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Tag Archives: Diamonds
Supercomputers have revealed the giant ‘pillars of heat’ funneling diamonds upward from deep within Earth – Phys.org
- Supercomputers have revealed the giant ‘pillars of heat’ funneling diamonds upward from deep within Earth Phys.org
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Diamond’s Memorial Goes Off the Rails
Trumpworld figures converged at Lynnette “Diamond” Hardaway’s remembrance ceremony on Saturday afternoon to celebrate the life of the pro-Trump pundit who died suddenly at 51—but the memorial took a dark turn as her sister suggested a nefarious plot behind her death.
Diamond’s sister—half of the “Diamond and Silk” duo—Rochelle “Silk” Richardson addressed the crowd at the Crown Theatre in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and appeared to fall back into her old anti-vaxxer ways.
“Instead of asking if Americans are vaxxed or unvaxxed, the real question to ask is: Are Americans being poisoned?” she asked the pro-Trump crowd filled with friends and family.
“In the wild, when they want to depopulate and sterilize a large group of animals, they usually inject one animal, and that one animal infect the rest of the animals,” Silk said, suggesting, without evidence, that the COVID-19 vaccine creates harm. “People are dropping dead around here, and nobody is talking about it! They are dropping dead suddenly and unexpectedly.”
According to fact-checkers and researchers, there is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines cause people to die. And despite far-right pundits amplifying the phrase “died suddenly” on social media with videos of people having seizures to support their theory, the claim isn’t supported by science.
Silk also recalled her sister’s final moments: “She said to me, ‘I can’t breathe.’ It was something out of nowhere, and no warning. … Each breath was less, and less, and less.”
“What I want to say to everybody is don’t you dare call me a conspiracy theorist. Because I saw it happen. I saw how it happened. I was there when it happened, and it happened suddenly,” she said, urging the crowd to “get some answers as to why people are falling dead suddenly.”
Silk’s comments immediately sparked a wave of outrage from figures on the right-wing, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene taking to Twitter to declare, “I demand an IMMEDIATE investigation into Covid vaccines and the dramatic increase of people dying suddenly!”
In the early days of the COVID pandemic, Diamond and Silk floated many fringe conspiracy theories, including the idea that quarantining would result in people getting “sick” and that increased COVID-19 case numbers being shared with the public was an attempt to harm Trump politically.
Silk has repeatedly denied on Twitter that Diamond passed away due to COVID-19. Instead, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has stated publicly that the pro-Trump pundit suddenly collapsed in her kitchen. (Diamond’s cause of death remains unclear, and an autopsy report has not been made public. Reached for comment via phone by The Daily Beast on Saturday evening, Diamond and Silk’s executive director Tressie Ham hung up and did not address questions via text message.)
“Where’s your proof that my sister died from contracting COVID-19? No Proof plus No Truth equates to a Lawsuit,” Silk wrote after Diamond’s death was announced.
Other Trumpworld royalty joined the solemn service to pay their respects to Diamond on Saturday—including the former president himself.
“It’s so hard to understand what could have happened,” he said. “When you got to know her, there was nobody that was kinder, there was absolutely nobody that was a more devoted person to the common sense of our country and to making our country great again.”
“Through the tears and the grief, let us celebrate this incredible life,” Trump added.
“In a blink of an eye…she is now in the—presence of the Lord Jesus Christ,” Trump-loving Pastor Mark Burns declared. “I believe without a shadow of a doubt, Diamond is talking to Jesus, and she is saying, Jesus, ‘Please make sure that Donald J. Trump is the next President of The United States of America.’”
Like many pro-Trump events, the event at times slid off the rails and took the form of a MAGA rally rather than a funeral service.
“She lives on in the hearts and the minds of those who loved her,” Republican North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson said. “The news media right now has paid little to no attention to her passing. We all know what the news media is. It is the most evil devil in America.”
“She was wise, she was strong, and she was beautiful,” Robinson continued.
Each speaker, including Trump, paid tribute to her unwavering support of the former president.
“And another secret about Diamond: She had a boyfriend. Yes, that’s right. And she had a boyfriend, and oh, my God, we would talk about him all of the time,” Ham said. “His name: President Donald J. Trump. Yes, yes, yes. President Donald J. Trump, that was her boyfriend.” Ham added that Diamond’s “side piece” was Mike Lindell.
Silk also used the service to threaten to file a complaint against local police over their handling of her sister’s death, though she gave few details.
“To the Hoke County Sheriff’s department, you have a rotten apple in the bunch,” Silk said. “While the body is still warm on the kitchen floor, you don’t overstep the next of kin…then try and barge into my home, that I pay the bills for, illegally, with no warrant, to retrieve my sister’s dead body.”
“You don’t push yourself onto someone then say ‘don’t touch me,’” she continued. Silk—who has long called for “handcuffs” to be removed from police—then pledged to file a “complaint” against the local North Carolina police department “ASAP”—adding, “just because you are dressed in blue doesn’t mean you get to abuse the power you think you have.”
The Hoke County Sheriff’s office didn’t return The Daily Beast’s request for comment on Saturday evening.
German police recover bulk of booty from $120 million Dresden diamonds heist
BERLIN, Dec 17 (Reuters) – Most of the jewels stolen from a historic Dresden art collection in 2019 in a $120 million heist have been recovered, German police and prosecutors said on Saturday.
The 31 pieces, including a breast star of the Polish Order of the White Eagle and an ornate diamond head-dress, had been secured by investigators in Berlin, authorities said.
Their return followed negotiations between prosecutors and defence lawyers for the Germans who are on trial for the November 2019 break-in at the Gruenes Gewoelbe (Green Vault) Museum.
In all, the pieces stolen from one of Europe’s greatest art collections contained more than 4,300 diamonds with an estimated value of more than 113 million euros ($120 million).
Prosecutors believe the thieves sawed through part of a window grating in advance and reattached it to get into the building as quickly as possible during the heist.
The returned pieces will be examined by specialists “to confirm their authenticity and intactness,” authorities said.
Pieces still missing include an epaulette on which a precious stone known as the Dresden White Diamond was mounted.
($1 = 0.9450 euros)
Reporting by Thomas Escritt; editing by John Stonestreet
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Dazzling galactic diamonds shine in new Webb telescope image
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The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a unique perspective of the universe, including never-before-seen galaxies that glitter like diamonds in the cosmos.
The new image, shared on Wednesday as part of a study published in the Astronomical Journal, was taken as part of the Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science observing program, called PEARLS.
It’s one of the first medium-deep-wide-field images of the universe, with “medium-deep” meaning the faintest objects visible, and “wide-field” referring to the region of the cosmos captured in the image.
“The stunning image quality of Webb is truly out of this world,” said study coauthor Anton Koekemoer, research astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who assembled the PEARLS images into mosaics, in a statement. “To catch a glimpse of very rare galaxies at the dawn of cosmic time, we need deep imaging over a large area, which this PEARLS field provides.”
The Webb telescope focused on a part of the sky called the North Ecliptic Pole and was able to use eight different colors of near-infrared light to see celestial objects that are 1 billion times fainter than what can be seen with the unaided eye.
Thousands of galaxies gleam from a range of distances, and some of the light in the image has traveled almost 13.5 billion years to reach us.
“I was blown away by the first PEARLS images,” said study coauthor Rolf Jansen, research scientist at Arizona State University and a PEARLS coinvestigator, in a statement.
“Little did I know, when I selected this field near the North Ecliptic Pole, that it would yield such a treasure trove of distant galaxies, and that we would get direct clues about the processes by which galaxies assemble and grow, he said. “I can see streams, tails, shells and halos of stars in their outskirts, the leftovers of their building blocks.”
Researchers combined Webb data with three colors of ultraviolet and visible light captured by the Hubble Space Telescope to create the image. Together, the wavelengths of light from both telescopes reveal unprecedented depth and detail of a wealth of galaxies in the universe. Many of these distant galaxies have always eluded Hubble, as well as ground-based telescopes.
The image represents just a portion of the full PEARLS field, which will be about four times larger. The mosaic is even better than scientists expected after running simulations in the months before Webb began making scientific observations in July.
“There are many objects that I never thought we would actually be able to see, including individual globular clusters around distant elliptical galaxies, knots of star formation within spiral galaxies, and thousands of faint galaxies in the background,” said study coauthor Jake Summers, a research assistant at Arizona State University, in a statement.
Other pinpricks of light in the image represent a range of stars in our Milky Way galaxy.
Measuring diffuse light in front of and behind the stars and galaxies in the image is like “encoding the history of the universe” because it tells a story of cosmic evolution, according to study coauthor Rosalia O’Brien, a graduate research assistant at Arizona State University, in a statement.
The PEARLS team hopes in the future to see more objects in this region, like distant exploding stars or flares of light around black holes, as they vary in brightness.
“This unique field is designed to be observable with Webb 365 days per year, so its time-domain legacy, area covered, and depth reached can only get better with time,” said lead study author Rogier Windhorst, regents professor at Arizona State University and PEARLS principal investigator, in a statement.
Scientists Successfully Create Diamonds Out of Bottle Plastic
In the experiment, a thin sheet of simple PET plastic was shot with a laser. The strong laser flashes that hit the foil-like material sample briefly heated it up to 6000 degrees Celsius and thus generated a shock wave that compressed the matter to millions of times the atmospheric pressure for a few nanoseconds. The scientists were able to determine that tiny diamonds, so-called nanodiamonds, formed under extreme pressure. Credit: HZDR / Blaurock
A research team utilizes laser flashes to replicate the interior of ice planets, which inspires a new method of creating tiny diamonds.
What transpires inside planets like
Extreme conditions occur in the interior of large icy planets like Neptune and Uranus, with pressure millions of times higher than on Earth and temperatures that can reach several thousand degrees
“PET has a good balance between carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen to simulate the activity in ice planets,” Kraus explains.
The team carried out their research using the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), a powerful, accelerator-based X-ray laser, at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California. They utilized it to analyze what transpires when powerful laser flashes hit a PET film while simultaneously using two measuring techniques: X-ray diffraction to detect if nanodiamonds were created and so-called small-angle scattering to see how fast and how big the diamonds grew.
Oxygen facilitates the process
“The effect of the oxygen was to accelerate the splitting of the carbon and hydrogen and thus encourage the formation of nanodiamonds,” says Dominik Kraus, reporting on the results. “It meant the carbon atoms could combine more easily and form diamonds.” This further supports the assumption that it literally rains diamonds inside the ice giants. The findings are probably not just relevant to Uranus and Neptune but to innumerable other planets in our galaxy as well. While such ice giants used to be thought of as rarities, it now seems clear that they are probably the most common form of planets outside the solar system.
The team also encountered hints of another kind: In combination with the diamonds, water should be produced – but in an unusual variant. “So-called superionic water may have formed,” Kraus opines. “The oxygen atoms form a crystal lattice in which the hydrogen nuclei move around freely.” Because the nuclei are electrically charged, superionic water can conduct electric current and thus help to create the ice giants’ magnetic field. In their experiments, however, the research group was not yet able to unequivocally prove the existence of superionic water in the mixture with diamonds. This is planned to happen in close collaboration with the University of Rostock at the European XFEL in Hamburg, the world’s most powerful X-ray laser. There, HZDR heads the international user consortium HIBEF which offers ideal conditions for experiments of this kind.
Precision plant for nanodiamonds
In addition to this rather fundamental knowledge, the new experiment also opens up perspectives for a technical application: the tailored production of nanometer-sized diamonds, which are already included in abrasives and polishing agents. In the future, they are supposed to be used as highly-sensitive quantum sensors, medical contrast agents and efficient reaction accelerators, for splitting
CO2 for example. “So far, diamonds of this kind have mainly been produced by detonating explosives,” Kraus explains. “With the help of laser flashes, they could be manufactured much more cleanly in the future.”
The scientists’ vision: A high-performance laser fires ten flashes per second at a PET film which is illuminated by the beam at intervals of a tenth of a second. The nanodiamonds thus created shoot out of the film and land in a collecting tank filled with water. There they are decelerated and can then be filtered and effectively harvested. The essential advantage of this method in contrast to production by explosives is that “the nanodiamonds could be custom cut with regard to size or even doping with other atoms,” Dominik Kraus emphasizes. “The X-ray laser means we have a lab tool that can precisely control the diamonds’ growth.”
Reference: “Diamond formation kinetics in shock-compressed C─H─O samples recorded by small-angle x-ray scattering and x-ray diffraction” by Zhiyu He, Melanie Rödel, Julian Lütgert, Armin Bergermann, Mandy Bethkenhagen, Deniza Chekrygina, Thomas E. Cowan, Adrien Descamps, Martin French, Eric Galtier, Arianna E. Gleason, Griffin D. Glenn, Siegfried H. Glenzer, Yuichi Inubushi, Nicholas J. Hartley, Jean-Alexis Hernandez, Benjamin Heuser, Oliver S. Humphries, Nobuki Kamimura, Kento Katagiri, Dimitri Khaghani, Hae Ja Lee, Emma E. McBride, Kohei Miyanishi, Bob Nagler, Benjamin Ofori-Okai, Norimasa Ozaki, Silvia Pandolfi, Chongbing Qu, Divyanshu Ranjan, Ronald Redmer, Christopher Schoenwaelder, Anja K. Schuster, Michael G. Stevenson, Keiichi Sueda, Tadashi Togashi, Tommaso Vinci, Katja Voigt, Jan Vorberger, Makina Yabashi, Toshinori Yabuuchi, Lisa M. V. Zinta, Alessandra Ravasio and Dominik Kraus, 2 September 2022, Science Advances.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abo0617
The “super-deep” royal diamonds revealing Earth’s secrets
Smith – a senior research scientist at GIA – was examining the diamond for inclusions, chemical hitchhikers from the interior of our planet that can reveal how the crystal formed, and under what conditions. But working with high-value diamonds is a tricky business – ordinarily, it’s impossible for researchers to get their hands on the largest specimens. They’re sometimes flown around the world to visit potential customers – alas, never scientists.
Maya Kopylova, a professor of mineral exploration at the University of British Columbia, says getting samples of any diamonds is hard, and most of the diamonds she works with would have otherwise been thrown away. “Researchers have to have a good relationship with companies and they will never give you valuable samples,” she says. “So, they will never give us diamonds that are 6mm (0.2 inches) in size or larger.”
Even then, acquiring them is convoluted and expensive – first, Kopylova has to visit the high-security facilities where diamonds are sorted and identify the specimens she’d like to study. Once the acquisition has been approved, then comes the paperwork – all diamonds must travel with a Kimberley Process certificate, which proves its provenance and helps to prevent conflict or “blood” diamonds from entering the market.
However, Smith’s situation is different. At GIA, he has access to one of the largest collections of diamonds on the planet – millions of gems that have been sent there to be valued, so that they can be insured or sold. “If you want to see something rare and unusual, this is the perfect place to go because there are diamonds coming through here all the time,” says Smith. “Every few days, you might get to borrow a diamond for maybe a few hours, maybe a day or two and study it.”
A few years earlier, this is exactly what Smith had done. Together with an international team of scientists, he casually requisitioned 53 of the largest, clearest and most expensive available – including some from the same mine as the Cullinan diamond – and took them back to his laboratory to view under a microscope.
What Smith found was revolutionary. Nearly three-quarters of the Clippir diamonds contained tiny pockets, or “inclusions” of metal that had avoided rusting – not something you’d find in ordinary ones – while the remaining 15 contained a kind of garnet which only forms within the Earth’s mantle, the layer above its molten core.
Together, these inclusions provide chemical clues that the diamonds could only have formed no fewer than 360km (224 miles) and no more than 750km (466 miles) underfoot. In this Goldilocks zone, it’s deep enough to explain the metal inclusions that hadn’t been exposed to oxygen, which is abundant higher up, and it’s not so deep that the garnet rocks would have broken down under the immense pressures of the lower mantle. Ordinary diamonds, meanwhile, originate below the crust, just 150-200km (93-124 miles) down.
For his 2020 study – together with Wuyi Wang, who is vice presedent of research & development at GIA – Smith analysed the 124-carat diamond and found that it formed at the deeper end of the possible range – at least 660km (410 miles) below the Earth’s surface.
Rare mystery diamonds came from outer space, scientists report
Around 4.5 billion years ago, an asteroid likely collided with a dwarf planet spewing meteorites into space including some that contain a strange kind of diamond. Called lonsdaleite, these space diamonds has a hexagonal structure rather than the cubic structure of a typical diamond. Researchers form Australia’s Monash University, RMIT University, and colleagues just confirmed the existence of the space diamonds in a meteorite and determined the natural process by which it formed. From RMIT University/EurekAlert!:
“This study proves categorically that lonsdaleite exists in nature,” said McCulloch, Director of the RMIT Microscopy and Microanalysis Facility.
“We have also discovered the largest lonsdaleite crystals known to date that are up to a micron in size – much, much thinner than a human hair.”
The team says the unusual structure of lonsdaleite could help inform new manufacturing techniques for ultra-hard materials in mining applications.
McCulloch and his RMIT team, PhD scholar Alan Salek and Dr Matthew Field, used advanced electron microscopy techniques to capture solid and intact slices from the meteorites to create snapshots of how lonsdaleite and regular diamonds formed.
“There’s strong evidence that there’s a newly discovered formation process for the lonsdaleite and regular diamond, which is like a supercritical chemical vapour deposition process that has taken place in these space rocks, probably in the dwarf planet shortly after a catastrophic collision,” McCulloch said.
“Chemical vapour deposition is one of the ways that people make diamonds in the lab, essentially by growing them in a specialised chamber.”
Scientists Say These Mysterious Diamonds Came From Outer Space
Professor Andy Tomkins (left) from Monash University with RMIT University PhD scholar Alan Salek and a ureilite meteor sample. Credit: RMIT University
Strange diamonds from an ancient dwarf planet in our solar system may have formed shortly after the dwarf planet collided with a large asteroid about 4.5 billion years ago.
A team of scientists says they have confirmed the existence of lonsdaleite, a rare hexagonal form of diamond, in ureilite meteorites from the mantle of a dwarf planet.
Lonsdaleite is named after the famous British pioneering female crystallographer Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, who was the first woman elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society.
The research team – with scientists from Monash University, RMIT University, CSIRO, the Australian Synchrotron, and Plymouth University – found evidence of how lonsdaleite formed in ureilite meteorites. They published their findings on September 12 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Geologist Professor Andy Tomkins from Monash University led the study.
Lonsdaleite, also known as hexagonal diamond in reference to the crystal structure, is an allotrope of carbon with a hexagonal lattice, as opposed to the cubical lattice of conventional diamond. It was named in honor of Kathleen Lonsdale, a crystallographer.
RMIT Professor Dougal McCulloch, one of the senior researchers involved, said the team predicted the hexagonal structure of lonsdaleite’s atoms made it potentially harder than regular diamonds, which had a cubic structure.
“This study proves categorically that lonsdaleite exists in nature,” said McCulloch, Director of the RMIT Microscopy and Microanalysis Facility.
“We have also discovered the largest lonsdaleite crystals known to date that are up to a micron in size – much, much thinner than a human hair.”
According to the research team, the unusual structure of lonsdaleite could help inform new manufacturing techniques for ultra-hard materials in mining applications.
What’s the origin of these mysterious diamonds?
McCulloch and his RMIT team, PhD scholar Alan Salek and Dr. Matthew Field, used advanced electron microscopy techniques to capture solid and intact slices from the meteorites to create snapshots of how lonsdaleite and regular diamonds formed.
“There’s strong evidence that there’s a newly discovered formation process for the lonsdaleite and regular diamond, which is like a supercritical chemical vapor deposition process that has taken place in these space rocks, probably in the dwarf planet shortly after a catastrophic collision,” McCulloch said.
“Chemical vapor deposition is one of the ways that people make diamonds in the lab, essentially by growing them in a specialized chamber.”
Professor Dougal McCulloch (left) and PhD scholar Alan Salek from RMIT with Professor Andy Tomkins from Monash University (right) at the RMIT Microscopy and Microanalysis Facility. Credit: RMIT University
Tomkins said the group proposed that lonsdaleite in the meteorites formed from a supercritical fluid at high temperature and moderate pressures, almost perfectly preserving the shape and textures of the pre-existing graphite.
“Later, lonsdaleite was partially replaced by diamond as the environment cooled and the pressure decreased,” said Tomkins, an ARC Future Fellow at Monash University’s School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment.
“Nature has thus provided us with a process to try and replicate in industry. We think that lonsdaleite could be used to make tiny, ultra-hard machine parts if we can develop an industrial process that promotes replacement of pre-shaped graphite parts by lonsdaleite.”
Tomkins said the study findings helped address a long-standing mystery regarding the formation of the carbon phases in ureilites.
The power of collaboration
CSIRO’s Dr. Nick Wilson said the collaboration of technology and expertise from the various institutions involved allowed the team to confirm the lonsdaleite with confidence.
At CSIRO, an electron probe microanalyzer was used to quickly map the relative distribution of graphite, diamond, and lonsdaleite in the samples.
“Individually, each of these techniques gives us a good idea of what this material is, but taken together – that’s really the gold standard,” he said.
Reference: “Sequential Lonsdaleite to Diamond Formation in Ureilite Meteorites via In Situ Chemical Fluid/Vapor Deposition” by Andrew G. Tomkins, Nicholas C. Wilson, Colin MacRae, Alan Salek, Matthew R. Field, Helen E. A. Brand, Andrew D. Langendam, Natasha R. Stephen, Aaron Torpy, Zsanett Pintér, Lauren A. Jennings and Dougal G. McCulloch, 12 September 2022, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2208814119
‘Mysterious’ Diamonds Found in Space May Be Tougher Than Earth Gems
Traditionally we think of diamonds as forming from the intense pressures found in our planet’s interior, but a number of the sturdy gems have also been found in meteorites from space — and the gems are fundamentally different from terrestrial diamonds.
An international team of researchers say they’ve discovered the largest crystals to date of a rare type of diamond called lonsdaleite. The diamonds have an unusual hexagonal atomic structure (compared with the more common cubic structure) and were found in a meteorite that may have originated from a dwarf planet that experienced a catastrophic collision with an asteroid billions of years ago.
“This study proves categorically that lonsdaleite exists in nature,” Dougal McCulloch, director of the RMIT Microscopy and Microanalysis Facility in Australia, said in a statement.
The unusual hexagonal structure of the diamond could make it harder than most diamonds originating from Earth. Lonsdaleite has been found in a certain type of meteorite, called a ureilite, and it has even been manufactured in a lab by shooting graphite disks at a wall at speeds comparable with those of an asteroid impacting a planet.
The research team looked at 18 ureilites, mostly from northwest Africa, and one discovered by Monash University geology professor Andy Tomkins on the Nullarbor, a vast, arid plain in southern Australia. The strange diamonds were found in just four samples, all from northwest Africa.
But the details of how these super-diamonds formed in space have remained somewhat mysterious.
McCulloch and colleagues used advanced electron microscopy techniques to look at slices from the meteorites and think they may have discovered a new formation process for both lonsdaleite and regular diamonds.
That process “is like a supercritical chemical vapor deposition process that has taken place in these space rocks, probably in the dwarf planet shortly after a catastrophic collision,” McCulloch said.
In lay-speak, that means the space diamonds were likely formed by carbon-based materials, potentially, on a dwarf planet being subject to extreme pressures after a cosmic traffic accident. The team actually think this prevailing hypothesis of diamonds forming during the impact could be wrong — and the diamonds may have formed at lower pressures after the destruction. Similar processes are used under controlled environments to produce materials for certain metals, semiconductors and other products.
The study was led by Tomkins and published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Tomkins says the space diamond sample provides a new process for industries to attempt to replicate.
“We don’t really know how hard lonsdaleite is,” Tomkins told CNET. “It’s been estimated mathematically to be 58% harder than diamond, but that is yet to be proven by measurement.”
The material might be useful in mining or just for bragging rights about your wild hexagonal space bling.
“We think that lonsdaleite could be used to make tiny, ultra-hard machine parts if we can develop an industrial process that promotes replacement of pre-shaped graphite parts by lonsdaleite,” said Tomkins.