From farts to diamonds
At Davos last week I met some remarkable technologists. But one guy who I had never heard of before had an interesting story: his firm turns methane gas into diamonds. Hence my sensationalistic headline of turning farts to diamonds (farts contain mostly methane gas).
The guy is Neil Kane, President of Advanced Diamond Technologies, and that’s him above showing his diamond film that was deposited on a bed of silicon to Sun Microsystems’ lead researcher John Gage.
On the bus ride home from Davos to Zurich he sat next to me and told me how the process works and just how useful it is.
Turns out methane has one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms. If you burn methane you’ll probably get a little soot, which is those carbon atoms showing up. But if you remove the oxygen, throw in a cocktail of a few other secret gasses, and heat it all up you can deposit those carbon items on a starter bed of diamond.
Now, why would they do that?
Well, turns out that diamond has a few interesting properties. We all know it’s the hardest substance around, right? Well, I didn’t know that if you have diamond on two surfaces that it’s among the lowest friction coefficient around, too. Translation: if you coat bearing surfaces with diamond you’ll save energy and the bearings will last a lot longer.
What else are they doing with it? Well, did you know your cell phone has several quartz crystals in it? Why? The crystals vibrate and keep the clock rates all synchronized. Diamond, he tells me, is even better than quartz for that use because it is more highly tunable and energy efficient and can be made to fit in a smaller space than quartz can.
Anyway, it’s great to hear about good old American innovation that’s happening in the midwest (the company is located near Chicago).
And if you think I’m being original with my headline here, I’m not. As they say “farts are a girl’s best friend!”
No, you’re right, that won’t go over well if I try it on Maryam. :-)
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January 30th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Actually, methane has one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms :).
January 30th, 2008 at 10:48 am
freesci, crap. I fixed that. Thanks!
January 30th, 2008 at 11:03 am
“No, you’re right, that won’t go over well if I try it on Maryam.”
I was going to say….
January 30th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Been looking at Olga Shenderova’s stuff for a few years now, quite interesting particulary in reference to detonation nanodiamonds.
January 30th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Why don’T they use the diamonds piling up in the vaults of that company… you know… THAT company.
January 30th, 2008 at 11:26 am
I’m aghast; a new juvenile low.
January 30th, 2008 at 11:27 am
What are they putting in the water at Davos?
The fresh influx of hillarious post titles and photos is really refreshing, not to mention entertaining? Thanks for the breath of fresh air!
January 30th, 2008 at 11:36 am
a new juvenile low
Never fear, all hope is not lost. New low’s are always around the corner. One thing you can count on this blog.
January 30th, 2008 at 11:49 am
The Wall Street Journal used the headline “swamp gas to diamonds.”
Oh, geez, we can’t have any fun anymore? Gotta be so serious. I guess I should still wear the tie I wore at Davos last week.
January 30th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Anyone notice this guy looks like Jeff Pulver?
January 30th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
[...] Esa es la definición que acabo de leer, culpa de Scoble. [...]
January 31st, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Hence my sensationalistic headline of turning farts to diamonds (farts contain mostly methane gas).
Nothing makes a joke more humorous than explaining that joke in excruciating detail. Good job dishing out teh funny, Bob!
February 1st, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Scoble, I can’t believe you didn’t answer how big can they make the diamonds? I see more diamonds needing to be purchased for my wife Julia in my future, and would love to give her a… larger, more beautiful diamond.
The Diamond Age has been promised for a few years now.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/node/7908
February 1st, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Lloyd: these diamonds aren’t actually big enough to wear. In fact, it’s hard to see these with the human eye.
May 9th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
I always new that diamonds would have a more useful function other than looking beautiful on a finger.
They can grow diamonds though, check out the following link…
http://www.heart-in-diamond.com/