Are Diamonds Forever?

Question

Surely they must break down at some point? Anyone know?

Answer 1

They are the hardest naturally occuring substance on earth. If they have a decomposition rate it is too small to be measured by present technology.

Answer 2

Well, it's true that diamonds are the hardest known substance, they can only be scratched by other diamonds. However, diamonds are far from indestructible.

Because of their extreme hardness, they are also quite brittle. Diamonds can chip or break if dropped or treated roughly. A large diamond can be broken or shattered with a simple steel cold chisel.

You can burn a diamond, by heating it, and then dropping it into liquid oxygen or liquid fluorine. You can dissolve diamonds in molten iron, molten tin, molten aluminum, and some other molten metals, as well as a number of exotic chemicals.

Also, Diamonds aren't really very rare at all, as far as gemstones go. Good quality natural rubies, emeralds, star sapphires, and demantoid garnets are far rarer and more expensive than diamonds. It's an open secret that the DeBeers cartel (now known as the "diamond trading company") hoards tons of gem quality diamonds each year, in order to drastically inflate the price of the diamonds they do sell.

In fact, the tradition of diamond wedding rings was actually *created* by DeBeers around 1950, in one of the cleverest and most successful marketing schemes in history.

A handful of companies in the US and Russia have begun mass producing large, very cheap, synthetic diamonds, of extremely high quality.These diamonds are very consistent in quality, and cost next to nothing, compared with mined diamonds. If more companies start mass producing gem quality synthetics, then DeBeers, et. al. will quickly run themselves out of business. One company, Apollo Diamonds, has developed a process that may be able to create very large, ultra-pure diamonds, that could replace silicon in some electronics.

Hope you find all this interesting,
~W.O.M.B.A.T.

Answer 3

No.
Everything decays eventually. Even black holes.

Diamonds May Not Be Forever
Monday, Dec. 31, 1979



If a physicist says he is being sent off to a salt mine these days, he may not be joking. He could be heading 40 km (25 miles) east of Cleveland, where an 81-ton digging machine is carving a huge cavity in a salt mine 600 meters (2,000 ft.) below the ground. When excavation is completed, the cavern will be lined with synthetic rubber and filled with 10,000 tons of exceptionally pure, filtered water. Then, about two years from now, physicists will begin looking in the pool for flashes of light that could signal the decay of protons, confirm a unifying theory of nature, and end the cherished notion that matter is permanent.

Protons, which along with neutrons form the nuclei of atoms—and hence the bulk of the matter in the universe —have long been regarded as permanent fixtures on the subatomic scene, members of a family of heavy particles known as baryons. If they happened to collide with still other subatomic particles, one thing was certain: the number of baryons coming out of such interactions was always the same as the number going in. To put it in the language of physics, there was conservation of baryon number.

Now that idea is being challenged by, among others, Physicists Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow of Harvard and Pakistani Abdus Salam, winners of this year's Nobel Prize in physics for showing an underlying unity of two of nature's four basic forces: electromagnetism and the so-called weak force, which governs some forms of radioactive decay within the atomic nucleus. In carrying their work further to relate these two forces to a third —the strong force (which binds the atomic nucleus together)—they and other researchers determined that such unity requires a net loss of baryons when certain particles collide. In other words, the proton must decay into lighter subatomic fragments. By most physicists' reckonings, protons have a mean life of around 10,000 billion billion billion (10³-²) years (more than half of them will disintegrate in that time). Thus out of 10³-² protons, only one is likely to decay each year. The problem: how to detect that rare disintegration.

Enter the subterranean reservoir, as well as similar experiments at a South Dakota gold mine, a Utah silver mine and a Minnesota iron mine. Based on the number of protons in the cavity's water (more than 10³³), Physicists John Vander Velde of the University of Michigan, Frederick Reines of the University of California at Irvine, and their colleagues figure that there should be about 200 decay "events" per year.

Answer 4

No, mmhh Yes!
But Kryptonite definitely Yes he he.
I think they are because it's the hardest material but might be wrong, and sometimes the obvious might not be the right answer so this is a good question.
Have a star.

Answer 5

Diamonds are foreever, they do not get eroded my wind and air....they survived 30 billion years until they were finally discovered. But the question you need to ask is when are the diamonds going to run out?

Answer 6

In response to Mr Crusty: how do you know with 100% certainty the universe won't last forever - (if you can of course define forever in the context of the universe and infinity). Wisest is he who knows he knows nothing at all - you ignoramus.

Answer 7

Dimonds are the most strongest material found in nature. They don't realy break down, they just get eroded away after millons of years.

Answer 8

I hope they are forever, my engagement ring is one and I want that forever

Answer 9

I think they last forever and they're also a girl's best friend LOL

Answer 10

They can be burned with the help of liquid oxygen..