2024-07-26 15:12:18
They are particularly rare on Earth, but one planet could have them in abundance: diamonds. Scientists have analyzed the crust of Mercury and made a discovery.
Mercury is the smallest of the planets in our solar system, with a diameter of about 4,880 kilometers, while the Earth’s diameter is more than 12,700 kilometers. Scientists have now discovered a peculiarity in the Earth’s crust that is causing a stir.
A layer about 16 kilometers thick under the crust of the planet, which is about 91 million kilometers away from us, is said to be made of the most precious rock. The planet closest to the sun has always puzzled scientists. It has a particularly dark surface. Finds of graphite indicate that there was apparently an ocean of carbon in the past. This is what caused the dark color. At the same time, a mantle formed under the crust.
But scientists from Belgium and China, who analyzed data from NASA’s “Messenger” probe, saw something unusual. The mantle was not expected to be made of graphene, a material consisting of several layers of graphite. They assume that another carbon product is hidden there: diamonds.
“We calculated that the carbonaceous mineral that would form at the interface between the mantle and the core is diamond and not graphite,” team member Olivier Namur, an associate professor at the Belgian university KU Leuven, told Space.com. Diamonds are formed when carbon is compressed under great pressure. What only occurs in small pieces on Earth is likely to be an immeasurable treasure on Mercury. But the diamond layer has not yet been seen, and that is unlikely to change for some time.
The Messenger mission, on which the new findings are based, ended in 2015. It mapped the small planet for the first time and discovered not only carbon but also ice at the poles. The European-Japanese mission BepiColombo, which was launched in 2018 and is scheduled to reach Mercury in 2025, could offer hope. However, it will only orbit Mercury and will not land on it.