TheCunningLinguists
26885
375
6
https://boingboing.net/2024/08/01/mercury-may-have-11-mile-deep-layer-of-diamonds.html
Sep 11, 2024 6:57 PM
TheCunningLinguists
26885
375
6
https://boingboing.net/2024/08/01/mercury-may-have-11-mile-deep-layer-of-diamonds.html
TheBlueMuppet
Diamonds on Mercury? That's HARD to believe! Eh? Eh? Oh.
evilspock
Diamonds are just carbon - a very plentiful material. As manufacturing tech advances, they get easier and easier to make - at some point in the next few decades they'll become cheap and ubiquitous, potentially replacing glass for some uses. By the time we can realistically mine mercury - the diamonds there will be a curiosity.
WolfOfLore
And are recruiting new slave labor for the mines.
NoelleFrost
But they're aren't any people to enslave on Mercury, how are they going to mine them?
GloriousPirateBeard
Cosmically speaking, wood is the rarest substance on earth
SomethingOtherThanMyRealName
"Yea there's a lot, but there's the cost of shipping, handling, processing, marketing, storage, so they're going to be REALLY expensive." - also DeBeers
SquidBaitBadgerDroid
That’s a nice ring!
Thanks, he went to Mercury
3006mv
Could probably find a lot of gold on some asteroids too
Urgalicity
They'd make a good high wear resistant coating. Crush em to dust and glue em like sand. Great grit for public walkways.
ameranthe
Sparkly space rocks sound more appealing than blood diamonds. I wonder what color they are.
JustSomeDevGuy
wantedTwo
Dibs
Sangueffusor
icurays1
theskepticinme
Diamonds: pretty, not rare anymore
lospaturno
are they pretty tho? I mean, a girl can be pretty, those are just small crystals... bismuth is more pretty, I guess.
Mmbear
Lab made diamonds are easy to make and have less imperfections than natural diamonds.
Syko73
Diamonds were never really rare though. The supply is just very tightly controlled
JPtheArrogant
Nah, DeBeers would start a nuke program so no one else can have the diamonds. Gotta control those prices by limiting the supply
MickeyCallahan
Much easier, really.
treboresque
or start an ad campaign that says true love can only be expressed with a terrestrial diamond ring.
Hatsodoom
Remember folks, jewelry is a general scam. Like a scam not even the Eds would run.
HonestCommentFarmer
DeBeers isn't interested until they can get children onto the surface of Venus to work in those mines.
ballsoutflyer
I thank Austin Powers for the new pronounciation of "Mag-ma".
BarderBetterFasterStronger
Wouldn't De Beers immediately lobby against visiting Mercury??? Diamonds are extremely common and are artificially expensive because of controlled supply.
TheCunningLinguists
They'd want to control the supply, as they do now.
brianterrel
Siberia has trillions of dollars worth of impact diamonds that nobody has bothered to harvest because the price will collapse if they do, making the whole effort a loss.
brianterrel
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148403/russias-crater-of-diamonds
brianterrel
Diamonds are not rare or valuable.
foreverinchains
Diamonds are extremely useful for many industrial applications. Harvesting diamond from Mercury or an asteroid would result in the price plummeting due to sudden abundance, which would only be a problem for companies like DeBeers that have spent a century artificially inflating their value for jewelry.
So, sure, let's have DeBeers go harvest diamonds in space.
yerrific
Also, they’re shiny.
TheCunningLinguists
The point is they would hoard them to control the market. But....can you just picture the advertising campaign for Space Diamonds, so much more exclusive than earth diamonds.
foreverinchains
More exclusive but equally worthless. We can already make our own diamonds that rival or exceed natural ones in size and quality, and we can create diamonds to different specifications for various industrial applications with very high precision.
The only reason to mine diamonds from space is for industrial or structural applications where we can't make enough ourselves.
Jewelry made from space diamonds would just be a money laundering scheme much like a banana taped to a canvas.
Filanwizard
And more importantly for uses in space where firing rocket loads of them from our own gravity well would be cost prohibitive.
Pwnzistor
The cost of harvesting diamonds from mercury and returning them to earth would keep the price pretty high still. Mercury is one of, if not the hardest planets to get to and return from.
foreverinchains
No, it wouldn't.
Again, we can just make diamonds for jewelry.
There is currently no benefit to mining diamonds from Mercury. If we ever need massive amounts of diamond for some kind of infrastructure in space, that might change.
ThatNoPicklePeeThatNoPumpARum
Diamonds are worthless.
B0ardski
not if they're on a spinning blade cutting rock,concrete stone and steel, that's how they stole your catalytic converter
B0ardski
or your locked up ebike
RandomDude74575
i thought they use a sawzall for stealing cats?
ThatNoPicklePeeThatNoPumpARum
Wow I totally didn't know that! You're so smart. This is sarcasm btw. I obviously meant it as in monetary value not in terms of usefulness.
glovelyday
We can make gem quality diamonds by the ton. They are, and always have been, of very little value. Their exorbitant costs are simply a product of advertising and tight control of the market by DeBeers and a few others.
tetondons
Exactly. As such, DeBeers won't make a space program, they will sabotage any program that tried to mine these diamonds. (FYI, human technology is no where even close to a point where we could mine these for a profit, so DeBeers is safe... for now).
SewerRanger
You don't need to mine them. You can literally buy a diamond making machine on alibaba for $200k: https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/09/you-can-buy-a-diamond-making-machine-for-200000-on-alibaba/
ThingsThatDontJustifyGenocide
Also, 11 miles deep, the earth is probably loaded with diamonds.
11 miles is EXTREMELY DEEP for mining.
jsims281
I think that they are saying the layer is 11 miles thick, not that it starts at 11 miles down.
HootSloot
They are saying 11miles thick but it isn't on the surface either
HeadJamistan
"DA BEERS" in Chris Farley's voice.
leperoutcastunclean
Careful, you'll get a ham lodged in your aorta.
Stoneagedudeman
Diamonds are industrial materials, they've served their purpose as currency and that time is gone. It's exactly the same reason we don't use rolled furs as currency anymore: they're literally worthless out of their specific context.
MapleSyrupMafia
Even then, lab made diamonds are the same exact thing and cost no blood at all unless a step worker get stuck in a machine.
till231331415
What the helll am I supposed to do with all my furs!!
muliphen
Shove em up your butt!
mafiacarstarter
Wear them to keep warm.
CyberHexx
Learn to sew, make them into clothing accessories, and (hopefully) start a clothing brand that doesn't rely on slave labor in third world countries.
peruvianfightingmidgets
"Theyre literally worthless out of their specific context", you just described all currency
woodworkerf
How right you are!! +1 +1 +1
cuddleskunk
Nope. Gold, probably the most used currency in all of history, is useful for electronics, medicine, chemistry, and probably more.
woodworkerf
Should I be taking Gold as medicine?
RootMeanSqr
You need it to be in liquid form to let it work it's magic.
Geistbar
The statement was effectively tautological so that doesn't work. X is worthless outside of its "specific context" of usefulness. Which is another way of saying, a thing has no value except for where it has value.
Gold's properties that give it value in certain use cases are the specific context where it has value.
cuddleskunk
I took it as singular as opposed to plural as they said "context" and not "contexts". Furs only have one real use. Gold has many uses.
KingXizor
Gold's industrial uses gave it actual functional value, it's use as currency was just based on it's rarity and hue since it had no value for anything else beyond decoration. So gold essentially fits in two categories anyway Gold(modern-industrial) and Gold(archaic-currency) that don't really cross since by the time we hit modern industry gold as an currency base was unfeasable.
peruvianfightingmidgets
Except we dont use gold as a standardised currency anymore and youre describing its practical uses. Bricks and wood are used for building houses, are they currency?
cuddleskunk
Gold still has a TON of value purely as a commodity. Commodities, especially ones without a real expiration date, are essentially just currency.