Diamonds in days (actually, minutes!)
by Richard Fangrad
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.
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!
just one more example of something commonly thought to require millions of years
but observed to happen rapidly
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.
Related articles
Further reading
Related resources
References
- LifeGem website
http://www.lifegem.com Return to text.
- Philip J. Currie & Eva B. Koppelhus, 101 Questions
about Dinosaurs, Dover Publications, p. 11, 1996. Return to
text.
Published: 15 April 2008(GMT+10)
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