"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so
many different things."
According to Web Elements, C amounts to 500,000 ppb by atoms in the
Universe. A significant portion of that is diamond-C in fine space
dust which could make very fine jewelry if you are the size of a
bed bug. Nanodiamond is now of medical interest as we read in
“Nanodiamonds are alternatives to toxic quantum dots” at
I am presently preparing a number of samples from mantle-derived and
related deposits and wondering about the history of C in igneous rock
which has come a long way both horizontally and vertically and over a
long period of time. We are told that some terrane rocks here in BC
match up to terrane material in Japan. The original mantle rock may
come from 100 miles down and what, after all, has been the journey of
an atom of C over millions and billions of years of time? Organic C
from a bed bug sized ET adorned with fine jewelry and maybe even a
little DNA could have arrived here when a space rock collided with
this planet to create the Moon and the organic C may have been turned
into soot, graphite or diamond as a result of the collision. A C atom
of any kind from space may have journeyed downward into the mantle
as supercontinents formed and dispersed in cycles over billions of
years. It could be organic C today, soot tomorrow and graphite or
diamond the next “day” in ET terms since a cosmic geological day can
be of any length.
Acme assayers can affordably tell us how much organic and inorganic
C there is in a 2 gram sample of dust. How does one obtain assays of
let us say 100 mantle samples at the Acme price which are specific
for fine diamond C? That will allow vectors to be drawn which point
to the diamond source. Can the De Beers Lab at University of Alberta
do this? GIA?
PS - If ET has travelled across a few galaxies to get here, what meaning would he attach to the wiki picture of that “big hole” at
Kimberley, over 1,000 metres deep, used to extract a few pieces of
fine C which would fit in the average clothes closet?
One of the geological phenomena here in the “River Nation” (Sto:lo
Nation/Fraser Valley) is ophiolite obduction orogeny although I have
not compared it lately with diamondiferous Andromedan orogeny. I am
not sure that a HEPA filter would take care of microbe-carrying
microdiamonds which are the secret weapon of those much feared Mighty
Monosyllabic Martians. (Mars Attacks - The Sequel) because the
diamonds are only a few atoms wide. The bioterrorist implications
cause me to lose a lot of sleep.
“Ack” (Martian translation)
If you Google ‘ophiolite diamonds’ you will find that some of those
globally widespread obducted formations of complex
igneous-sedimentary-metamorphic rocks are diamondiferous as in the
Japanese forearc, “glass inclusions in pyroxene xenoliths of Hawaii”,
the Luobasa ophiolite of Tibet, etc. Also refer to Vancouver Sun, Jan
23/06 “Mysterious Diamond Causes Excitement in BC”.
“Ack” (Martian translation)
The confirmation of microdiamonds in the mantle rocks of the Mount
Thom escarpment would cause more than a little excitement. Acme
assays for C are affordable. I could run 100 samples for C through
them. But their differentiation seems only on the level of
organic-inorganic C. How might one affordably test 100 samples for
diamond C when the history of any C sample could cycle over millions
and billions of years between organic-inorganic, between
igneous-sedimentary-metamorphic, between mineralized inorganic state
(eg graphite) and non-mineralized organic state (the soot
nanopartices which get through ny HEPA filter) because C is a
cosmological metamorphic mineral and some day the C in my body may
become a diamond in another galaxy used by Martian invaders in
biological war.
BTW, since C-carrying rocks may generate diamond C when they hit
this planet, what about C-carrying rocks hitting the Moon which is a
favourite Martian target range?
First I apologize for some inexplicable typographical errors in my
previous post. Martians may be messing about in my brain or computer
to thwart what I imagine to be my crystal-clear tongue-in-cheek
investment schemes. (Using nano-diamonds as a paint additive for
super-durability and reflective qualities)
I recognize that even a good HEPA filter won’t be adequate to filter
nano-diamonds out of cosmic dust in industrial quantities.
Peter’s (canadianmooncivilization) geological jargon is very
readable, even to a person like myself who has no formal grounding
(intended pun) in the field.
I intend to leave all my own personal carbon atoms to some worthy
charity here on Earth rather than letting them fall willy-nilly into
the hands of the little green invaders from you-know-where.
I am impressed by his ambitious attempts to translate hyper-laconic
Martian Monosyllabism into written English. It is definitely a step
in the right direction. The phraseology comes across as just a bit
stilted or wooden, lacking the nuance and poetry which can be more
easily conveyed in the Martians’ own speech modality - (if only we
could hear in the ultra-violet range). Still, it is an effort worth
pursuing, as their form of communication uses so much less oxygen
than our own form of audible speech.
The more oxygen we can conserve for jewellers’ torches and other
worthy purposes, the better it will be for all of us. Even we
earthlings can contribute to this effort if, when required to speak
aloud, we make an effort to speak in acronyms instead of using
entire words. This technique is used successfully in submarines,
spaceships, and other oxygen-scarce environments.
Cheers.
Marty in Victoria where we do have a bi-lingual school, but it is Fren=
ch-English, not Martian.