Recent comments in /f/askscience

Thisbutbetter t1_j6d2n6y wrote

Reply to can gemstones be melted into a gradient? by Acceptable_Shift_247

I think you could get what you want by having a jeweler cut the gems where it gets thinner in some spots and overlay them, like where you want the sapphire to show most is where the thickest part of sapphire with an asbense of amethyst overlay is and vice versa for amethyst, everything between would be in a gradient as they overlap in those parts.

I imagine the gems being cut almost like a ying yang, each side being the pure stone and the middle having a mixture of colors from where the stones overlap.

I know this isn’t answering your question about melting but I think it’s the easiest way to get the ring you want.

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CrambleSquash t1_j6cxuze wrote

Reply to What cause each materials to have different maximum stress and strain? by Adventurous-Swim-523

The mechanical properties - such as strength, of materials depends on their structure at various length scales - macro (what shape is it?), micro (grains, domains etc.), atomic (atomic defects, crystallinity, bonding: metallic Vs ionic Vs covalent).

This is an incredibly complex topic. We have to take a different perspective on all these aspects depending on the materials we're studying - a metal, plastic or ceramic, bio.

Sadly there's no silver bullet! This is why a large part of Materials Science is dedicated to this very topic.

Perhaps interestingly the answer is basically never as simple as how strong are the atomic bonds.

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starmartyr t1_j6cp14w wrote

Reply to comment by spideywat in Shouldn't goldilocks zones shift over time? by LaRoara42

There is the panspermia hypothesis. The idea is that microbial life could somehow be ejected from its home planet by something like a meteor impact. So you have a rock floating through space that contains a dormant single-cell organism. It floats around space for millions of years until it eventually lands on a planet with a habitable atmosphere. The organism evolves over millions of years and eventually, the planet is covered in diverse life forms. That could have happened on Earth. While this theory is interesting it doesn't do much to answer the question of the origin of life. It just passes the buck to somewhere else in the universe.

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