2024-02-22 06:35:28
Scientific bulletin titles:
-Synthetic diamonds boost the global jewelry market
-The Odysseus spacecraft, belonging to the private American company Intuitive Machines, is heading towards the moon without any accidents recorded so far.
– New data about a black hole that absorbs the equivalent of a sun’s worth of matter every day
Synthetic diamonds are a game changer in the global diamond jewelry market, which is currently worth $89 billion.
In the United States, the largest consumer of natural diamonds in the world, 37% of engagement rings are synthetic, up from 17% in February 2023. Consumer demand for synthetic diamonds has improved thanks to two countries, China and India, which are among the largest producers of synthetic diamonds in the world. . In the absence of an industrial monopoly and due to the low prices of synthetic diamonds, the demand for them is stimulated. According to retailers in the western Indian city of Surat, where 90% of the world’s diamonds are cut and polished, the price of a low-quality, 1-carat polished diamond fell from $2,400 in 2022 to about $1,000 in 2023.
But how are unnatural diamonds made and with what techniques?
At the Greenlab Diamonds laboratory in Surat, India, workers need less than eight weeks to produce a wearable synthetic diamond that is virtually indistinguishable from natural diamonds. Within the reactors in this laboratory, workers fill them with gases such as methane, which contains carbon, so that these gases produce intense pressure similar to that which leads to the formation of diamonds deep in the earth. Next, workers inside the reactors drop diamond fragments they call “seeds,” which grow under the influence of heat and pressure. The final product of synthetic diamonds, after being cut and polished in special facilities, resembles the same chemical and optical properties as those of natural diamonds.
The role of private companies in the Comorian economy is beginning to show its signs
The private American company “Intuitive Machines” is holding its breath a few hours before the landing of its Odysseus spacecraft on the surface of the moon, in a highly symbolic step that, if successful, will be the first landing of an American probe on the surface of the moon since the end of the Apollo program in 1972. Thanks to the solar panels on it. On board, the Odysseus spacecraft is supposed to operate for seven days, starting from its scheduled landing this Thursday night. Regarding the location that will serve as a landing pad for the vehicle, it is located about 300 kilometers from the south pole of the moon within a crater called Malapert A, after an astronomer from the seventeenth century.
The Moon’s South Pole is of interest to various countries aspiring to explore it, because it contains water in the form of ice that can be utilized. The Odysseus spacecraft, more than four meters high and equipped with six NASA scientific instruments, will study the lunar plasma – the layer of electrically charged gas – and measure radio waves coming from the Sun and other planets. The cameras installed under the vehicle will analyze the amount of dust that will result from the landing process, in order to compare it with what was recorded during the landings of the Apollo missions.
It should be noted that NASA is looking to develop the lunar economy with the private sector within its new CLPS program. Therefore, the private company Intuitive Machines is only one of a group of other private companies that were commissioned by NASA to transport scientific equipment to the moon, in preparation for the return of astronauts to the moon within the framework of the other main program, Artémis.
For your information, the value of the contract signed by NASA to implement the first mission for Intuitive Machines amounted to $118 million.
When a black hole absorbs the equivalent of the sun every day!
The fastest-growing black hole known to date has a mass of 17 billion suns and eats the equivalent of one sun every day, according to a study published earlier this week in the journal Nature. The history of the black hole J0529-4351 dates back to the primitive era of the universe, 13.8 billion years ago, according to what astronomer Christian Wolf at the Australian National University wrote about this hole. In the 1980s, astronomers fell into the fallacy that this black hole was rather a very luminous star. However, based on observational studies carried out by the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia, and by the European Southern Observatory’s quasar.
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