CHAPTER 2: DIAMONDS—ETERNAL LIFE
Diamonds
“A Diamond is Forever,” is what the Diamond Trading Company advertises. Diamonds are Forever was a 1971 James Bond flick with Sean Connery. Wikipedia spends 19 pages on the subject, and reports that $9 billion worth is annually mined, mostly in Africa, is the hardest known naturally occurring material and is a transparent crystal consisting of tetrahedrally bonded carbon atoms. When carbon forms a rhombohedral crystal, it is graphite, which is soft, opaque and dark gray.
One carat of diamond weighs .07 ounces and costs around $7000, but the cost/carat increases with size, as a 5 carat piece now wholesales for $115,000, or $23,000/carat. The largest one was the Cullinan Diamond, owned by Queen Elizabeth II at 3,107 karats (it was made into other cuts), the largest of 530 karats now the centerpiece of the sceptre for King Edward VII. However, in 2007, a 7,000 carat greenish diamond, about the size of a coconut, was purportedly found in South Africa.
The largest ruby (an aluminum oxide) is 2,475 carats (about a pound) and largest emerald (silicon oxide) 1,686 carats.
These two gems have no carbon.
(In the constellation Centaurus is the largest diamond suspected at the core of a dead star weighing in at 5 million trillion trillion pounds at a distance of 50 light years. The largest pearl is the 14 pound Pearl Lao Tzu or Allah.)
Scientists have mimicked nature, and artificial diamonds will someday not be readily distinguishable from the real ones by the human eye. Anyway, rubies and emeralds are rarer than diamonds, but both can also be artificially produced.
Alas, diamonds are not forever, as they can burn at 800 °C (might make a nice counterpoint title to Fahrenheit 451, the temperature at which paper combusts, and also the title of a novel by Ray Bradbury) and over a long period of time (maybe even the age of the Universe) decay into graphite. But the carbon nature of diamonds links to human life, which is also carbon-based. There is, of course, the notion that life could just as well have been silicon (atomic number 14, element found in the popular photovoltaic cells, glass and breast implants) based, and sand (another compound of silicon), too, lasts a long time. In any case, diamonds are symbolically appropriate for eternal life, for it refracts with brilliance and is full of color.
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Alas, diamonds are not forever, as they can burn at 800 °C (might make a nice counterpoint title to Fahrenheit 451, the temperature at which paper combusts, and also the title of a novel by Ray Bradbury) and over a long period of time (maybe even the age of the Universe) decay into graphite. But the carbon nature of diamonds links to human life, which is also carbon-based. There is, of course, the notion that life could just as well have been silicon (atomic number 14, element found in the popular photovoltaic cells, glass and breast implants) based, and sand (another compound of silicon), too, lasts a long time. In any case, diamonds are symbolically appropriate for eternal life, for it refracts with brilliance and is full of color.
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The Dow Jones Industrials dropped back 173 to 8300, but world markets almost all went up, no doubt a reaction to what happened yesterday on Wall Street. Gold remained at $950/toz and crude oil went up to $63/barrel.
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By the way, Bloomberg now has a Wind Index of wind energy stocks, which can be found by clicking on above or below:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=bwind:ind
By the way, Bloomberg now has a Wind Index of wind energy stocks, which can be found by clicking on above or below:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=bwind:ind
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