Macroscien said...I have been doing my concrete driveways today.. and come to such (after thought) reflection.
What the beautiful material people invented that you could pour to any shape and become strong like a rock, get even stronger every year.
What could be even better than that ??
Yes !! It is .
Diamond, or simply speaking carbon (or coal).
We barbarians do just burn it for energy but our future generations could use it as a building block of everything. The strongest material known to humans.
They could build in the future 10 km high skyscrapers, lifts to the orbit , maybe Moon
Everything could be made of "artificial diamonds"
All we do is just burning it ...isn't it sad ?
Our descendants will never forgive us such a waste...
I assume it was both physically and mentally tiring concreting your driveway ?
I think you may find that :
Coal isn't pure carbon and doesn't directly turn into diamonds.
Diamonds form about 50km below the earth's crust at 50 times atmospheric pressure and 2000 degrees C
It takes millions of years for blocks of carbon to turn into diamonds in these conditions
Modern man evolved about 200,000 years ago and walked out of Africa about 80,000 years ago.
So, when the coal we are currently digging at up to 60m below the earth's crust, sinks due to geological processes to 60km, then spends a couple million years turning into diamonds, then gets uplifted back to the surface to be collected, history suggest man will have either evolved into something quite different to man, or been replaced by something else.
The chance that our decedents would ever be able to obtain naturally occurring diamonds from the coal we are currently mining is just about zero.
Probably more likely they manufacture a different substance that is harder than diamond, stronger than diamond, more ductile than diamond and cheaper than diamond and place diamonds in museums to marvel at how the ancients fought trade wars over such trivial things.
