Well, not exactly a diamond. Way denser, to start with, and the electrons will be in a fermi gas state which isnât quite the same as a diamond crystal such as youâd think of when holding a diamond in your hand.
Still, donât tell De Beers!
Thanks, you jerk, for telling the world. Now my wife is going to want me to get it for her!
Can someone do an XKCD-style calculation, and tell me which would be worth more, the diamond or the cost of the expedition to the diamond?
Donât worry about precision â a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation will be enough to determine whether or not I should burn my life-savings and take over a large country to embark on this gigantic intergenerational project â I mean, <ahem>, will be mildly interesting over my lunch break.
Diamonds are forever. Electron degenerate matter is very difficult to contain.
Can we call the pulsar Lucy?
Only if itâs got some âsplaininâ to do.
Donât they talk about this in the new Jarmusch film âOnly Lovers Left Aliveâ? Itâs an almost good modern vampire movie⌠something thatâs even rarer than a planet sized diamond ( rknop - i bow to your scienceyness).
Itâs hard to figure out a way to sell an Earth sized diamond without crashing the market. I mean diamonds arenât even rare, itâs only the cutthroat (sometimes literally) business practices that keep them expensive at all.
Bringing that diamond would not only crush markets, it will also crush Earth quite literally.
âŚbut gravity does a very nice job containing it in a white dwarfâŚ
No, please! Do tell De Beers!
Itâs 900 light years away. Stick them all on a rocket and launch them at it. Even at our best attainable speeds, itâd take something like 50,000 years round trip - during which time we wonât have to deal with them here on earth!
That and the cultural value they possess.
People are told by society that diamonds are valuable, so theyâre willing to pay unrealistic prices for a commodity that isnât rare, which in turn keeps the value artficially high, in turn reinforcing the societal belief that diamonds are valuable.
Itâs a vicious cycle, one helped along by De Beerâs marketing department, who work very hard to convince people that 1) diamonds really are rare and exclusive and that 2) the only âproperâ way to express love is to pay large percentages of oneâs yearly wages on an artificially overvalued shiny bit of carbon.
Ooohhh, good, yes! Very good!
Included for interest, saw this the other day:
Also notable for De Beers reference:
While DeBeers could not understand how the Soviets were producing such a large quantity of gem diamonds of such uniform size, and supposedly from one mine that by DeBeers surveys should not be capable of such diamond production, they were, nevertheless, pressured to purchase them all lest the Soviets simply dump the diamonds on the open market, thus flooding it and bringing down diamond prices.
Did anyone else think of Mount Zeus in 2061: Odyssey Three?
The problem is if they somehow actually succeed, forming a space born diamond worshipping society over the millenia, advancing technologically out of pure zealotry, developing the technology to move stars, and then once they reach their fabled and holy destination, towing it back to the forgotten homeland of Earth to fulfill the prophecies of old.
How else can two octillion monthsâ salary last forever?
Fitzgerald would be impressed.
Can we charge them interest on the cost of the trip, as well?
