty simple. All we have
to do is keep the fire in this furnace burning,
and as long as the fire is burning, the doomsday
device will not go off. But the furnace will only
(19:37):
burn diamonds. You can only put diamonds in it. So
that leaves the people of Earth to figure out how
they are going to collect set diamonds, at what rate
they are going to put them in the furnace, and indeed,
how long will they be able to keep this up
before there are no more diamonds to burn and the
device goes off.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
This feels like a science fiction variation on the plot
of Speed.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Oh yeah, yeah, it is kind of a yeah yeah,
you can imagine a Dennis Hopper. Dennis Hopper is the
alien in this imaginary Outer Limits episode.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
I really like this idea. Can you imagine though, if
aliens actually did come to Earth, we went to meet
their ambassador and it's Dennis Hopper. That just would not
inspire confidence.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Well, it depends on which what part of Dennis Hopper's
filmography they're drawing from. Like the younger Dennis Hopper, you know,
there are a lot of roles there where he was
more of the relatable leading man. It's only you know,
later in life where he tended to play on the
whole more deplorable characters.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
By the way, I'm not insulting Dennis Hoppers. I just
been like I was thinking, we are greeted by the
you know, the photo journalist and Apocalypse now or something.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, he had a knack for playing often unhinged characters
for sure. All right, well, let's return once more to
the ancient world. Particularly, let's get let's get into some
(21:06):
concepts concerning diamonds in ancient Greece and ancient Rome.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Oh boy, I think we got some good stuff on
this one today. Now briefly to refresh about some stuff
we talked about in the last episode we did, I
think bring up Plenty of the Elders references to diamonds
in his work. Remember, Plenty of the Elder is a
first century ce Roman author who compiled a very important,
(21:32):
influential sort of encyclopedia of what was known to you know,
to his people at the time, known as the Natural History,
and Plenty I think is the very last volume of
Plenty's Natural History that was devoted to minerals and gemstones.
And Plenty used in his work a term that was
(21:54):
derived from the Greek called adamas, which earlier sources used
to refer to a variety of materials that were considered
very hard or maybe indestructible, but from description were clearly
not diamonds. Plenty confusingly uses this term to refer to
a list of different materials, some of which, it does seem,
(22:18):
are diamonds, but maybe others are not.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
So.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
For example, a footnote in the one of the translations
of Plenty we often turn to, which is available online,
the boas Stock and Riley translation, that is a footnote
saying that the author of this footnote thought that Plenty
was probably not familiar with actual diamonds. However, this does
not seem to be the conclusion of Jack Ogden in
(22:43):
his book Diamonds the King of Gems, which we have
referred to a few times on this series already. Ogden
does seem to think that in some of these instances
Plenty may be talking about diamonds.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah, yeah, so let's get into some of this. So,
drawing again from Ogden. Also, Ogden, along with historian Brian
Fagan in a source I referenced in the last episode,
also get into this a little bit. But the introduction
of diamond tipped engraving stones during the early Roman period
(23:16):
seems to have transformed the world of lapidary, allowing even
the hardest gemstones to be drilled and engrave. So again
we have to remember that there's this interesting dual nature
to the diamond of the ancient world, where it's used,
seemingly at times initially as just a raw material to
(23:37):
work gemstones that were already popular colored gems, and then
there's this transition into realizing that diamonds on their own
are beautiful and are are also suitable to be considered gemstones.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Right, so in many cases it's thought of as like
a useful industrial material before it's thought of as a
just beautiful decorative gem on its own.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
And this is important because to understand where we're going
to go next, you need to realize that, yes, it
does make sense to sometimes want to destroy a diamond
in these even in the ancient world, because again not
all diamonds are going to be suitable for working into
some sort of valuable stone, but also there are going
(24:20):
to be uses for diamond fragments and diamond powders. If
you are working stones other gymstones and preparing them to
use in various bits of jewelry.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
And so forth right, it's kind of an unbeatable abrasive.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah, And this brings us to the idea of softening
your diamonds up by soaking them in goat blood. Not
just any goat blood, but the blood of a he goat.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
The blood of she goats will not do yes.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
This is mentioned by both Plenty of the Elder and
later by basanias this is the yeah, the idea that
while the diamond is hard and resist to destruction, get
yourself a little goat blood he goat blood, Let it
soak in there, and that will put it. That'll soften
things up enough that you can break it up and
get what you need out of it. Now, Ogden points
(25:13):
out that plenty source on this is uncertain and it
doesn't seem to be based on anything drawn from Indian
diamond tradition. So again, remember India is like the really
the hot area for initial diamond culture, and it seems
to sort of flow out of India into other cultures,
Mediterranean cultures, and as we'll discuss, also into Chinese culture
(25:34):
and so forth. So this idea doesn't seem to directly
relate to anything known to exist in Indian diamond traditions,
but it doesn't go away after it has been brought up.
So there are writings about it from the fourteen hundreds onward,
with descriptions of goat blood being used to soak and
soften diamonds. In time, there were even writings on what
(25:57):
sort of diet your he goat would need if you
wanted to use its blood to soften up your diamonds.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
Wow, that's elaborate.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
None other than Roger Bacon refuted this idea during the
thirteenth century, though I guess not everyone listened to Roger
Bacon because the idea seemed to persist. And Ogden writes that, yeah,
ultimately we have no idea where this came from, but
it may be linked to various blood sacrificed rights connected
to diamonds, much in the same way that such rights
(26:27):
were associated with ancient metallurgy. He also speculates and This
is where it gets really really interesting that maybe gem
cutters would have needed to crush diamonds to produce chips
for their work, like we were saying, and a working
medium or paste would be useful to keep those bits
of diamond from flying all over the place. I think
(26:47):
we'd touched on this in the last episode or the
one before it. Like when you do destroy a diamond,
there's often this observation that just like it almost vanishes,
it turns into this dust. It's just hard to collec
it just goes everywhere.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Right, So the idea is that if you could pound
or smash your diamond within the matrix of like a thick,
sticky liquid substance, that might help prevent some of it
from being lost, just like flying off the table and
going all over the place.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Right right, So what might you use? Might you have
used something like goat's blood? Ogden So points out that
it's possible that they were, that people use something that
maybe wasn't blood but contain blood, or maybe just looked
like blood. He cites a Sanskrit recipe for medicinal diamond
dust that involves first encasing the diamond in a mixture
(27:39):
of beaten cotton plant and beetlenut, which has a red coloration.
Then you roast it several times and then you're able
to break it up.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Oh that's interesting. You know, I've before heard of the
I think I've heard of the juice of a beetlenut
being compared to blood or looking like blood in some instances. So, yeah,
I wonder if that could be a mistaken identity at
a distance there.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Yeah, I believe there are cases of Europeans encountering peoples
that were chewing beetle nut and they would describe all
that their mouths were bloody, and it's like, not that
their mouths weren't bloody, they're just chewing petal nut. Yeah,
but anyway, Ogden notes that lead was also used in
the breaking of diamonds, something that took on airs of magic,
since the lead is of course very soft and diamonds
(28:25):
are very hard. But yeah, while diamonds are hard and
have long been used to cut other gems, as we've
been discussing, they're also quite brittle, and one means of
breaking them and retaining the fragments was to first encase
the diamond in lead before striking it with a hammer.
Wax or a mixture made from horn was often used
in some traditions, with a later idea connected to another
(28:48):
tantalizing idea that diamond might be broken with a ram's horn.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Huh. I wonder if that's true. I mean, the diamond
can be shattered with a sufficiently powerful blow. But every
thing I've read about and seen that was used for
that purpose would be like a strong metal hammer, you know,
like a steel hammer or something like that. Would a
ram's horn be hard enough?
Speaker 4 (29:11):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Well, I think maybe the idea is probably not. But
in sort of the game of telephone and myth making,
the idea of using a mixture with ground horn would
be the thing you'd use. And then it gets you know,
in the same way that eventually you're talking about just
soaking your diamonds in blood or in this case, beating
it with a horn. You know, it's just it becomes
(29:35):
this sort of magical, cryptic thing, but it perhaps has
a connection to some sort of actual practice. Now turning
our attention to ancient China. First one, I just mentioned
some some points that Ogden makes about diamonds in China.
He points out that research has indicated that diamonds may
have been used to polish nephrite jade from a very
(29:58):
early period in Chinese history. I was looking at the
source on this. It's from Lu at all, the earliest
use of corundum and diamond in prehistoric China. This is
from two thousand and five the author's right quote. We
also present physical evidence that later Langzhou axes. This would
have been around twenty five hundred BCE. This was a
(30:19):
neolithic jade culture. Quote may made from the same previously
undescribed rock whose most abundant component is corundum, where were
polished to a mirror like finish with a diamond abrasive.
Ogden points out that we have fifth century CE Chinese
writings describing diamond set finger rings worn by foreigners and
(30:40):
sent to China from India and in one case from Java.
Java was apparently a source for Chinese diamonds prior to
European involvement in Java during the seventeenth century. There's a
gold ring with a set diamond that was found that in
nineteen seventy excavation of a fifth century CE Nanjing tomb. Diamonds,
of course would have traveled on the Silk Road and
(31:01):
in an interesting connection of technologies again, thinking about the
Silk Road, thinking about various materials and technologies and bits
of culture traveling throughout Eurasia along these trade routes. He
points out that an Italian innovation of a crank flywheel
belt driven grinding apparatus for working gymstones was seemingly based
(31:24):
on silk spinning technology from China, and this would have
been adopted during.
Speaker 4 (31:28):
The thirteenth century. Oh interesting.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Yeah, so you know, different different aims, different technological approaches
that end up speaking to each other across the Silk Road. Now,
I was also looking around some other sources. I was
looking at an older text, The Diamond, a Study in
Chinese and Hellenistic Folklore, Volume fifteen, issues one through two
by German anthropologist bertheled Law for it is from nineteen seventeen,
(31:57):
but he was a pretty big big deal. He pointed
out in this book that there were song dynasty tellings
of the Valley of Gems. That story we talked about
in the last episode, in which you have your diamonds
down there at the bottom of this deep canyon or valley,
and the only way to get them is, of course
to throw meat down there. The meat will stick to
the diamonds, or the diamonds will stick to the meat rather,
(32:19):
and then giant birds will swoop down in there, collect
the meat and bring that meat up to the surface,
or they'll eat the meat, and you have to kill
the birds and then harvest the diamonds from their stomachs.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
And often it was said that there were monsters of
some kind or like venomous snakes down at the bottom
of the valley, which is a reason you can't go
down there and get the diamonds yourself.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Right, And so this is a very infectious story. It
spreads and throughout diamond cultures, and it spreads with diamonds
to other cultures, and so it's not surprising that there
are also tellings of it in Chinese traditions. But the
versions that Lafer brings up here mentions that, okay, in
(33:00):
these tellings, the great eagles that feast on the diamond
studied meat in the valley, they just eventually poop out
the diamonds, so they're not being they're not there's no
driving them away from the meat and getting the diamonds.
There's no looking for there, there's no killing the birds
and then digging them out of their bodies. No, you
just have to go out to the Gobi desert because
(33:21):
that is where they are dropping their diamond filled poops.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Wow, that seems so much simpler than having to fight
the bird and kill it. Yeah, just scour the poop fields.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
You know, you're not hurting the birds, you're not stressing
them out, you're not having having to fight a giant
bird that's eating snakes the size of elephants and so forth. Now,
this of course got me wondering. It's like, well, why
the Gobi Desert of all places? You know, I was
wanting to line up with reality at all. Sadly, Lafer
doesn't really mention the Gobi Desert at all elsewhere in
(33:53):
this particular text. Certainly some precious minerals are found in
the Gobi region, though I've not read about diamonds being
on that list. Perhaps they are. Perhaps I'm missing something
it's worth stressing. As Laffer does though that the original
Song Dynasty source on this wrote that he was not
sure if the story was true or not, so it's
another case of someone passing along this story, but also
(34:16):
being like, I cannot vouch for this, but this is
what has been told to me, I was.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Just looking at various maps of known diamond deposits and
diamond mines in the world, and the Gobi Desert does
not appear to be a hotspot.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Yeah, so, but again, who knows exactly how the story
comes together. Now. Lafer also touches on the subject of
gemstone phosphorescence. I found this pretty interesting. So tales of
luminous gems, these go way back. You can find examples
of this in ancient writings and medieval writings, and apparently
there is some truth to the idea some gems glow
(34:50):
in the dark after excitement via friction or heat, and
such observations could have potentially been exaggerated into some of
the traditions around the world glowing stones, and there are
some versions that are apparently unique to Chinese traditions, including
tales of pearls that glow in the dark, and even
the pupils of certain female whales described as moonlight pearls. So, yeah,
(35:17):
there would be this pearl like object that glows with
like a moonlight luminosity, and you could pull it out
in a dark room and you would see the glow.
And these were seemingly regarded as a real thing during
the fourth century CE, and as the author notes, it's
not entirely divorced from the real world. You know, Phosphorescent
(35:40):
biology in the marine world is a real thing, and
it was noted by ancient observers. They may not have
known as much about the undersea world as we know today,
but they knew that sometimes you find things that kind
of glow or outright glow in the oceanic world.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yeah, and you don't even necessarily have to go to
the deep ocean for that. That's where a lot of
the examples we think of are. But there are you know,
masses of smaller organisms that float near the surface of
the water and can create bioluminescent glows or phosphorescence sometimes
visible just you know, in the waves.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Absolutely. So, yeah, the idea, you know, has at least
a couple of feet on the ground here, or maybe
not the whole foot, but at least some toads touched
on the ground, and some fantasy and other aspects of
the telling. But yeah, other tales of whalestone state that
you could see reflection in one at night and that
it had purifying qualities. And then there were also accounts
(36:34):
that said that they could be found in the eyes
of dolphins as well. Lafer points out that other examples
of glowing items of biological origin in Chinese tradition includes
the horn of the rhino, and also it was said
that there was like a variety of will o the
wisp that would rise from battlefields. So after some sort
of terrible battle on which humans and horses have died,
(36:56):
it would see this glow that rises up like a mist,
and a variation of this would continue on into Japanese traditions,
with the idea being the other this is somehow connected
to the life force of the beings that perished here. However,
as Laffer discusses, there would seem to be something of
an open question as to what extent ideas about glowing
diamonds and Chinese tradition were based on observations of diamond
(37:20):
phosph phosphorescence, or if it was like a continuation of
traditions surrounding pearls and other gems, and as diamonds are
introduced and or diamonds are upgraded to gymstone status, they
take on these ideas. In general, ideas of phosphorescent diamonds
may also be connected to the electrical qualities of diamonds,
(37:40):
which plenty of the Elder also wrote about. So basically,
when a diamond is electrified or exposed to friction, it
can pick up paper and other light substances, though it
does not become a conductor. But observations lead ancient writers
at times to champion diamonds over loadstones as just magnetic powerhouse.
(38:01):
Interestingly enough, in modern evaluation of diamonds, UV lighting is
sometimes used to judge the authenticity of diamonds, looking for
that for some sort of like a faint glow, and
evidence that a diamond is actually magnetic to any degree
or responds to a magnet is it's an indication that
what you have here is not one hundred percent carbon
and is therefore not a real diamond. And if it has,
(38:23):
you know, some sort of metal content to it, well
it's not carbon. Interesting now, it should come as no
surprise that diamond is not just an earth thing. Diamond
can be found in meteorites, often in the form of nanodiamonds.
(38:47):
In particular, there's a hexagonal diamond as opposed to the
cubicle lattice of diamond as we've been discussing it, and
it's it's called Long's Dale light, by some estimates more
than fifty percent harder than normal or terrestrial diamonds, or
diamonds as we've been discussing them. So this form of
diamond was first identified in nineteen sixty seven in the
Canyon Diabolo meteorite in the form of nanocrystals. Lonstolite is
(39:12):
formed when graphite containing meteors strike the Earth, with the
resulting heat and stress transforming the graphite into this form
of diamond. However, the largest of these are merely a
micron in size, so it's not if you're imagining sort
of like a scene from the opening of the classic
film The Blob, you know, in which the perfectly round
(39:33):
meteorite cracks open and there's something inside it, perhaps a diamond.
In this case, that does not seem to be the case.
These would be very small, but you do have some
interesting appearances of this material. Lonstolite deposits were apparently discovered
in Tunguska and having to do with the Tunguska event,
(39:54):
which of course is a supporting evidence for the idea
that what we're talking about there is as opposed to
a comet, and it's thought that this form of diamond
also forms in major planetary collisions as well.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah, I was reading about some other interesting cases of
probable impact diamonds that are found. You mentioned Tunguska, but
there's a really big impact structure in northern Siberia called
the Poppy Guy impact structure, which is the result of
a huge impact like thirty five million years ago, and
(40:29):
it is also thought to have created a lot of
diamonds when it struck. It's thought that the intense heat
and energy of the impact event essentially, yeah, turned graphite
that was already present in the rocks in the ground
into diamonds.
Speaker 4 (40:45):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
But again we're still we're talking about nano diamonds here,
and I realize that's probably not what's going to captivate
everyone's imagination. You want to consider some serious space rocks,
And indeed, stories about possible giant space diamond do periodically
pop up in the space news, Like this is the
kind of thing that I don't have specific memories of
(41:06):
this occurring, but it's the kind of thing that could
pop up on like late night television. There's so many
jokes who can make about giant space diamonds, and there's
something about like it's just an interesting reflection on how
we treat diamonds here on Earth again, that they're rare,
they're generally small, and the idea that there could be
an enormous one out there in space somewhere, but we
(41:27):
just can't get to it. It's kind of an interesting
tease though.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
I mean, the funny thing is people think like, oh wow,
if we could, you know, if we could just get
this planet sized diamond back to Earth, then I'd really
be rich.
Speaker 4 (41:41):
But I don't know.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Then it just seems like diamonds would be worthless if
there was that much of them.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yeah yeah, Or like, what are we We're going to
bring it back to Earth and bring it into an
orbit around our planet, what happens next? I don't like
the possibilities.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
You'd have to tightly control, like how much of it
that you mind brought back to Earth so as not
to flood the market and make it worthless.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Yeah yeah, now this is interesting. There is this idea
that I believe it is no longer favorite at all,
but the idea that Jupiter in our own solar system,
the idea that it could have a core that is
essentially a huge diamond, And in fact, this is the
(42:24):
idea proposed any work of fiction by Arthur C. Clark in
his book twenty sixty one Odyssey three. Now I haven't
read Odyssey three. I've only read his first book in
the series, twentyd and one in Space Odyssey, based on
his screenplay for the Stanley Kubrick movie. It's my understanding, however,
(42:45):
that this is not necessarily a trilogy in the sense
of other like sci fi and fantasy trilogies, just kind
of like it's more of a continuation of some of
the same themes, but with more futuristic events occurring.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
Now you mentioned it is no longer favored the idea
that at the core of Jupiter there's a big old diamond.
But we did talk in our episode on the Moons
of Uranus about the idea that the atmospheric dynamics within
the atmosphere of Urinus produce diamond rain.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
This, yeah, the diamond rain.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah, that it that it rains diamonds within within the
gases of Urinus. So you can go listen to those
episodes if you want the fuller explanation there.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Well, I'm glad you pointed that one out. Yeah, that's
also a great idea and that I think captivates the
imagination because it's like it's like that Treehouse of Horror
episode where where Homer freaks out because there are no
doughnuts in this one reality that he transfers into, and
then after he leaves it turns out it actually rains
donuts here. That's right anyway, in this in this author C.
(43:51):
Clark book, which again I haven't read. If you have
read and you want to write in with more details,
feel free. But basically the idea spoiler for the Second
Odyssey book twenty But in that book, Jupiter explodes and
becomes a star, and in twenty sixty one it's revealed
that since the core of Jupiter is made of diamond,
there's now a mountain made of diamond on Europa. And
(44:14):
at the time of his writing this was apparently not
entirely out of the question, but the Galileo Prob's findings
gave us more insight into Jupiter's composition, and this ultimately
ruled out the diamond core hypothesis. But again, you don't
give up hope. There's still the diamond rains potentially on Urunas.
And then there are some more far flung candidates that
(44:36):
you might consider for diamond worlds. These are two that
have definitely popped up on a lot of like the
space news websites. I'm gonna tell you about a couple
of them here in case you haven't heard. The first
one is a place called that's classified is fifty five
cancrie E, also known as Jansen. This is forty one
(44:58):
light years away in the Answer constellation. It may have
lava oceans. It may have a diamond core discovered in
two thousand and four. We of course don't know for
sure what its composition is, but based on observations and
observation data, it might be a rocky, high carbon world
and its mass could be as much as one third diamond. However,
(45:22):
don't buy your ticket just yet. More information is needed.
More information is required. I don't want you to travel
all the way there and find out that it is
not a rocky world and it is not one third diamond.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
Be a real time enough at last situation to get there,
ready to mine the diamond, and then realize that, oh
it doesn't have oxygen.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
Yeah. Now, another place in our universe that has also
popped up in these various science stories is a white
dwarf star classified as HD one nine four one two C.
This one's located one hundred and four light years away,
and scientists have theorized that it could be in the
(46:02):
process of cooling and crystallizing into a giant diamond. WHOA,
all right, you know it sounds promising, However, big caveat here.
This process is thought to take somewhere on the order
of one quadrillion years, which would mean that this particular
white dwarf, along with oh, I don't know all other stars,
(46:24):
is simply not old enough to have transformed yet. And
I think it's going to be a hell of a
waiting game if you show up there anticipating the possibility
that it's going to turn into a big diamond. But
I love these ideas of like giant space diamonds, and
especially in this latter case, out of reach in both
time and space. I mean, Beker's anything on the measure
(46:44):
of light years away is out of reach in both
time and space to us, but especially the idea of
HD one nine oh four one two C, because it's
if it does become a diamond, it's going to become
a diamond so far into the future that it's basically
a dream.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Maybe that's where the diamond punk technology regime actually arises.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
Yeah, yeah, I was thinking about it a little bit
when you were talking about diamonds as fuel, Like if
you had some sort of diamond world, or it doesn't
even have to be a diamond world, just we could
borrow from Arthur C. Clark and just imagine a scenario
where you have an enormous mass of diamond on some world,
some moon somewhere that was ejected from some sort of
diamond core scenario that and it provided diamond in enough quantity,
(47:33):
then perhaps you could use that to prop up your
idea of a diamond furnace that powers something. I mean,
maybe it ends up taking on religious connotations because I mean,
the idea of a furnace that burns entirely on diamond,
even if it's not practical from an energy standpoint, maybe
there is something kind of like spiritually attractive about that. Again,
assuming the culture that's powering the furnace sees diamond as
(47:58):
something that is special and beautiful and holy and not
just something to be used to work other gemstones or
to fire up a furnace.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Well should be blast off from the diamond planet for today.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
I believe so. But don't worry. We'll be back with
another core episode on Thursday, because Tuesdays and Thursdays that's
when we have core episodes of stuff to blow your mind.
We're primarily a science podcast. On Fridays, though, we set
aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
film on Weird House Cinema. On Mondays we do listener mail,
and on Wednesdays we do a short form episode. Let's
(48:33):
see what else to stress here. Hey, if you haven't
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(48:53):
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Speaker 2 (49:00):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest
a topic for the future, or.
Speaker 4 (49:10):
Just to say hello.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
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