John Cross asked in his thread whether there were gems in the scrap dealer's shop that came from asteroid mining.
Now, the question of whether there are gems there is easy enough to address; but it occurs to me that the other question, whether these might have come from asteroid mining, is an intriguing one, and I'd like some feedback--particularly from Graeme and Eric, but from anyone else who thinks they have an argument one way or another.
My impression is that most gemstones come from compressed carbon deposits, and that most carbon deposits come from decaying organics. That means that we have the sequence of planetary life-->decay-->carbon formation-->compression-->gemstones. It also means that you can't have gemstones of the sort John wants unless you started at some point with life on a planet that somehow broke into asteroids.
I'm specifically thinking of carbon tetrahedrons--diamonds, rubys, emeralds, most of the more valuable clear faceted stones seem to me to be in this category. Of course, I could be wrong on this--generalist, you know, nothing is my field. However, given my thoughts on the matter, I'm inclined to think that there would not be stones of this sort in asteroids, unless our asteroids have a very unusual history.
What do others think?
--M. J. Young
Well MJ, it's not just that I want there to be gems available to my character, but it's also that I 100% firmly believe in life on other worlds. Why would an all-powerful God make only one planet capable of sustaining life, after all? So, in my opinion, God always has been making planets, God always will be making planets. So, if there are any other planets with life on them, eventually, in the cosmic score, they would break up and scatter their remains throughout space. It's not that much of a stretch, and in fact, seem to me very UNlikely that there would not be carbon-based diamonds and such inside asteroids.
I, as GM, would go for it, and have asteroid gems.
That's my intuition, off-the-top of my head-ism which is actually pretty good as an adviser.
Where did the asteroids come from? One assumes they broke up from a planet, or were chunks of comet. Either process could produce a lot of heat, and that might be enough to produce gems.
Also, there is the theory of Abiotic Oil (the theory you know and everyone else does is Biotic Oil.) This theory, of which I have the vaguest acquaintance, is that oil is produced by pressure, and that most oil on earth did not have any involvement with organics.
So that leaves the question of is there a process which might gather enough carbon in one place to be melted?
I do know diamonds are found, I think, in kimberlite, which tends to be in volcanic tunnels leading to the surface.
And of course, if the universe you're in was recently created, there might not have been enough time for diamonds to be slowly formed, and so they might be primordial rocks aka directly created. The book on polonium halos I recently read made a good case for pre-Cambrian granites being primordial.
Also, I think John's idea is Just Kewl which is a point in its favor.
Not to forget alien biologies (plants with silicon stems and diamond mirror refractors to gather heat), or some ancient alien technology which has byproducts (thats a good way to slip in some extra complication into your world).
Something else. You've got to realize that this is a completely different universe. Who is to say that its physics are the same? I mean I just came from a place where gems grew on trees. Did the tree produce carbon which decayed and went under extreme heat and pressure to create them? I think not.
People sometimes say that it is blasphemous to believe in extra-terrestrial life. I think it's blasphemous NOT to. Our human minds cannot even begin to grasp the concept of infinity. God is infinite. God could organize the universes into ways that we couldn't even begin to fathom. I believe not only in extra-terrestrial life, but also in the Multiverse, extra dimensions, and any number of other ways that an all-powerful God could organize things. Think of that last scene in Men In Black, where the alien is playing with marbles. The marbles the alien is playing with are entire universes. The alien may or may not even realize that. That is but a glimpse of how insignificant we are against God. God could organize things in ways that our pathetic little human brains couldn't even begin to grasp. I mean if gems can grow on trees, then they can most certainly show up in asteroids.
I should think gem-containing asteroids would be rare, if they were to be found at all. Firstly, most asteroids don't come from the destruction of larger planets, as far as I'm aware; they form as asteroids, were always asteroids (before that, they were dust). So there's that. Then, out of those asteroids that used to be bits of planet, we take only those that used to be bits of life-bearing planet- and out of those, only the asteroids that used to be the crust of that planet will be likely to have gemstones.
That's pretty slim pickings, it seems to me. I'm sure they're not unheard of - Krypton, at least, should produce a few gemsteroids - but I highly doubt they're common enough to support asteroid gem-mining as even a minor industry.
Hmm. After poking around a bit, I'm no longer sure. How do aluminum oxides form, anyway?
Scott, I might be wrong, but isn't carbon the single most commonly found element anywhere in the known universe? I don't think it would have to necessarily have to come from life-bearing planets.
Of course, "Anywhere in the known universe" would probably be earth, the moon, and Mars. That's the only places we've been to study.
I think that's hydrogen, actually, followed closely by helium. Most of the matter in the universe (as far as we know) is contained in stars, and most of that is hydrogen undergoing nuclear fusion into helium. I'm not sure off the top of my head how common carbon is in the grand scheme of things.
Carbon is pretty high up as far as elements in the universe which are not hydrogen or helium go, i think. however, diamonds have to be produced by extreme heat and pressure, which means that asteroids would tend to lack diamonds due to their low gravatational pull, leading to a low pressure and also are rare in inner belt asteroids due to the fact that those are largly nickel-iron. further, although you would tend to get as many, if not more, diamonds on planets with no life, asteroids which were part of other solar systems tend not to show up in your solar system.
all this flies out the window if physics work differently, of course. Also, diamonds would be more common in an older universe, because carbon is formed when stars collapse.
Another thing that is so obvious that not many people would consider it. That is that we really have no idea what stars and asteroids are made of. We BELIEVE that stars are a nuclear reaction of hydrogen and helium, but we really do not know for sure. I mean when was the last time someone landed on the sun and took samples of it, ya know? We BELIEVE that asteroids are made up of iron and nickel, but we really don't know. For all we know, the sun really is a light bulb, and asteroids could in fact be some space entity's fecal matter. We really have no idea what a lot of the universe is made up of. So, since we have no idea, and we really have no way of knowing, I would say a reasonable doubt certainly exists. Maybe asteroids are made up completely of diamonds. Who is to say?
Well, in the sense that nearly everything we think we know we only know by faith, there is truth there. However, we have some pretty solid evidence supporting our theories concerning the material makeup of stars....we really have no idea what stars and asteroids are made of. We BELIEVE that stars are a nuclear reaction of hydrogen and helium, but we really do not know for sure.
Let's start by heating a piece of iron. You're all roleplayers; you can imagine this. It starts to glow red. But it doesn't glow "red" in a general sense, it glows a very specific shade of red defined by a single specific frequency of red light. It gets brighter as it gets hotter, and what is happening is that the heat exciting the iron atoms is causing those atoms to release photons of a specific frequency that is defined by the structure of the iron atom. Then, as the temperature increases and we see the color of the glow shift, that red is not changing--but it is being joined by the release of photons of other very specific individual frequencies. Our vision system is designed to combine all of these and round them to the nearest "color"--and to ignore electromagnetic "light" that is outside a very narrow range that constitutes our visual perception. However, we have the ability, using prisms as the simplest way, to separate the light into individual frequencies, each frequency appearing as a narrow bar of color.
That's what a spectroscope does: it separates light into the rainbow of those colors actually being emitted by the light source. If the light source is a heated piece of iron, it will have very specific bars of light at very specific frequencies.
And that is true for every atom, that when excited sufficiently it glows. That's how we make lights. Further, the glow of each element is unique to that element, and each gains additional frequencies at specific temperatures, and the ratios of of those frequencies depends on the temperature. Further, having studied the matter, we can calculate and predict the frequencies specific atoms will release at specific temperatures.
Thus we can work backwards: if we can capture the light from a light source, we can split it into all the frequencies (visible and invisible) it contains, identify each and the relative intensities of each, and match these to the elements which must be present and the temperature at which they would be emitting those "colors". We thus have a very accurate measuring stick for determining the composition of a star.
A few trivial details are interesting.
Iron is the heaviest element (the largest nucleus) which can be produced by compression within a star. When all (or most) of the matter in a star has been fused into iron, the process stops, and the star is dead. Elements heavier than that are considerably more rare in the universe for precisely that reason--it is simple for iron to form in stars, and eventually to be smashed off into the universe. To get heavier elements, you need a nova or supernova--an explosion of a star. In the force of such an explosion, some of the material is compressed by fusion into elements of greater atomic weight.
The bands of elements found in stars are specific enough that we can use them to detect relative motion of the stars by use of the Doppler Effect. You probably remember that as the reason why a train whistle sounds high when the train is coming at you and drops in pitch when it passes: the frequency of the wave is compressed or decompressed by the movement of the source relative to the receiver. However, all frequencies are compressed or decompressed by the same proportion. Thus we find that the light from some stars have bands that are correctly spaced for certain elements but are all too high or too low. This then suggests, respectively, that the source is moving toward or away from us at sufficient velocity to shift the bands that amoung--and we can determine exactly what velocity is necessary to create a shift of that degree.
If I send two pings from my sonar and it reflects back at me, my system will show that it bounced off a smooth hard surface with a regular curve which is moving through the water, and I will realize that I have found something artificial, probably a submarine. I then "know" that the submarine is there. I have not seen it; I have not been to it. I have, however, received information that proves its presence, position, and movement. In the same way, I have not brought back material from the stars, but they have sent rather detailed information as to their temperature and composition and movement based on the light radiating from them.
Thanks for the opinions on the gems. I'm still thinking about it.
--M. J. Young
Actually, umm, solid evidence is rather lacking. There are two major theories of how the solar system came to be, and both have massive holes in them. Its probable that both theories are largely wrong.
Furthermore, by what we know, the stars should not be here. Yet they are. So....again massive holes big enough to drive a fleet of supertankers full of speculation through.
We don't really know the stars location more than 300 lightyears from Earth. After that it gets a lot more iffy. The Red Shift (or Doppler Effect amongst the stars has problems.) We can only do parrallax out to 300 lights due to the size of the base (from one point to its opposite point on Earth's orbit).
We're not really sure how the Sun works either.
Carl Sagan pointed out that there are varying degrees of certainty in science. The Law of Gravity is very certain. Sonar is again quite certain.
As the world's expert in Australopithecus put it....and then there are things that slide right off the register of objective truth, and the follower can sometimes believe several mutually incompatible things at once like parapschyology or the human fossil record.
The nature of the solar system and stars is likely a good bit closer to B than A.
Well the other thing though MJ is that we're testing that against earth standards. Iron glows at a certain frequency ON EARTH. Who is to say that it glows at the same frequency everywhere? No matter what kinds of tests we run on it, we still aren't seeing it in the conditions it's in in outer space. If I told you that cotton was the strongest fiber known, you would laugh in my face. However, if the only other fiber I was familiar with was tissue paper, then I would be correct. See what I mean?
the atomic properties of iron are unaffected by enviromental phenomena. iron will glow with a specific set of colors at a specific tempature even in outer space. and we can test that, and NASA may very well have. Space is not magic, it does not effect the behaviors of atoms, it does not effect how fusion operates, especially not in gravity wells, and really all it effects is that there is vaccum waiting to suck you out and kill you by oxygen starvation beyond whatever protects you from vaccum, and has no thermal conductivity, as well as generally having low gravity.
JTM,
I haven't heard of a theory which says that atoms behave differently in space. However, I have heard of theories that have different effects being predominant in space than are commonly on Earth.
Supposedly some of the megastructures in the universe look to take something like 300 billion years to set up (and since the universe is supposed to be only 15 billion thats a wee problem). So, assuming that other forces are active than what is the General Consensus seems reasonable to me.
So while I might pick a bone with John's specific examples, I'll have to stand by his general principle aka Space IS magic, or it might be, and we have good evidence to believe it is.
*Magic being defined as unexplained forces.
I see what you're saying, but the fact still remains that we don't know for sure. You can say whatever you want about this or that, but the fact still remains that we can never be 100% positive about anything. Until someone actually lands on the sun and brings back a sample of it for genuine analysis, I'd say that reasonable doubt still exists as to what it is made up of.
Also, it is very possible that there is an unknown element in these asteroids that just happens to glow at the same frequency as iron. Not to mention the fact that we have no way of knowing what temperature the asteroids are. You can say "Well, iron glows this color at 500 degrees, so that must be iron" but do you know what temperature the asteroid is? Maybe the asteroid is actually at 5,000,000,000,000,000,000 degrees, and its unknown minerals just happen to glow at the same color as iron at that temperature. It's the "What If" factor, and there is no way around it.
I'm not a 100% positive that I'm talking to JohnA1Nut instead of to a computer program, but I'm certain enough to take action based on my theory that John is a Real Person(TM). :)
So don't demand 100% proof, please. The only thing that can be proven that hard is math. What we have is probabilities. We weigh the evidence, and just like a jury we try to decide what is true.
And that is all you need.
A lot of space science is really iffy, or has giant holes, or requires outright Miracles to work.
When someone says...90% of the universe is undetectable by any means, and cannot logically exist, but this Dark Matter has to exist anyways to make our theories work....well, you know what you'd say if someone tried to sell you a car with only a front tire in his hands, and he claimed the rest of the car was invisible....
There are a lot of other problems.
Its highly probable that we're making serious mistakes in the General Consensus about the universe.
Its highly probable that we're making serious mistakes in the General Consensus about the universe.
That's all I'm saying Eric.
Also, it is very possible that there is an unknown element in these asteroids that just happens to glow at the same frequency as iron.
No, it is not. That is because we know all the elements that can possibly be stable for more than a small portion of a second, and some of those too. you see, at a certain point any element decays at some rate, and that rate goes up rapidly, to the point that most of them beyond uranium have to be created in particle accelerators and don't last more than a few days then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transuranium_element
also, while we likely are making mistakes about the physics of the universe, the actual composition we can be pretty sure of.
That is because we know all the elements that can possibly be stable for more than a small portion of a second
No we don't. We know all of the elements NATIVE TO EARTH that can do that. Space is a mighty big place. There could very well be minerals in outer space that we never encountered here on earth.
actually, there are only somthing like 100 elements possible that do that. this is because the key distinguishing feature of an element is the number of protons. we have created/witnessed all elements up to element 118, and elements with more than 92 protons decay fairly rapidly.
Again, you're using earth science here. All I'm saying is that it is POSSIBLE, just POSSIBLE that there are things in space that we could never conceive of here on earth. Our knowledge of earth science compared to the endlessness of space would be like having one page out of one book, and from that trying to understand all of the books that have ever been written from the beginning of time.
O.K., to settle what is really a non-argument between JTM and JohnA1Nut:
John, we are not using "Earth science" as opposed to science that exists "out in space". We are using the structures of atoms themselves. What you're saying is that it's clear that people in New York have bodies composed of DNA, but what about people in Moscow? We have the building blocks, and we know how they fit.
On the other hand, on some level the question is not whether elements act the same way in space as they do on Earth, but whether they would act the same way in other universes that they do on Earth.
My answer as a referee is that yes, they do, unless I am in a universe in which the biases and rules of the universe dictate otherwise. That's partly because it's a terrible load easier for me if I don't have to make one little change to one little fact about the universe and then work out the millions of other things that would be different because of this one change or else deal with the fact that there is an inconsistency in my universe that might come back to bite me if someone who understands the science better than I tackles it. It's partly because in a world with a relatively high tech bias, I need to have all the machines work on the same principles, and if I change one of those principles I have to figure out why a particular machine still works even though the science on which it is based doesn't. (It is unfair for anything in a bias to be excluded in high bias unless that is by intentional design--e.g., power blocking--because the point of bias is to control what is possible and what is not.)
So it might be that this universe is different in the ways you want it to be, but to the degree that what you want violates the known laws of the universe, it is less likely.
That said, this discussion has caused me to recognize 1) that carbon is one of the commonly-formed elements in the universe; 2) that for reasons not at all clear to me discrete elements tend to be found in bunches (otherwise, why would asteroids be so heavily nickel-iron based?); and 3) that a lot of that matter got scattered through the universe by explosions of some sort which might have compressed such pockets of carbon into gemstones.
Thus it is at least plausible that there might be gemstones out there. I still stand by my conclusion that this would not be something with which a scrap dealer would normally deal.
--M. J. Young
This is a serious problem Multiverser faces. However, most people are casual enough, or simply not informed enough to realize its a problem.
But there is one partial solution:
In the Known Laws of Science aka the General Consensus world, the galaxies were formed by gravity.
In the Electromagnetism Predominant world, the galaxies are primarily the creation of giant electric arcs kinking and soaring through space and creating circular effects.
However, unless you're in a spaceship equipped with a magnetic drive, its not really going to make much difference to you which reality you're in.
If you're on Earth (or in New York) and armed with crossbows or machine guns, it doesn't matter what Space (or Moscow) does with its magnetic drive interplanetary spaceships. It only matters if you take a magnetic drive spaceship through the scriff to a GC world. Otherwise, its a mere detail.
So you can reasonably dodge a lot of this.
In ways, this is a continuation of the hyperspace types discussion we had here.
Another solution is the Steampunk ('The Alternate Tech is Magic!').
http://www.tricitiesnet.com/donsastronomy/mining.html
Graeme has provided an excellent and authoritative answer on asteroid mining. Thank you kindly.
--M. J. Young
Besides free metals like iron and nickel, C-Type asteroids also contain water ice, hydrocarbons, graphite, various metal oxides, silicates, sulfides and sulfates, nitrates, carbonates, etc.
This is an excerpt from the page.
Graphite is mostly carbon. If we agree that diamonds are mostly carbon, then there is obviously carbon on the asteroids. Therefore, it seems probable to me that diamonds would also be there. I know that "undercooked" diamonds, called carbon crystals, are often found in coal mines. (Coal, like graphite, is mostly carbon)
Read more, John. The web page writer thinks there would be gem grade diamonds.
Yeah, Eric, I saw that. It's a bad habit I, and a lot of other people have. Read half the webpage, then make a comment about something answered in the next paragraph. I've done that to MJ more than once. In some of the letters I've seen, (from my Final Countdown page) readers of that often do it too. I'm not finished with the page yet, but thanks for reminding me to read it.
I'm frankly suprised asteroids can actually form diamonds, whatever their compisition.
Actually, I think that the theory is not that they form the diamonds, but that the diamonds are formed by the same events that create the asteroids.
If asteroids are formed by accretion of dust particles over time, then you would be correct that there is insufficient pressure to create them. If, however, they are formed by larger objects breaking up, the pressure would have been inherent either in the larger object or in the forces that caused the disintegration. Also, it might be that the "dust" includes larger nuggets which were compressed carbon from an exploding star (the same forces that create large nucleus atoms).
It is at least one of the dominant theories that the debris that forms the rings around the outer planets, similar in many ways to the asteroid belt, is from moons torn apart by the gravitational forces of those planets. The Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter is similarly though to have formed as it did because of the gravitic force of Jupiter, but whether the mammoth planet actually tore a smaller planet apart or merely prevented it from coming together is debated. So it might be debris from a crumbled planet.
At least, that's how it stood last I investigated the matter.
--M. J. Young
I've read a few SF/Fantasy novels set on That Planet before it got crumpled. One had it destroyed as part of a War in Heaven.
It would be a nice Romantic (not in the Romance novel sense, but more in the story tradition of High Adventure and Wild Travels) setting. It would be a very cool 1920's travel with Doc Savage back in time to before Minerva (which is usually its title) got destroyed to rescue some device needed to save Earth from a similar force bent on blowing up Earth.
A collision between two asteroids in space would create pressure and heat also, perhaps enough to form diamond or other carbon forms.
I suppose that's correct. One tends to think of asteroids as floating along in some orderly fashion, but probably with each in its own orbit and gravitic influences on all the others there are slight differences in velocity and vector, and collisions are probably fairly common (although I don't imagine that they are quite as wild as those in the Star Wars movie where they fly through the asteroid belt--a good computerized radar system would probably be able to predict the positions of every object larger than a soccer ball with a few miles with a good five to ten minute lead time). Those probably aren't bumper car jars--these are rather large chunks of rock moving very fast, even if they are mostly moving in the same direction. (Two cars running parallel to each other at a mile a minute that bump do not have near the impact that velocity suggests, but only the impact created by their mass and the velocity along the vector at which the gap between them closed, which is probably only a few feet per minute.)
So I can see that carbon deposits on asteroids might wind up crystalizing under impact pressure.
--M. J. Young
They are floating along orderly now but I imagine at some point in the life of an asteroid that things were a bit more energetic (why are they here?).