On The Rocks

‘CAN it be pure coincidence that, with the Prime Minister and her husband in the Far East, the Chinese have discovered a way to make diamonds from ‘thin air’?

‘We have found a couple of rubber bands and a pea-shooter’

We know Tony’s uptight, what with the Dr David Kelly thing, war in Iraq and finding ways to keep Euan out of trouble in the long summer break, but can he really turn carbon dioxide into diamond? Talk about trapped wind.

As it is the Independent says that a team of Chinese scientists has found a way to turn waste gas into gems – although the jewels produced are typically just one quarter if a millimetre in diameter.

Aside from Gerald Ratner and the average love-struck 16-year-old, such a rock is not sufficiently large to turn into jewellery.

Rather, the gems will be used in industry for such things as cutting tools and abrasives.

However, Professor Qianwang Chen, who led the research, assures the paper that he can grow diamonds ‘as large as 1.2 millimetres across.’

Impressive, but not as profitable as the traditional method of creating a diamond – inserting a lump of coal up Tony’s…

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Posted: 24th, July 2003 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink