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Name: sbrown
Status: N/A
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: 1999 - 2000
Question:
Would diamonds melt on Venus?

Replies:
No, as I recall temperatures on Venus range from a few hundred degrees to maybe a thousand degrees Centigrade. Diamonds are the hardest substance known because they have a VERY tight crystal structure. This probably means that liquid diamond (which, of course, whould just be liquid carbon) could only exist at extremely high pressure. At ordinary pressures, if you heated a diamond to higher and higher temperatures, at some point it would sublimate like dry ice changing into carbon-dioxide gas.

John Hawley


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