{"id":245650,"date":"2026-10-19T22:51:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T03:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/scientists-turn-ordinary-plastic-into-billions-of-tiny-diamonds-using-powerful-lasers"},"modified":"2026-10-19T22:51:00","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T03:51:00","slug":"scientists-turn-ordinary-plastic-into-billions-of-tiny-diamonds-using-powerful-lasers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/scientists-turn-ordinary-plastic-into-billions-of-tiny-diamonds-using-powerful-lasers","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Turn Ordinary Plastic Into Billions of Tiny Diamonds Using Powerful Lasers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-turn-ordinary-plastic-into-billions-of-tiny-diamonds-using-powerful-lasers2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Diamonds recovered from plastic contain roughly 3,000 atoms each and could be modified with other elements for future use in medical imaging.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Powerful lasers can turn plastic into tiny diamonds, but recovering the crystals means catching them as they shoot out at speeds comparable to a meteorite impact. Researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and the University of Rostock have now collected those diamonds intact, showing that they survive the return from extreme pressure and temperature to ordinary conditions.<\/p>\n<p>The recovered particles averaged three nanometers across, or three billionths of a meter, with roughly 3,000 carbon atoms in each diamond. The laser technique produces a combination of high purity, exceptionally small size, and closely matched particle sizes that conventional methods, including explosions, cannot achieve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Diamonds recovered from plastic contain roughly 3,000 atoms each and could be modified with other elements for future use in medical imaging. Powerful lasers can turn plastic into tiny diamonds, but recovering the crystals means catching them as they shoot out at speeds comparable to a meteorite impact. Researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}