Can diamonds be mass produced in space?

sequoianoir

I'd have thought that was the last place "on Earth" that you would want to do it. Diamonds and "space" are not related as far as manufacturing goes. Diamonds (and very good quality ones at that) can now be produced on Earth without too much difficulty. It is actually so much of a problem, and identifying these from the real "natural" thing, that De Beers of South Africa considered (and I believe introduced) engraving all real diamonds that they mined. I believe the concept of manufactured diamonds originated in Russia, where they built the first equipment to do it. This made fairly crude yellowish diamonds often with flaws but the technology has now been improved such that flawless white (clear and sparkling) diamonds are the result. What is needed in this process is a relatively enormous amount of energy and large and heavy "machinery" that would make it much more difficult to replicate in space. Weightlessness and space offer no advantage to making diamonds, only problems. Gravity does not hinder making diamonds so why do it in space? An interesting fact, it is now possible to turn your loved ones, after they have died, into jewelry. After cremation the ashes that are left are mostly carbon, the same as a diamond. There are companies that will take this "carbon" and make a diamond from it! Jul 26 03, 6:22 PM

lothruin

Diamonds can't successfully be mass produced on Earth, what would make space any different? I worked as a professional goldsmith for several years. At that time, and as far as I can find now, no synthetic diamond had the exact properties as natural diamond. Chatham has come very close. So has a mineral known as Moissanite. Both can fool even long-time industry professionals, but neither is quite right. For the purposes of jewelry, Chatham or other synthetic diamonds are a lovely substitute for the real thing. However, most truely fine tastes will demand the real thing, and since none of the synthetics are a lot cheaper, they will get the real thing. Also, for purposes of industrial diamond, cutting bits and saw blades, etc., the synthetic is viable. It is, for all intents and purposes, as hard as diamond, or at least as hard as corundum, (ruby and sapphire, which has been very sucessfully synthetically created,) which it sometimes actually is. However, for some more subtle uses of diamond, such as detection of radiation, nothing but the real thing has proven useful. A jewelry or synthetic diamond website will tell you it is the same thing. However, most scientific websites which discuss the subject will tell you it is not. Jul 26 03, 7:00 PM

sequoianoir

I was basing most of my knowledge of this on a British TV programme called Horizon. It is a very well regarded leading edge scientific documentary style program where they investigate and explain to the best of their ability in laymans terms all the recent breakthroughs in science, medicine, etc. They have covered super volcanoes, Fermat's last theorem, gene therapy, etc., etc. All I know was that the largest diamond producers on the planet, De Beers in South Africa, were investing tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds in building detection equipment that could differentiate between what they dug out of the ground and what was made by a machine in 3 or 4 places in the world. This was about 2 years ago. As I said, they started engraving the diamonds they mined and kept the process very very secret so that it could not be replicated. At that time the only problem in the man made diamond process was size. The success rate for upto half a carat was very good, between half and one carat quite hit and miss, and diamonds of 1 carat and above very rarely made. But this was only considered to be a matter of time (a couple of years or so) before 2 and 3 carats would be produced with the same success rate. De Beers examined many of these man-made diamonds and most of their experts could not identify which were real and which were not. Only a very expensive piece of equipment invented specifically to do the job - might have been something like a mass spectrometer - did it. Jul 26 03, 8:21 PM

lothruin

Well, exactly. But the point is, there is NOT a method of exactly duplicating natural diamond. For most purposes, the synthetics are fully as good if not better than the naturals. But for certain scientific uses, only the naturals possess the neccessary properties. Which indicates that the two are not equal. Jul 27 03, 12:15 AM