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It rains solid diamonds on Uranus and Neptune

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Re: It rains solid diamonds on Uranus and Neptune

#41

Post by int_handler »

tpeo wrote: post #31
int_handler wrote: post #20

Can we officially rename Uranus to Caelus? Uranus (more accurately, Ouranos) is a Greek god. Besides Earth, all the other planets are named after Roman gods, thus Uranus should be named Caelus to be consistent.

Why is it that it bothers you that it's a Greek name and not that there's a planet named after the sky?

It's not named after the sky. It's named after the God of the Sky, which doesn't bother me any more than other planetary bodies being named after deities of couriers, beauty, war, thunder, agriculture, ocean, the underworld, and so on.

The main reasons to rename Uranus is 1) consistency and 2) the puns. Either name it Caelus to be consistent with the naming convention used for the other planets or name it Ouranos to be closer to its Greek spelling and pronunciation.

I prefer (1) because the current situation is similar to having a codebase where all class names are PascalCase but there's this one class name in Upper_Snake_Case.

Re: It rains solid diamonds on Uranus and Neptune

#42

Post by int_handler »

Analemma_ wrote: post #36
Razengan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always preferred "Terra" or "Gaia" to "Earth." It could be a preference from video games, or maybe it’s because the common usage and being a synonym for ground and dirt has made the word seem ”low-brow” and the alternatives classy, exotic or poetic, and if their popularity was reversed we would think "Earth" was a classier word, but still. “Terrans” will always sound better than “Earthlings” however. :)

I think this is just one instance of a near-universal perception among English speakers that Greek/Latin words ("Terra") sound more sophisticated than Anglo-Saxon ones ("earth"). It's hard to hypothesize about whether this could be reversed in an alternate universe because this tendency goes back many centuries: for a loooong time Latin was the language of the scholarly and political elite, whereas Anglo-Saxon Old En…

There is a similar reason for why English swear words sound Germanic: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/06/swear-words-etymo...

Re: It rains solid diamonds on Uranus and Neptune

#43

Post by tpeo »

int_handler wrote: post #41
tpeo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it that it bothers you that it's a Greek name and not that there's a planet named after the sky?

It's not named after the sky. It's named after the God of the Sky, which doesn't bother me any more than other planetary bodies being named after deities of couriers, beauty, war, thunder, agriculture, ocean, the underworld, and so on. The main reasons to rename Uranus is 1) consistency and 2) the puns. Either name it Caelus to be consistent with the naming convention used for the other planets or name it Ouranos to…

It is named after the sky. Or rather, it's named after a deity which was named after the sky: οὐρανός is/was the common term for sky in Greek.

Re: It rains solid diamonds on Uranus and Neptune

#44

Post by sogen »

jacquesm wrote: post #16
Animats wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CVD diamond synthesis has become so effective that it's embarrassing.[1][2] The diamond gem industry made a terrible mistake. They promoted "flawless" diamonds as the most valuable. Now they're up against a process borrowed from the semiconductor industry, which makes flawless crystals in bulk. DeBeers keeps trying to maintain the distinction between natural and synthesized diamonds, but it's coming unglued. They kee…

There was a beautiful wired article about these: https://www.wired.com/2003/09/diamond/

Wow, thanks for the link. Found sad that Apollo is no longer, and Gemesis rebranded

Re: It rains solid diamonds on Uranus and Neptune

#45

Post by manmal »

cortesoft wrote: post #25
cooper12 wrote: post #17

Can someone explain a concept to me? I never understood how gold rushes were profitable. If you suddenly found a mass quantity of a "rare" material, wouldn't it no longer be valuable since its value depended on its scarcity?

Depending on the resource, there may be latent demand that can be met when a cheaper source of a resource is discovered. Demand curves are not linear. Often times, as a resource becomes more readily available, a ton of new uses spring up that were not economically feasible when the cost was higher.

The term for this is price elasticity: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/priceelasticity.asp

Re: It rains solid diamonds on Uranus and Neptune

#46

Post by remarkEon »

tinfins wrote: post #32

There's an old sci-fi short story about a planet with diamond rains. I wish I could remember the name - Google is failing me right now. I think I read it in one of those yearly compilation books.

Is this a thing in Ringworld? Been a long while since I read that one but I seem to recall diamond rain in that one.

Re: It rains solid diamonds on Uranus and Neptune

#47

Post by tempestn »

cm2012 wrote: post #15
Animats wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CVD diamond synthesis has become so effective that it's embarrassing.[1][2] The diamond gem industry made a terrible mistake. They promoted "flawless" diamonds as the most valuable. Now they're up against a process borrowed from the semiconductor industry, which makes flawless crystals in bulk. DeBeers keeps trying to maintain the distinction between natural and synthesized diamonds, but it's coming unglued. They kee…

Synthetic diamonds are not available to consumers much cheaper than real ones.

Moissanite is though, and it has a higher refractive index and higher dispersion than diamond, so in the metrics that theoretically make diamond attractive as a gemstone, it's superior.

Re: It rains solid diamonds on Uranus and Neptune

#48

Post by remarkEon »

Animats wrote: post #11
jacquesm wrote: post #5

SpaceX' master plan revealed. Poor DeBeers.

CVD diamond synthesis has become so effective that it's embarrassing.[1][2] The diamond gem industry made a terrible mistake. They promoted "flawless" diamonds as the most valuable. Now they're up against a process borrowed from the semiconductor industry, which makes flawless crystals in bulk. DeBeers keeps trying to maintain the distinction between natural and synthesized diamonds, but it's coming unglued. They kee…

Aren't we still a ways off from when this technology can scale and become economically viable? Still, I'm sort of tempted to get one of these things off Alibaba and have it looked at.

Re: It rains solid diamonds on Uranus and Neptune

#49

Post by nashashmi »

Razengan wrote: post #30
int_handler wrote: post #20

Can we officially rename Uranus to Caelus? Uranus (more accurately, Ouranos) is a Greek god. Besides Earth, all the other planets are named after Roman gods, thus Uranus should be named Caelus to be consistent.

I've always preferred "Terra" or "Gaia" to "Earth." It could be a preference from video games, or maybe it’s because the common usage and being a synonym for ground and dirt has made the word seem ”low-brow” and the alternatives classy, exotic or poetic, and if their popularity was reversed we would think "Earth" was a classier word, but still. “Terrans” will always sound better than “Earthlings” however. :)

Where did the name Earth come from? https://www.indifferentlanguages.com/words/earth

It is a common word in many languages and it has many forms like Ard or Erd or Jord.

The other word for earth that is also very common is zameen, but that means land.

Re: It rains solid diamonds on Uranus and Neptune

#50

Post by nashashmi »

Pmop wrote: post #40
Razengan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always preferred "Terra" or "Gaia" to "Earth." It could be a preference from video games, or maybe it’s because the common usage and being a synonym for ground and dirt has made the word seem ”low-brow” and the alternatives classy, exotic or poetic, and if their popularity was reversed we would think "Earth" was a classier word, but still. “Terrans” will always sound better than “Earthlings” however. :)

It's funny because in Brazilian portuguese, people commonly use terra to refer to dirt.

Some people use Earth for dirt as well, like earthwork.
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