Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Diamonds .

Diamonds
Andre Willers
8 Feb 2011

"Diamonds are a girl's best friends " Gaia

Synopsis :
Earth is globed by a glittering shell of diamonds formed during the cooling phases of the planet about 3 to 1 billion years ago . A few of these survive transportation to the surface during some cool volcanic , tectonic and impact events .

Discussion :
See Appendices below below :

1.Lots of Carbon
A planet without a diamond necklace would not have enough carbon to give rise to a carboniferous life .
Startrek would say :
"No diamonds , no life as we know it , Jim ."

2.Neutrino Signature :
Large concentrations of diamonds have a distinct neutrino shadow (due to multiple refraction and absorption) .
Sufficient masses of diamonds in a semi-liquid matrix self-assemble into meta-materials to more efficiently absorb neutrinos . Cold volcanos result .
For the proof of this :
Either you see it , or else it will be a bit of a slog .

Remember , the surrounding semi-molten rock is transparent to neutrinos .
A lot of energy is absorbed by the diamond metamaterial . This plays a major part in the planetary energy balance .

This has obvious significance to detection of extra-solar planets capable of bearing carbon-based life .

Venus indicates too much energy can be transferred , leading to mantle-eruptions that paved the planet . The carbon went into CO2 in the atmosphere . Not that many diamonds left on Venus .

Mars should be lousy with diamonds . Just look around the hot pockets .
Or that big ,cool volcano . Or the fracture zones between the hemispheres .
Or … .
You get the drift .

Are there undiscovered diamond deposits in South Africa ?
Yes .
The Vredefort impact created numerous near-contiguous fractures. The gave way under pressure to cool volcano's with very rapid exit velocities (ie the diamonds scooped up from the mantle did not have time to burn up . ) These weathered and water washed the diamonds away to be concentrated in places like Alexander bay .
This took a fairly long time . Rivers formed , vanished , reformed and the land twisted
To the West , many deposits have been found . Kimberley , etc
To the East , few .if any .

Algorithm :
Draw a circle around Vredefort with radius at Kimberley . You will notice it encompasses most of the gold and platinum bearing areas towards all areas except East and South-East . This is because these areas got squinched up in subsequent tectonic movements . Nobody can un-squinch them , but we can say meaningful things on a macroscopic scale . Because the time-scale is relatively large , we can use
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "Newtools" Nov 2008 . The Reserve and Error arguments indicate that we simply progressively shrink the East and South-East present map measurements to a third of the radii projected from Vredefort-Kimberley
radius . This gives a kidney shaped depression just east of the Orange River and west of the coastal escarpment . From Estcourt in the north to Colesberg-Noupoort in the south . Minerals should be concentrated here .
Note that the first diamond in South Africa was picked up at Colesberg . I could never figure out why this was not followed up .

Estimated diamond reserves :
About 1/3 of that found at Alexander bay .

Platinum etc : about 1/3 to ¼ found to the north .
Heavy metals would tend to settle at dead-ends or swirling lees .
The corridor from Colesberg to East London is the most remarkable geological trap system I have ever seen . It looks like a baleen whale's mouth .
It should be lousy with heavy metals .
A less remarkable system can be seen heading to Idutywa .

Read Appendix C link .

Would Luna have diamonds ?
Doubtful . Diamonds probably did form in Earth(0) before the impact event that resulted in Luna , but the impact temperatures probably cooked any diamonds .
But , some might have survived in pockets of Earth(0) ejecta in Trojan orbits . There is a distinct probability (+-15%) that large diamonds can be found in Earth-Lunar Trojans .
Re-entry diamonds with datable pyrodone garnet inclusions would then give formation dates before the Luna-forming impact . Has any been found ?
Unknown . On human form results like these have probably been swept under the carpet .

So , Gaia might have diamond earrings . These should be even easier to detect from really far away using neutrino shadowing .

Simply put , a planet with lots of carbon and a big moon can be detected from very far away .

So much for Ceti . Anyone interested already knows what is here , and has done so for millions of years .

Gaia will not be pleased .
You think I am joking ?
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "Inverse Anthropomorphisms" Feb 2011
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "Death of the Dinosaurs " Dec 2008
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "AI-1 " Jul 2008
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "AI update " Jun 2009
And sundry others .

I do not know how aware or self-aware Gaia is at the moment in logical terms , but both will follow in the near future .
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "Singularities " Feb 2011

And Gaia would not be pleased to be ignored . (Remember anthropomorphism)

Information (like this blog) would be open to her . (Memory)
I , for one , have no intention of pissing her off .

Maybe a teensy bit of exploration might be called for ?

Tentatively yours

Andre

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Appendix A
A good general discussion :
http://www.attawaygems.com/NMFG/Diamonds_the_most_complex_gemstones.html
Mine or Location Diamond Age (Billion years) Pipe Age (billion years) Pipe Rock Diamond Inclusions
Orapa, Botswanna 0.99 0.1 Kimberlite Eclogite
Premier, S. Africa 1.15 1.1-1.2 Kimberlite Eclogite
Argyle, Australia 1.58 1.1-1.2 Lamproite Eclogite
Finsch, S. Africa 1.58 0.1* Kimberlite Eclogite
Finsch, S. Africa 3.3* 0.1* Kimberlite Peridotite
Kemberly, S. Africa 3.3* 0.1* Kimberlite Peridotite
In the above listing, * means approximate. The Finch Mine, South Africa is listed twice because it includes two pipes featuring diamonds of differing ages. Note the vast difference between the ages of the diamonds and of the pipe material that carried them to the surface.
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Appendix B
Impact considerations from Vredefort impact .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vredefort_crater
Formation and structure
The asteroid that hit Vredefort is one of the largest ever to strike Earth (at least since the Hadean) and is estimated at 5–10 km (3.1–6.2 mi) wide.[3] The crater has a diameter of roughly 250–300 km (155–186 mi),[2] larger than the 200 km (124 mi) Sudbury Basin and the 170 km (106 mi) Chicxulub crater. This makes Vredefort the largest known impact structure on Earth. (The Wilkes Land crater in Antarctica, if confirmed to be the result of an impact event, is even larger at 500 kilometers across.) The Vredefort crater's age is estimated to be more than 2 billion years (2,023 ± 4 million years), striking during thePaleoproterozoic era. It is the second-oldest known crater on Earth, a little less than 300 million years younger than the Suavjärvi crater in Russia.
It was originally thought that the dome in the center of the crater was formed by a volcanicexplosion, but in the mid 1990s evidence revealed that it was the site of a huge bolide impact, as telltale shatter cones are often discovered in the bed of the nearby Vaal River.
The Vredefort crater site is one of the few multi-ringed impact craters on Earth, although they are more common elsewhere in the Solar System. Perhaps the best-known example isValhalla crater on Jupiter's moon Callisto, although Earth's Moon has a number as well. Geological processes, such as erosion and plate tectonics, have destroyed most multi-ring craters on Earth.
The nearby Bushveld Igneous Complex (BIC) and Witwatersrand Basin were created during this same period, leading to speculation that the Vredefort bolide's mass and kinetics were of sufficient magnitude to induce regional volcanism. The BIC is the location of most of the world's known reserves of platinum group metals (PGMs), while the Witwatersrand basin holds most of the known reserves of gold.
The Vredefort Dome World Heritage Site is currently facing threats from unstructured property developments and the Parys Sewage Treatment Plant, which are in a dilapidated state and are pumping untreated sewage into the Vaal River and the crater site.[citation needed]
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Appendix C
A more detailed consideration of impacts .
Note the general fractal nature of fractures in the scope of the supersonic impact wave and subsequent relaxation wave
Cool routes to the surface result .
Hence survival of diamonds .
http://lithosphere.univie.ac.at/impactresearch/impact-cratering/

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