Thursday, March 12, 2009

Diamonds

How old is a typical diamond? How did its carbon get underground? Is it biological carbon subducted by tectonic forces? Or is it carbon from the formation of the earth?

One experiment that could be done is to dump a whole bunch of specially tagged carbon (with impurities) into subduction trenches all around the world, and see if you get tagged diamonds out in a few million or billion years.

Start the experiment now, write down some records, and hope that whatever civilization or species that is around then (probably not us), can read our records and interpret the results.

What experiments has humanity carried out lasting longer than say two generations?

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