From: spike66 (spike66@attbi.com)
Date: Fri Aug 30 2002 - 10:47:13 MDT
Eugen Leitl wrote:
>Damage, schmamage. Look at a diamond crystal floating in deep space.
>Imagine utter absence of radiation. Calculate the half lifetime before it
>turns to graphite. My guesstimate would be billions, if not hundreds of
>billions of years half lifetime.
>
At the conditions stated, the halflife would be infinite, since there is no
apparent source to supply the activation energy to get to the more
stable graphite configuration. Since natural diamond is formed over
a long period, there is no carbon 14 present. Quantum tunneling
would not be a factor far from any radiation source.
Of course you didn't actually state that it was natural diamond, nor
did you rule out radioactive impurities in the crystal. spike
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