Name: S Brown
Status: Other
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: Prior to 1993
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, would 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.
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