From the sky: Scientists have discovered rare diamonds that came from a planet
Remnants of diamonds were found in the mantle of a dwarf planet that fell to Earth billions of years ago.
"The asteroid collision event has been known for a long time, but no one realized that this is when the diamonds were probably formed"
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technology
13/09/2022
Tuesday, September 13, 2022, 10:49 a.m. Updated: 11:41 a.m.
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The diamonds found (Photo: RMIT University)
Diamonds are considered a rare find, so just imagine how rare it is to find diamonds that came from a distant planet.
Billions of years ago, an asteroid smashed into a dwarf planet blasting the planet's interior into outer space.
Over time, remnants of the dwarf planet's mantle fell to Earth as space diamond-rich meteorites, called Ureilite.
For years, scientists have wondered about the fallen debris from the long-lost planet and the mysterious presence of the diamonds it contains.
They even found a hint of Lonsdaleite, an extremely rare type of diamond named after pioneering crystallographer Kathleen Lonsdale.
Now, a team of scientists led by Andrew Tomkins, professor of geosciences at Monash University, has found the largest Lonsdale diamonds ever seen in ureilite, unequivocally confirming their existence in meteorites.
According to research published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team proposed a unique model for ureilite that could reconcile all the conflicting observations related to diamond formation.
"We've known about the diamonds that exist in Ureilite for some time," Tomkins said.
"I was examining diamonds in different samples with the microscope and noticed that one of them contained some unusual folded diamonds. For me as a geologist, it was quite strange - a diamond is the hardest material, so it shouldn't bend."
This test led Tomkins to conduct research within the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Organization and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology: "
The ureilites diamonds (photo: RMIT University)
While previous studies have found evidence of lonsdellite (58 percent stronger than normal diamond) in ureilite, Tomkins and his colleagues used advanced electron microscopy to identify lonsdellite crystals as small as a micron, which is about 70 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
Although this size seems unusually small, these Lunsdale chunks are larger than anything previously seen in space rocks.
The team proposed that the lonsedloite sprang from a hot fluid that flowed following the asteroid's collision with the planet, which strangely preserved the properties of the graphite present in the mantle.
Some of the lonsdaleite was replaced by conventional cubic diamonds as the rocks cooled, creating the distinct patterns seen in ureilite.
The process, called chemical vapor deposition (CVD), is like a natural version of a manufacturing technique used to produce synthetic diamonds under laboratory conditions.
"At first I assumed the diamonds were formed by CVD, but when we found the Lonsdaleite, we came to the most logical conclusion about their formation," Tomkins said.
"The asteroid collision event has been known for a long time, but no one realized that this is when the diamonds and lonsdelite were probably formed."
The results of the research may help in the development of techniques for the production of lansedlite and synthetic diamonds.
Given that lonsedlite is even harder than ordinary diamond, it has many potential applications in materials science, including gears in miniature machines.
"What we found was a situation where the graphite forms - the folding forms - were replaced by lonsedloite that kept its shape almost perfectly," Tomkins said.
"We believe that in the laboratory it will be possible to reproduce this natural process. It is possible to produce components from very soft graphite and then turn these shapes into lonsdaleite. The plan is to conduct experiments that try to reproduce the natural process that created lonsdaleite."
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