If diamonds are nothing than carbon produced by millions of tons?

Question

of pressure, (and maybe "bottom of the sea" pressure doesn't count). How long would it take for the coal at the bottom of the Atlantic, used on the Titanic to become diamonds ?

Answer 1

When you are looking at a diamond you are looking at about a billion years...give or take. it is a deep Earth process. That coal would have to be much deeper and under a lot more heat AND pressure before that process could even begin.

Answer 2

Ignoring the matter of heat/pressure which could never occur in sea bottom conditions or even with the movement of tectonic plates it is impossible for coal to turn into diamond. The reason for this is that diamond consists of VERY pure carbon containing impurities only in parts per million quantities. Coal, on the other hand, is at its very best only about 85% - 90% carbon and the boiler coal used on the Titanic was even lower than that. With this level of extraneous material the carbon would not be able to crystallize at all.
It is interesting to note that there was a report back in the Edwardian period in England that coal had been turned into diamond by a volcanic intrusion that went through a coal seam. University students had been on a field trip with their professor and they "salted" the area with some small diamond crystals from Africa which they allowed the professor to find. The poor old fool was taken in completely and wrote a paper on the matter before he was informed about the joke, however by that time the myth had taken root and seems to be alive and well to this day.

Answer 3

Geolicious is correct. The pressures at the bottom of the ocean are still well within the stability field of graphite and are not enough to form diamond. Diamonds will only be formed starting at about the upper mantle of the earth, where the heat and pressure are enough to make diamond the more stable phase. The coal at the bottom of the Atlantic will not ever become diamond, not even after billions of years.

Answer 4

the coal in the titanic would be lying on the surface of the ocean floor in the Atlantic ocean. it has to be covered by tons of earth, which will take millions of years by processes of underwater volcano forming new islands and the weight of those new islands forming the pressure or the coal being caught between an oceanic trench and having that trench enclose on itself. the oceanic pressure is just not enough to form the diamonds.

Answer 5

Diamonds are formed by carbon being trapped in molten rock miles below the surface. As rock cools contaction of rock and depth pressure causes carbon atoms to link into tetrahedral crystals.

Answer 6

u know, it takes billions of years to do such a work & it also needs a big big presure not at the end of a sea...