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Even in space, where all sorts of bizarre things happen, diamond rain was something special for a long time. However, it turns out that it is far less common than expected. It can rain diamonds on at least 1,900 exoplanets.
Astronomers came to this conclusion after experiments on Earth showed that diamonds can be formed at much lower temperatures than previously thought. This means that diamond rain could be a fairly normal phenomenon on the icy worlds of our cosmos.
confusion
Carbon needs high pressure and heat to turn into diamond. However, until now there has been some confusion about how much the element needs to be compressed and heated to form diamonds on ice planets like Uranus and Neptune.
There have always been two types of experiments to investigate this. First, you can compress carbon by subjecting it to a sudden shock. You can also place the carbon components in a gap and slowly compact them. Previously, the former required much higher temperatures and more pressure to shape the diamonds.
New trick
But now an attempt has been made in the USA to combine the two methods. For the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory In California, researcher Mungo Frost and his colleagues decided to compress polystyrene – the same polymer that makes Styrofoam – between two diamonds and then heat them with X-rays. They saw that the diamonds began to form from the polystyrene at temperatures of around 2200 degrees and a pressure of around 19 gigapascals. These are conditions comparable to the superficial interiors of Uranus and Neptune.
And that’s a much lower pressure than was previously thought necessary for the formation of diamonds during shock compression. The reaction took longer than in previous experiments. This could explain why diamond formation under lower pressure was not noticed at this time. “It didn’t match previous results and we didn’t expect it to, but it actually fit well and kind of brought everything together,” Frost explains. “It turns out it all has to do with different time scales.”
Diamonds on exoplanets
But what does this have to do with diamond rain on exoplanets? Well, a lot. This means that it can rain diamonds even on smaller planets, something that was previously thought to be impossible. Of the 5,600 known exoplanets, more than 1,900, or more than a third, can rain diamonds.
In addition, diamonds could form at a shallower depth in our solar system than previously thought. This changes our knowledge of the dynamics inside large planets. Because diamonds are formed at shallower depths, diamond rain can sink through a layer of ice into the core of these planets. This would in turn have an impact on the magnetic fields of these icy worlds, about which we currently know little. So the discovery can lead to more questions than answers.
What is Diamond?
As far as we know, diamond is the hardest material that occurs naturally on Earth. It is a mineral formed by the crystallization of carbon. On Earth, diamonds are formed under high pressure and enormous heat at a depth of around 140 to 190 kilometers. They come to the surface through volcanic eruptions. On our own planet we only find diamonds in the ground, but on Uranus and Jupiter, for example, it rains diamonds. This can even lead to a very strange state of water, which, as we’ve written before, is described as “super-hot, smooth ice.” A black ice cube is four times as heavy as a normal ice cube and has a temperature of several thousand degrees Celsius.
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