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Diamonds in days (actually, minutes!)

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For many people, the value of a diamond is partially wrapped up in the belief that they are millions of years old. However, a company called LifeGem, has found a way to manufacture diamonds in as short as six months using the carbon found in the cremated remains of people. Even your pets can now be turned into beautiful blue, yellow or clear diamonds.

5704-diamondPhoto: chomikuj.pl/kariba

LifeGem describes how they create their diamonds,

‘The process for creating high-quality diamonds has been present for many years. General Electric first pioneered this technology in the mid-1950s. Diamonds are created by subjecting carbon, the primary element of all diamonds, to conditions that recreate the forces of nature. The LifeGem creation process is identical to this, only we use an exact carbon source to create a beautiful and meaningful diamond tribute for you and your family.’1

The company extracts the carbon from the cremated remains and, by baking the carbon at temperatures up to 3000 ºC, it is purified and converted to graphite.

‘To create your LifeGem we now place this graphite in one of our unique diamond presses which replicates the awesome forces of nature—heat and pressure.’1

Notice that even though they are attempting to replicate the forces of nature that are believed to be involved with the creation of diamonds they don’t include ‘millions of years’ in the list of ‘ingredients’. That’s because they know that millions of years are not required to make diamonds. To summarize: carbon + heat + pressure + just a few months = a diamond.

‘Other than being created in our lab, LifeGem diamonds are molecularly identical to naturally occurring diamonds. They possess exactly the same traits—hardness, brilliance, fire and luster.’1

And faster still!!

Actually, it’s possible to synthesise diamonds in days, rather than months. Or even just hours.

For example, researchers have now made diamonds by reacting carbon dioxide with metallic sodium in a pressurized oven at only 440ºC—the lowest temperature reported so far for diamond synthesis—and 800 atmospheres. It took just 12 hours.

And how’s this: researchers have transformed graphite into ultrahard pure diamond in only a few minutes under static high pressure and temperatures of 2,300–2,500°C. With their extreme hardness (being polycrystalline, they are even harder than single-crystal diamonds), these transparent artificial diamonds could be used in industry where real diamonds are currently used to cut and polish other hard materials.

The ‘millions of years’ are unobserved speculation!

Rapidly-formed diamonds are yet another example of something commonly thought to require millions of years but observed to happen rapidly. Science involves making observations, but no one has ever observed anything taking millions of years. Regarding fossilization, dinosaur expert Dr Phil Currie from the Tyrell Museum in Alberta, Canada has said,

‘Fossilization is a process that can take anything from a few hours to millions of years … ’2

Clearly he has observed rapid fossilization. But he has not observed fossilization taking place over millions of years. Therefore the statement that fossils can form in a few hours is ‘scientific’ but the unobserved ‘millions of years’ process is unsubstantiated speculation.

Other observations that geological processes happen quickly include:

All of these observations support the biblical record of a recent creation followed by a global Flood.

Published: 15 April 2008

References

  1. LifeGem website http://www.lifegem.com Return to text.
  2. Philip J. Currie & Eva B. Koppelhus, 101 Questions about Dinosaurs, Dover Publications, p. 11, 1996. Return to text.