Hmm sorry but I would have to say either you misunderstood Hawkings or he was
wrong, don't take this as a personal attack. Diamonds can and DID form in earths
crust. What you are talking about is the formation of elements. Now elements are
only formed in nature in extreme conditions, like those at the center of stars
and in super nova, during fusion. Diamond is really just another form, a
crystalline form, of carbon. If you take graphite, yet another form of carbon,
and compress it under sufficiently high pressures and heat for long enough you
WILL get diamond, in fact I just recently watched a NOVA video in my Chemistry
11 class where they were talking about the race to make better man made
diamonds. This does nothing at all to the atoms of carbon, it simply rearranges
them to form new bonds. Atoms of graphite are bonded together tightly in thin
layers, whereas in diamond they are bonded much more rigidly into a crystalline
structure. Also I don't think anyone would argue that gold, and other elements
formed in the earth, at least I hope not, when our earth coalesced out of the
primordial gas, dust and rocks 4 billion years ago it gained all of the elements
that it has ever had, the amount of gold, nickel, carbon etc.. on earth has
changed very little since the beginning, some may have been added from
meteorites, what has happened it that these elements have recombined countless
times since them into new compounds, all life itself is nothing more than the
recombination of elements that were already here.

GrimDude wrote:

> It only makes sense too, Bob. If, any of the readers here had ever visited a
> salt mine, they would realize that the internal temperatures of the planet
> build quickly the closer to the center you get. Olivine near the surface
> might indicate a problem for us, but we might be an odd case compared to
> other life forms.
>   Don't forget, people, that the center of our planet is nickel, and
> possibly liquid nickel. That very feature rules out the possibility that
> minerals like gold, diamond, and other such dense materials, could have
> formed here at all. If, during school, you learned that diamonds and gold
> are formed within the crust of the earth, you were taught incorrectly. Only
> elements that occur 'above' nickel (from the periodic table) could have been
> formed here at all. Not naturally, anyway. The pressures of this planet are
> insufficient for that.
>   The building blocks of our planet are the result of a naturally evolving
> universe. A universe that had been ongoing for billions of years in order
> that our planet could even exist at all.
>   I once sat in on a lecture by Hawking's himself, where he speculated that
> diamonds could (possibly only) be formed in the resulting explosion of a
> supernova. When I shared this revelation with a geologist friend he nearly
> had a fit! As he put it, "Hawking's is a smart guy, but he really missed the
> mark here."
>   Somehow, I don't think so. It is much more likely that geologists have
> been misled for decades. I trust Hawkings. :)
>   Oops! Boy did I digress!
> Anyway, back to the topic at hand....
>
> Didn't you miss a few moons of Mars? :)
>
> Grim

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