杏吧原创

Home-made diamonds

While the rest of the world has been craning its neck to catch a glimpse of Sputnik orbiting the planet, a group of scientists back on the ground have been looking the other way. Withdrawing from the mysteries of space, they have cast their minds down 240 miles into the depths of the Earth. There, the pressure is enormous and the temperatures believed to be higher than 5000 掳F. And, in a sealed chamber which duplicates these conditions, this handful of scientists from General Electric鈥檚 metallurgical products department have aped nature and made diamonds.

Sixty thousand carats were piled up in a tiny heap for sceptical news reporters to touch last week. They looked like grains of grey sand until they were picked up and held. Then they shone with lights of many colours. Although none could approach the size or sparkle of a fine-cut flawless gem, the man who led the team that created them said: 鈥淭hey are not imitation. They are all nature has produced, except in size.鈥�

Other people have tried to create diamonds in the past and failed; the first known attempt was in 1828. Just how the General Electric synthesis of the stones was accomplished cannot be disclosed because of a US federal law passed during the second world war which bans publication of patent information which could be helpful to an enemy nation. Diamonds fit this bill because much of the machining on aircraft, guns, shells, tanks, trucks and automobiles is done with cemented carbide tools sharpened by diamond grinding wheels. But whatever the synthetic process used to create the new diamonds, because the US currently imports as many as 10 million carats of natural stones 鈥� chiefly from the Belgian Congo and South Africa 鈥� the ability to create diamonds for industrial use makes both economic and strategic sense.

From The New 杏吧原创, 24 October 1957