Scientists recently pointed to the possibility of rain consisting of diamonds raining across the universe, after they used ordinary plastic to simulate the strange rain they believe formed deep inside Uranus and Neptune.
Scientists previously assumed that extreme pressure and high temperatures turned hydrogen and carbon into hard diamonds that lie thousands of kilometers below the surface of the ice giants.
In new research published in the journal Science Advances, oxygen was introduced into the mix, indicating that diamond rain may be more common than expected. Ice giants such as Neptune and Uranus are believed to be the most common form of an exoplanet, which means diamond rain could fall all over the universe.
Dominic Krause, one of the study’s authors and a physicist from the German HZDR Research Laboratory, said that diamond rain was completely different from Earth’s rain, noting that scientists believe that there is a thick, hot liquid below the surface of the planets, where diamonds form and slowly sink downward to the rocky core located below the surface, including It is over 10,000 km and may be the size of the Earth.
“Falling diamonds can form vast layers that cover hundreds of kilometers or more,” Krause told AFP. Although it may not be as shiny and polished as a pretty gem on a ring, it was formed by forces similar to those of the earth.”
The research team found the mixture of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen needed to simulate the process in an easily available source, as it is available in the plastic PET – polyethylene terephthalate – used in the manufacture of bottles and food packaging.
According to Krause, the experiment will work initially using Coca-Cola bottles, although the researchers used ultra-clean PET plastic. The team then exposed the plastic to a high-powered optical laser at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California.
“The very short, extremely bright X-ray flashes allowed scientists to see the formation of nanodiamonds, which are diamonds so small that it is impossible to see with the naked eye,” Krause said. “The oxygen present in massive amounts on these planets helps absorb hydrogen atoms from the carbon, so diamond formation is much easier,” he continued.
A potential new method for making nanodiamonds:
The experiment may direct scientists toward a new method for making nanodiamonds, which has a wide and growing range of applications including drug delivery, medical sensors, non-invasive surgeries and quantum electronics.
“The current way to make nanodiamonds is to take some amount of carbon or diamond and blast it with explosives,” said study co-author Benjamin Ofori-Okai and a scientist from SLAC. Laser production may provide a cleaner and more manageable way to make nanodiamonds.”
The diamond rain research is still only a hypothesis because there is not enough information about Uranus and Neptune, the two farthest planets in our solar system. No spacecraft has flown past the ice giants since NASA’s Voyager 2 probe in the 1980s, and the data it sent back to Earth is still being used in research.
But the NASA group plans to launch a potential new mission to those planets in the next decade. That would be amazing, Krause said, and he’s looking forward to more data even if it takes a decade or two.
Source