X-ray laser turns plastic into diamonds

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Nahid#13
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Joined: Tue Jan 31, 2023 7:13 am

X-ray laser turns plastic into diamonds

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Scientists have turned plastic into diamonds. Using high-powered lasers, the team pierced samples of PET, a common material used in plastic bottles, to create intense heat and pressure to create tiny diamonds that can naturally fall onto planets like Uranus and Neptune. Here on Earth, diamonds are valued for their rarity (even if that varies), but on other planets they may seem as common as rocks. On ice giants like Uranus and Neptune, extreme pressure is thought to compress elements like hydrogen and carbon into solid diamonds, which then fall through the atmosphere like rain. The phenomenon was not directly detected, but in 2017 a team of scientists reported that they had recreated the process in a laboratory.

They did so by firing the world's most powerful X-ray laser, the Lina Coherent Light Source (LCLS), at samples of hydrocarbon materials. This instantly heated them Belgium Mobile Number List to temperatures of up to 6,000 °C (10,800 °F) and generated powerful shock waves with a pressure of several million atmospheres, creating tiny 'Nano diamonds'. While experiments have shown this to be technically possible, the team says the original hydrocarbon materials, such as polystyrene, did not accurately simulate the elements present in the interiors of these ice giants. Oxygen is also present in large amounts, so scientists have explored other materials that could introduce this key element into the mix.

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They opted for PET, a form of plastic commonly used for food and beverage packaging that has a good balance of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. The team repeated the experiment by padding thin-film PET samples with LCLS and then using two different imaging techniques to see not only whether Nano diamonds were formed, but also how quickly and how large they grew. And indeed, they detected a diamond density of up to 3.87 grams per cubic cm. The action of oxygen was supposed to accelerate the splitting of carbon and hydrogen, and thus encourage the formation of Nano diamonds , said Dominik Kraus, the author of the study.
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