[HN Gopher] Modeling study proposes a diamond layer at the core-...
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       Modeling study proposes a diamond layer at the core-mantle boundary
       on Mercury
        
       Author : PaulHoule
       Score  : 23 points
       Date   : 2024-07-20 00:03 UTC (22 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (phys.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
        
       | A_D_E_P_T wrote:
       | This means that Mercury might be a carbon planet or quasi carbon
       | planet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_planet
       | 
       | If that's the case, somebody ought to update the wikipedia page.
       | 
       | What might come as a surprise to the average engagement ring
       | shopper is that diamond is a wildly abundant material in the
       | universe. On that scale it's nothing special -- possibly it's
       | just slightly less ubiquitous than silica sand. It's the heavy
       | metals, like gold and even tungsten, that are rare and weird.
        
         | yieldcrv wrote:
         | I don't think anyone is surprised by that. The price is the
         | price.
        
           | jajko wrote:
           | > The price is the price.
           | 
           | What does this mean? That you just have to suck it up and
           | shell out 3 salaries or you are not worthy or manly enough?
           | Anybody old enough who has seen tons of various marriage crap
           | knows that this increases quality of marriage by exactly 0%
           | (at least in positive direction, negative can be debated but
           | I'd say its mildly above 0), and same effect goes into
           | 'durability' of it.
           | 
           | But for men, its a fantastic litmus paper - even if you
           | explain this and the requirement remains strict, thats a
           | massive personality red flag, which never ever goes alone.
           | For me personally it would be no-go since life is too short
           | to make such mistakes, but I am out of these games hopefully
           | for good.
        
             | lazide wrote:
             | Project much?
        
             | yieldcrv wrote:
             | It means that if you are in the market for an actual
             | diamond, then you will be presented with a price and have
             | no way of altering what the market price is.
             | 
             | If you want moissanite or something else, or dream of
             | asteroid mining to flood the market on earth, that has
             | nothing to do with anybody else in the market for diamonds.
        
               | TaylorAlexander wrote:
               | I think the understanding that they are not rare and that
               | the price is entirely an extortionary corporate fiction
               | to collect huge profits will influence one's desire to
               | pay the high price.
               | 
               | Like if you buy a gold ring, I suspect its cost will be
               | pretty related to the base price of commodity gold, the
               | labor involved in creating it, and a reasonable markup
               | for the company to survive. But it is too
               | commoditizatized for it to have the super high prices
               | diamonds have. Knowing that diamonds are horribly
               | overpriced will reduce some people's desire to actually
               | buy one. So telling people this helps save people money.
        
               | ziofill wrote:
               | You're not wrong, but the price of diamonds isn't due to
               | their scarcity, but rather control od supply. De Beers
               | controls the supply and therefore the price.
        
         | adrian_b wrote:
         | Not really.
         | 
         | The carbon-rich planets described in the Wikipedia article have
         | formed by condensation from gases in which carbon was more
         | abundant than oxygen, which happens in the gases from which
         | some stellar systems have formed.
         | 
         | The Solar System has formed by condensation from gases where
         | there was more oxygen than carbon, and this remains true for
         | Mercury.
         | 
         | Mercury has a somewhat higher proportion of carbon than other
         | planets, because much oxygen has been lost in space, as a
         | component of water and of other easy to vaporize oxides, due to
         | the high temperature of its surface. Even so, it contains much
         | more oxygen in silicates, than carbon.
         | 
         | The core of Mercury is made of iron alloy, like all planet
         | cores. This study supposes that the liquid core has been
         | saturated in carbon. In this case, when the core has
         | solidified, it must have expelled a part of the dissolved
         | carbon at the surface of the core. Due to the high pressure,
         | the expelled carbon must have formed diamond, instead of
         | forming graphite, as it happens at the solidification of
         | smelted pig iron (after a sufficient time, so that any
         | metastable carbides will decompose).
        
       | dotancohen wrote:
       | To those looking at the fine diagrams: CMB in this context is
       | obviously not cosmic background radiation, it is core/mantle
       | boundary.
        
         | JorgeGT wrote:
         | I was thinking of the BFE...
        
       | tsujamin wrote:
       | Luckily The Core (2003) gave us a realistic visualisation of what
       | this would look like ;)
        
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